I am still -swamped- but thought I'd let y'all know of this first (hesitant) piece I wrote about Berlin and which appeared in Express Tribune's Sunday Magazine this past weekend. The print layout is nicer so here it is embedded.
It's amazing that how it's been 6 decades since my grandparents migrated to East Punjab, and yet the slightest mention of Gujranwala/Lahore(the rough geographical spread where my family resided) still evokes a feeling of imagined nostalgia in me....as Ghalib said , Ú¯Ùˆ واں Ù†Ûیں Ù¾Û ÙˆØ§Úº Ú©Û’ نکالے Ûوئے تو Ûیں کعبے سے ان بتوں Ú©Ùˆ بھی نسبت ÛÛ’ دور Ú©ÛŒ go vÄñ nahīñ pah vÄñ ke nikÄle huʾe to haiñ kaÊ¿be se un butoñ ko bhÄ« nisbat hai dÅ«r kÄ« great article sepoy sahib
My favorite Ghalib lines ever (given my last name, perhaps not surprising either). Remind me of the scene/setting of Paradise Lost (Book I) -- in both cases, it seems to me (despite himself in Milton's case), the artist's sympathy is with the "idol" and/or the blasphemer...
A moving piece, tying together so many CM-specific threads too: A: hmedis; Lahore snaps/muhallas, history. I mean, obviously, but it's nice to see your "blog life" bleed into the rest... I was reminded of this old Khushwanth Singh piece: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?203610 (and, on re-reading, was struck by the class-privilege: "Locked in my first-class bogey, I neither saw nor heard anything." That could be an epitaph for so many.)
thx, Q!
[...] moved to Berlin but continued to bring readers reviews of the quality that they have come to expect from him; [...]