About the departing Derbyshire batsman Hassan Adnan: “It’s never nice informing players they have to go, especially when it is such a loyal servant and great team man,” Derbyshire chief John Morris said. ‘A loyal Servant’ musta have different connotation in the UK sports arena … but I was kinda jarred on my first read.
____________________________________________________________
Parvez Sharma’s A Jihad for Love looks quite promising and I will try and seek it out. It comprises of profiles of various couples from across the Muslim world – such as Ahsan and Qasim: In India, his home country, director Parvez Sharma documents the lives of Ahsan-a Sunni Muslim and Qasim-A Shia Muslim. Both [...]
روشن کەيں بەار کے امکاں ەوۓ تو ەيں گلشن ميں چاک چند گريباں ەوۓ تو ەيں Somewhere the lights of spring have surely appeared A few collars, in the garden, have surely shredded ٹەري ەوي ەۓ شب کي سياەي وەيں، مگر کچھ کچھ سحر کے رنگ پَر افشاں ەوۓ تو ەيں The dark ink of [...]
“Athleticism has never been associated with Indian cricket, nor with Indians in general, and that has been a chip on the shoulder of Indian manhood.” Somini Sengupta, If It’s Hip, Fast and Furious, Is It Cricket?, 2007 “Through the same passes from time immemorial warlike races had swept down on the sun-steeped plains of the [...]
As a birthday gift (contestable) to you, my gentle reader, I will post all the things that have been looming in my head for the past week. All. Watch this space. I. India vs. Pakistan in the World Cup Twenty20 Finals. I am sure this is big news in the subcontinent. Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra [...]
In the Aug 2, 2007 issue of LRB, Bernard Porter had a review essay, Trying to Make Decolonisation Look Good, covering Ronald Hyam’s Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918-68, Peter Clarke’s The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire and Sir Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper’s Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain’s Asian [...]
The ICC World Twenty20 is currently underway in South Africa. It is exciting and exhilarating and droves of fans are watching this most amazing and necessary rejuvenating elixir pumped into the staid, old, decrepit body of Cricket. Or so they tell me. I really cannot be bothered. Apparently the India-Pakistan match ended in a tie [...]
There is a new poll [pdf link] out that has details on Pakistani democracy, popularity of various national leaders and some other interesting tidbits. It also shows that Bush and Mush are way unpopular – even as UbL has held on to his appeal in the 18-35 demographic. Make of it what you will.
I quote W. G. Sebald from an old interview: “Going home is not necessarily a wonderful experience,” he says. “It always comes with a sense of loss, and makes you so conscious of the inexorable passage of time.” He adds: “If you’re based in two places, on a bad day you see only the disadvantages [...]
Also see, David Simon in The Believer [via kottke]
Feist with Broken Social Scene, The New Pornographers, The National and some other people.
[see Part I of III and Part II of III] III. A Modest Proposal Many historians are reluctant to comment on the present if a question presented to them contains a categorical assumption about the past; it’s a little like suggesting a diagnosis to an MD–no matter what is wrong with you, it’s not going [...]
This terror of a language and the official language of terror continues its march of terror – from Raed Jarrar being denied boarding a plane because his tshirt had Arabic on it, to Debbie Almontaser resigning because someone printed an ‘objectionable’ Arabic word on a tshirt to David Al Watan and his six colleagues questioned [...]