Prison Tales: Our Spring Pastimes
Nostalgia Our Spring Pastimes ZGM ‘Some birds are not meant to be caged’, that is how best I can pronounce childhood of my mates, siblings and myself. When spring ‘dressed in all its trim, put a spirit of youth in everything’ like swallows in wee hours we flew out of our homes as arrows from a quiver. Nothing could hold us back. The fright of standing on a stool in class or receiving a cane charge on our palms for incomplete homework could not … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Memeiors
Stanly Wolpert: A Historian We Should Read
PUNCHLINE Wolpert’s works Stanley Wolpert is a historian who makes the difference By Z. G. Muhammad In our generation, perhaps rarely any of one might have read it or heard about it. In my small collection of biographies, there is a purple coloured hardbound, with pages turned to smoke yellow biography published eighty-eight years back by George Allen and Unwin Limited, 40 Museum Street, London. It has a foreword by father of Indian Nation Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The biography has been authored Mahadev Desai Gandhi’s James Boswell and personal … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Kashmir-Talk
Suicide Attack: War Is No Option Dialogue Is Way Forward
PUNCHLINE Let Us Talk Peace Z. G. Muhammad There is war talk all around. The war cries that have been an intrinsic feature of some television studios for about the past five years have become shriller during the past couple of days. Calling for a full-fledged war including the use of nuclear weapons is expected of some television anchors, hatemongers and shouting brigades know for screaming, screeching and yelling from the safe harbours of television … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take
Hassan My Younger Sibling- An Obituary On My Childhood —
Nostalgia Hassan My Younger Sibling An Obituary on My Childhood ZGM He is gone. My other half of me, my younger sibling Hassan, like white and puffy dandelion disappeared in the thin of air without a whispering breeze blowing across. He left so fast and forgot even to jot down a parting note- some reminiscences of the whole childhood and boyhood we had lived together- if he had forgiven me for breaking his terracotta toys, ripping … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured
LOOKING BEYOND THE STREET NARRATIVES
PUNCHLINE Looking Beyond The ‘Shop-Front Narratives’ By Z.G. Muhammad Let me begin my today’s column, with one of my favourite quotes of Mahmoud Darwish; “He who writes his story, Inherits the land of that Story.” The reason for this couplet buried somewhere in the subconscious resonating in my mind has been an ongoing debate on the social media the Facebook for a past couple days on some posts by historian Dr Abdul Ahad, author of ‘Kashmir … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take
PRISON TALES: LEADERS AND PICKPOCKETS
Nostalgia Prison Tales Leaders and Pickpockets As someone has said coffee connects us in so many ways, so did the hubble-bubble connect generation ahead of us in our childhood. Those days’ many tailor shops in our downtown, were no less than the fashionable Coffee House, on the Residency Road were wits, poets and “politicians” met in the morning to enjoy hot cups of coffee and talk politics- of course pooh-poohing the resistance movement used to be … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take
Kashmir: ‘Electoral Politicians and Polo Ponies.’
Punchline Kashmir: Electoral Politics and ‘Polo Ponies’ Z.G. Muhammad Sometimes meeting an embittered politician, enables one to peep into a domain of politics that otherwise remains obscure. Moreover, on occasions sharing experiences about such meetings helps in analysing the games behind popping up of new characters like mushrooms during rains with alternative narratives for fortifying the ‘hegemonic discourses’ at the time of elections in the State. More it also helps to understand how multiple forces, ostensibly … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take