• Walli – Chapter 12

    Who shall be punished for the sin committed without interruption for 12 years? The sin is committed against the sinner. Is that justice? Yes, the sinner has been punished. What about the one who sinned the sinner? On the Judgement Day… On this judgement day? Or another? I object to the wait for the judgement…

  • End of March

    March ends. Finally. It has been a long one, because it carried whole seasons within it: Ramzan, breezy Eid, holidays, summers, winters, spring, rains, cloudy noons, and a sudden monsoon today. Just when it seemed over, it burst again. It cried.Just when it wasn’t time to drive… it was. And, of course, it’s not just…

  • A Chronological Timeline of Major Religious and World Events – Around Canaan

    If you have a general image of a timeline of major world events in your mind, and a particularly good image of world’s map, then you can understand things a lot better. And this way, events become part of your memory too. For instance, let’s make a general timeline of the world from religious perspective.…

  • Everyone’s a Side, Everyone’s a Main

    I was scrolling through deep and insightful reels on Instagram and I found this. Let me quote the exact words: “A side chick wants to be the main chick and that’s why men get caught cheating. A side guy wants to remain a side guy forever and that’s why women are not easily caught.” Someone…

  • Lahore’s Ides of March

    In the last 40 days, Lahore had winter, spring, summer, winter again – with a long weekend of Basant in Feb, and an Eid ahead. And slow, steady rains and a cold breeze. With AQI better than Paris. For some days, at least. Yes, the jackets were packed. And unpacked. Or kept stubbornly packed. Such…

  • Our Fears are Our Stories.

    Our fears are our stories. And our story is in a morgue. This is a morgue and you are nothing more than a body. You count as much as a dead body even when you are alive. After children die by accident, the state comes home to offer crocodile tears. Ideally, parents shouldn’t let them…

  • The Last Listener

    When was the first time she listened to the other person without being selfish? Without being ‘what’s in it for me’? Without “I”? Without tapping her foot? In a small but well-decorated bedroom. In a narrow bed with devices attached. A window opened to a wide lawn with trees blurred in rain. An LED TV…

  • Mud & Ashes

    THE BURIAL January 2026. The body was being laid in the grave. An overcrowded graveyard with fewer mourners for the wrapped lady. A 45-year-old Guriya. But there stood the father. Broken. Torn apart. Much older than yesterday. And it was all a repeat telecast. THE GOD. My God. If cruelty had a blasphemous image. “I’m…

  • The Shadow of our own Darkness

    On the flip side of the classes, poor people have higher birth rates than upper-middle and elite classes and they are in much larger numbers. Roughly half of the population is poor. That half is producing laborers and slaves for the top two classes. A kid born here will serve a kid born there. No,…

  • The Gutter

    The conception. The long nine months. The birth – the lone God-gesture only mothers can perform. The nurturing of a new life. A woman giving her body, in return for heavenly pain, to become a mother. The prophetic transformation. From womb to lap. Day and night. Night and day. The first word. The second. Crawling.…