Our friend bulleyah is fighting the good fight in Delhi. He emailed earlier in the week that Delhi’s Sunday Book Bazaar faces closure by those municipal goons. Surrounded as I am by city-block sized Border’s and B&N’s, I forget the pleasures, the sights and the sounds of a book bazaar. Imagine, if you will, a [...]
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Pakistan has lost the internets due to “a serious fault in the undersea cable carrying data between Pakistan and the outside world”. In unrelated news, USS Jimmy Carter is a fine looking submarine. Ahem. In related news, some of your comments recently may have been blocked due to “questionable content”. My apologies. I accidently added [...]
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Speaking of courts, we should probably try to get our noggins round SCOTUS, which has apparently lost its damn mind. Earlier in CMís history, I wrote a little jeremiad on America getting the Supreme Court it deserved as punishment for allowing its legislature to punt all significant decisions sideways, to the ununelectable Supremes. I expected [...]
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Just a public notice and congratulations to my younger brother who received 10/13 [A!] in his Masters of Science [in Sand, Dirt, Oil and Rock?] exam at Aalborg Univerity! He is now certified to find oil in the North Sea and be richer than this academic pauper. We are all very proud. My one question [...]
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Today, Mukhtar Mai appeared in front of the SC to plead the case against her rapists. Here is a very good timeline of her case – including the news that her passport has been returned to her. The central decision before the SC is whether the Federal Shari’at Court or the Lahore High Court have [...]
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The controversy sparked by BJP prez Lal Krishna Advaniís comments about Muhammad Ali Jinnah in Karachi earlier this month raises forcefully, once more, questions of the deeply politicized nature of historical memory ñ especially when it comes to major events and figures of colonial South Asia and the nationalist movement. In an uncharacteristic sentimental moment, [...]
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Outside our Nani’s house was a canal – taking water from the central Lahore Canal to the army fields in the cantonement. On my first trip alone to Lahore – this was seventh grade? – I sat along Joray Pull canal and, um, wished I could jump into the rushing muddy water. When we moved [...]
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Love, hugs and kisses to abba gee on this Father’s Day. the weather is nice today but it is supposed to REALLY heat up this week. Ugh. Next weekend, the iowocity crew is coming to town [hopefully], so I am psyching up for it. Anyways, off to the links, eh? Prithvi called to attention an [...]
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Have you heard of the Apple’s announcement that it will switch over to Intel processors? You must have. I have had many, many emails from readers asking what is my take on this amazing development. Ok, by “many, many” I mean “one”. And by “one”, I mean, “myself”. Seems like CM is not the go-to [...]
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In a bid to present the softer side of Pakistan, The General has restricted all movement of Mukhtar Mai – including any overseas travel. See, the softer side of Pakistan does not include any promotion of the fact that women get gang-raped by community consensus [panchaiyat or jirga] – when they are not bought, sold [...]
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Mid June and it is finally hot as all hell here in Chicago. Just when I was beginning to think that this summer will be tame. Ha. The weekend was great. Some superb hanging on-s with friends and lovers. Some discussions of plans for the summer as well. All of this reminded me that I [...]
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Well, it’s been fun doing this Empire thing [I should have called it Empire Days {why do clever things always occur to me post facto?}]. I have a lot more to say and this isn’t even my field which makes all that I have to say, circumspect from the beginning. But, there will be other [...]
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Greetings gentle readers, I am pleased to join you once again. While I have been on hiatus (occupied by, among other things, the process of moving from the Lone Star State home to the sprawling and weather-rich cosmopolis of Miami for the summer; upon which more, perhaps, later), Sepoy has opened up a massive tin [...]
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Empires are visible most clearly on maps and in tables. In 1884, a tabulation of the British Empire found the following: It controlled nearly 10 million square miles of territory with 305 million inhabitants [35 million in Britain]; it had a yearly revenue of 203 million sterlings – with 1/4th coming from direct taxation; nearly [...]
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Nations [or, empires for our purposes here] loomed out of immemorial pasts into limitless futures, wrote Benedict Anderson. If Rome was, and continues to be, the template across which Western empires measured themselves. Then Britain is the empire that looms over this American one [used to be that we called the Americans neo-Imperialists pre-2001 but [...]
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I started the Empire Week thinking it would be a cool showcase for talking about Porter’s book but I have gotten seriously sidetracked. Some stuff at work and other things have intruded rather rudely. So, today’s entry is a tad late and also quite scatter-brained [who said I knew anything about empires?]. Before the week [...]
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I have been sneakily meaning to disrupt Empire Week with a little meditation on walking as a mode of subaltern research for weeks now… On second thoughts, it really isn’t that much of a disruption. after all, who defeats the Galactic Empire but Luke Sky-walker… (aaghhh! that was terrible… I think i’m going to be [...]
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