Khaled al Maeena is sitting in the lobby of Le Méridian in Khobar. He signals towards a Pakistani waiter: “karak chai merey leyeh.” The man is taken aback but hurries to comply.

The name Khaled al Maeena is instantly familiar to anyone living in the Arab world. Known as the ‘editor of people’, he ran Arab News, Saudia Arabia’s leading English newspaper, for 23 years. Today he is the editor-in-chief of the Saudi Gazette.

Recognised as a liberal Saudi, now he primarily writes about social issues but Al Maeena is also famous for his perspective on the expatriate community, especially Pakistanis. Indeed, al Maeena has a soft spot for us mostly because he spent his formative years in Karachi.

Father Raymond at St Patrick’s High School shaped him as did bicycle rides from Bolton Market to Burns Road for Nihari. Food figures prominently in his memories. He recalls Saadullah’s sandwiches at the corner of PECHS Block 2 and how in the early 1960s, Karachi had some really good Chinese restaurants. “I loved eating at Bundoo Khan and Hanifia,” he adds. “Those were such idyllic days.”

As his family had been trading in the subcontinent since the 1920s, this meant that a young al Maeena made many trips between Bombay, Calcutta and cities in Sindh. Eventually, he chose to study in Karachi. After St Patrick’s College, he studied journalism at Karachi University where some of his peers included Khursheed Ahmad and Nusrat Nasrullah.

Back then, Karachi was one of the most beautiful cities of the east after Beirut and Cairo. He would take evening walks down Shaheed-e-Millat Road. “My great uncle had a house there. Every evening, smartly dressed girls would walk in groups. How safe the roads were!” he says. “There was a time when people would drive from Guru Mandir to Tariq Road at 2 am. There was no extremism or intolerance.”

Al Maeena refutes the notion that funding for terrorism in Pakistan came from the Saudi government. He interprets it as money flowing in through individuals. Pakistanis took money from rich Saudis by saying they would build mosques but the funds were misused. He maintains that Saudis have a soft corner for Pakistan.

In May 1998, a few weeks after India’s second nuclear test, Pakistan detonated five nuclear devices and became the seventh country to develop and test a nuclear missile. During that week circulation of newspapers went up fifty percent in Saudi Arabia.

The last time al Maeena came to Pakistan was in 2006 to visit the quake-hit areas. When asked if he would like to visit Karachi again, he says: “No, I do not want to be kidnapped.”

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, May 19^th, 2013.

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The first thing that strikes you is the poverty and not just in the shape of the old refugees from Palestine and new ones from Syria. Buildings stand half built. My friend points to a couple of high-rises that seem to go up 40 floors. He says construction was abandoned about 10 years ago as architects had forgotten to design a sewage system for the towers.

The city does not seem planned in the academic sense. Much like Karachi, roundabouts or ‘circles’ as they are referred to locally, serve as geographical reference points.

USAID stamps assert themselves on most plaques at tourist attractions. Expats tell me that the US has pumped huge sums of aid into Jordan. Research tells me that after Afghanistan and Pakistan, the third highest amount of American aid goes to Jordan.

The Umayyad Monemental Gateway to the palace on the Citadel hill in Amman. PHOTO: MYRA KHAN

“Jordanians are confused about the US,” says an American. “On the one hand they are giving Jordanians all this money, and on the other hand they’re starting all the wars in the Middle East.” It makes it hard for them to form a single opinion about the US.

I can relate.

Feeling cheated

I started feeling cheated by pictures of Queen Rania. Jordan might not be the powerful, liberal country its representatives make it out to be. The litmus test was the way women were perceived.

In the souks for every 20 men, I see only one woman. In Jordan, by the age of 24 you are assumed to be married, friends tell me. Women, foreign women more perhaps, are hassled by the young men. In most cases, they shout haram, bandying it about unlike how we do in Pakistan.

I can’t say that the women are more conservative because I saw a lot of local Jordanians who were not. There are women who were the hijab and those who don’t. It’s perhaps evidence of natural diversity within a religion or culture, but I expected more respect from the men. The officer giving me a visa on entry asked why my head was not covered if I came from a Muslim family.

Hadrian’s Arch in Jerash built in 129 AD. PHOTO: MYRA KHAN

The scene

Restaurants are buzzing in Amman, especially if you walk downhill from the first and second circles. Jordanians enjoy going out, smoking sheesha amid bites of hummus and muttabal. The food is divine. It is safe to say all those falafel places I ate at while studying in England were doing it wrong. Jordanians also enjoy a good barbeque. They don’t skimp on the meat.

The sights

Speaking in broken Arabic, only using words such as yanni and taqreeban, I take a taxi to one of the best viewpoints — the Citadel.

It is in this spot that the Roman Temple of Hercules stands next to the Byzantine church and the Umayyad mosque alongside an Early Bronze Age cave. You even walk through a broken Ammonite palace.

Rub a dub dub

The session at the hamam proved to be one of the highlights of my trip. Before you go, ensure you are extremely comfortable with your body. They will ask you to wear nothing but your underwear. Don’t worry, it’s segregated. If you feel uncomfortable, I suggest closing your eyes, because the women who work there don’t take no for an answer.

Remains of the Temple of Hercules, dedicated to the deity and constructed between 161-166 AD. PHOTO: MYRA KHAN

You are first shoved into a steaming sauna that blinds you temporarily. In the midst of your yelps of pain an arm pops through the plastic curtain and hands you a pomegranate juice slushy. Savour this till the end.

After the sauna, another sweltering experience awaits in the jacuzzi. After your pores are opened, you lie on a marble slab where you are scrubbed to remove the grime. After they exfoliate the top three layers of your epidermis it’s off to the massage and then to a wooden coal steam room.

Jerash

At these ruins I saw the grandest, largest display of Roman architecture I could possibly lay eyes on at a single site. It had everything I studied in history class — the arches, the hippodrome for horses and chariots, the central plaza encircled by pillars, the fountains.

Walls of the city of Petra laced with tombs that have fallen victim to earthquakes and erosion. PHOTO: MYRA KHAN

The most spectacular part was being able to walk in the grooves that chariot trails left behind centuries ago.

Petra

There’s a public transport strike for buses leaving Amman. At the time, rumours were circulating that three university students had been shot dead.

Finally on route to Petra, the journey seems bland. Flat desert and sporadic ghosts towns don sides of the roads.

Petra was first ‘sighted’ in 1812, by a Swedish man pretending to be a Muslim trader. Claims go as far back to 300 BC of when it was created. For centuries it remained unknown to the world outside. Bedouins, a nomadic people spread all over Arab world, inhabited the built-in-stone structures and lived here for years without telling non-natives of the existence of Petra.

The end of the entrance to Petra, As-Siq, is a narrow crevice, making it hard for people to discover the city in olden times. PHOTO: MYRA KHAN

You almost miss the narrow opening on the left that takes you into Petra. The entrance is so tall that it has its own name: As-Siq. It is over 1000m. A shallow groove in the wall shows a water irrigation system along the entire way in. The walls reach up to 80 metres in places as if the city wanted to keep itself a secret.

Most of the statues are damaged. Guides say much of Petra was hit by earthquakes in old times, but the dwellings remain. Many Bedouins still act as tour guides, giving camel and donkey rides.

Here, the ultimate destination is the Monastery. What you see along the way is forgotten up a grueling hike through sand, stones, stairs, with Bedouin women selling you their jewelry for almost any price. If you ignore them, they shout, “It’s the same way down!”

The monastery, like every other building, that been carved horizontally into a thick stone wall with stunning precision.

They say Petra was abandoned eventually as trade routes went elsewhere. I can’t imagine why, or how anyone could leave it behind.

Not far from the monastery are viewing points where you can look over the entire valley. A Bedouin says that there is a river with lush green trees below, and that I can see Syria from here.

“Syria? From the south of Jordan?” I ask.

“Yes,” he replies.

I only believe the first half of his sentence.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, May 19^th, 2013.

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Bundled between tiny tea-stalls and vegetable vendors on the main commercial strip of Mithi, the capital of Tharparkar district, the Prem yoga centre stands out as a complete anomaly in the city’s landscape. The huge signboard at the entrance immediately grabs your attention and coaxes you to come inside. A sizeable open-air ground, often used for political jalsas and weddings leads up to the yoga room where the actual sessions take place. Huge posters showing the teacher and founder Santosh Kumar suspended in various yoga positions like the crow pose, the warrior pose and half-lotus, adorn the walls.

“The same Supreme Being that breathed life into you also breathed life into me. An inextricable force binds us. So where does that leave time to hate? We are here to love,” says a solemn Kumar, popularly known as Yogi Kumar as he explains the premise behind his latest labour of love — the Prem Yoga Centre.

As the name suggests, Kumar aims to help his clients maintain a balance between mind, body and soul with the help of yoga. His broader vision is to create harmony in society by helping individuals reconcile with their spiritual and physical beings.

“People around us are stressed, despite having everything,” he says. “Yoga helps you achieve that internal change, and ultimately inner peace.”

For Kumar, the centre holds a personal, an almost spiritual meaning. Having lost his wife to blood cancer, he treasures the importance of health over everything else.

Yogi Kumar opens a centre for yoga in Mithi after his wife died of blood cancer. PHOTO: AMEER HAMZA

“The doctors said that my wife wouldn’t make it beyond one month. I used to make her do a little bit of yoga every day, and she survived for 14 months. It was a miracle,” he says.

Soon after, he handed over his business to his brothers and devoted his entire attention towards the centre and helping others. He claims that most conditions such as obesity, stress, thyroid malfunction, and eyesight loss are all aggravated by a neglect of the self.

Kumar has no formal training in the subject but has learnt everything over the internet, using video guides and manuals. He has also attended a few formal training sessions in Dubai and Malaysia.

Despite the lack of proper certification, his clients have complete faith in his expertise.

Forty-three-year-old Jai Prakash, an employee with an NGO, comes to the sessions regularly after work. He says that even before the yoga centre opened, Kumar was always the person everyone used to go for health advice. “He has always been inclined towards health and fitness. You talk to him for ten minutes and you will realise that he knows what he is talking about,” says Prakash.

The centre has been open for less than a month, but over fifty people are already attending. While the majority of them are men, six women are also training. Kumar admits that the response has been phenomenal, proof that there is a market for health and fitness in a place like Tharparkar as well.

“There is a strong tradition of yoga in Hindu philosophy, so there has always been a certain degree of awareness about it in Tharparkar,” says Dr Ramesh Kumar, a resident. “But this is the first time it is being done commercially on this scale here.”

Five one-hour sessions are offered at various times of the day for a nominal charge of Rs1,000 a month. Along with the sessions, Kumar also helps his clients with their diet.

Thirty-six-year-old Mashooq Omrani, a sports teacher by day, has been a regular at the centre since the beginning. He claims that he has lost six kilogrammes in the past two weeks and feels energised from the workout. “Before coming here, I was rapidly gaining weight and I hated it,” he says. “Now I feel much lighter physically and psychologically.”

For 17-year-old student Rakesh, the yoga class is a welcome break from his strenuous academic routine and helps him stay and feel fit.

While Kumar is the sole trainer right now, he plans to expand by training more men and women so that they can open centres in cities like Karachi and Hyderabad. “I am not doing this for money,” he stresses. “I want to take it to schools, NGOs and even the police… Yoga is for everyone.”

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, May 19^th, 2013.

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I often come across poorly composed and rhythmically imbalanced verses on Facebook. They are attributed to famous poets like Ghalib, Iqbal and Faraz. Whenever I see such posts, I make a point of setting the record straight. Most of the time, I am viewed as a troll and advised to appreciate the wisdom of the words rather than being critical of their form.

When I first started reading Paulo Coelho’s latest book Manuscript Found in Accra, I resolved to follow this advice. I can safely conclude that the book is full of worthy musings and quotable quotes on a variety of subjects — from solitude and love to beauty and miracles. Like all his other works, this recent book by Coelho also has its moments of glory when the earnestness, simplicity and clarity of its prose start touching your soul and transforming your thoughts.

Manuscript Found in Accra seems to echo the writings of Khalil Gibran and sometimes also Osho, the Indian mystic. In its style and form, the book appears to be a subdued imitation of the Dialogues of Plato, the gospels and, ironically their counterpart, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A book for All and None. However the merits of Accra do not redeem its obvious defects and contradictions. Coelho attempts to disguise his string of musings by blending historical facts with fiction. In this case, the titular manuscript is an ancient document written in 1099 by a 21-year-old man on the eve of the Crusaders’ invasion of Jerusalem. It recounts his dealings with a mysterious Greek man, referred to as the Copt, who counsels a group of men and women on their most pressing questions. The back-story serves little purpose, except for making Coelho’s thoughts sound like the knowledge of Jerusalem.

Coelho’s attempt to structure his thoughts by introducing a frail superstructure story seems to have failed. The Manuscript Found in Accra is essentially a book of quotable quotes with a message of self-reform rather than revolution.

Who do you think you are? Three picks on self discovery

1. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Recently retired Harold Fry is surprised by a letter from a dying friend, Queenie Hennessy, who he hasn’t heard from in twenty years. He becomes convinced he must deliver his message in person to Queenie. So he sets off without hiking boots, rain gear, maps or even a cell phone. Available at The Last Word for Rs1,250 (Hardcover) and Rs695 (Paperback).

2. Into the Wild

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given his savings to charity, abandoned his car and invented a new life for himself. During his adventure, he encounters several unique people that change his life before he faces the dangers of the wilderness.

3. On the Road

On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac’s years travelling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady. The two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac’s classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be ‘Beat’ and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than forty years ago. Available at Liberty books for Rs832.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, May 19^th, 2013.

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If you lived near the Lahore airport and had to drive to Mall road regularly, you’d be open to buying a car whose fuel cost you less. Amir Riaz has that 50km commute, and he’s quite frank about his decision to keep a hybrid car. “I have a [regular car] too,” he told The Express Tribune. “But I prefer taking my [hybrid]. It is just sensible. It consumes one-fourth of the fuel.”

The hybrid guzzles less gas because it uses a combination of petrol and electric power (in the form of a battery). Pakwheels CEO Raza Saeed says over 90% of the hybrids sold on their website are the Toyota Prius manufactured in Japan. Other choices include the Insight and Reborn by Honda or the Civic hybrid. Some high-end names recently introduced to Pakistan are the Porsche hybrid and the BMW 7-series.

Porsche Panamera S-E Hybrid

While prices may vary depending on the model of the used car, something like the Toyota Prius will set you back 1.4m rupees. If you’ve got the cash to spare you could consider what Porsche, Mercedes and BMW have to offer at a hefty price tag of Rs13.5m. Porsche Pakistan CEO Abuzar Bukhari brought in the first luxury hybrid, the Cayenne, which consumes 13.76 litres of petrol for every 100 kilometres. Interestingly enough, this is an SUV giving you better road mileage than a much smaller non-hybrid 1300cc or 1000cc car. “Pakistanis should not be limited to […] for hybrids,” he argues while naming two companies. “We Pakistanis deserve better, why buy used cars from other countries?”

Imports are the most obvious option, though, especially since no one is making them locally. These hybrids, many from Japan and the UK, are being brought over the Afghan border in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. However, the majority of them are arriving at Port Qasim in Karachi. About two out of 10,000 used cars reaching Karachi shores each month are hybrids.

The hybrid is considered more environmentally friendly and economical when it comes to fuel consumption. And as petrol prices rise in Pakistan, some people are thinking this type of car is a better option. But despite these positives, this technology is struggling to become a viable player in Pakistan’s controlled market.

No bang for your buck

The government has put the squeeze on importing used cars. It now says that you can’t get them if they are more than three years old. It used to allow used cars that were up to five years old until the end of 2012.

According to official car import numbers, over 1,140 Toyota Prius were imported from July to October 2012 compared to less than a thousand units before the end of the previous financial year. But then the official policy changed.

Honda Insight Hybrid

“[Newer] used cars mean a higher price,” explains Salman Hameed, a hybrid dealer in Lahore. He was getting up to 70 cars until the government changed the rules. Now it’s just 20 and he thinks demand could sink further. This means that dealers like Hameed who used to be getting the 2007 models are now forced to get the 2010 ones. This means an average price difference of Rs400,000. “But it is also a newer car,” he says.

All of this would change if the government gave local manufacturers incentives. If not, people like Pakwheels CEO Raza Saeed feel that the market for hybrids will remain small because the choices are so limited. If local companies made the car, it would be cheaper and hybrids could possibly become the norm.

Take the example of India where there has been a concerted push by the government. Today, one of India’s leading local manufacturers, Tata, produces the Nano hybrid which is known as the world’s cheapest hybrid at a mere 100,000 Indian rupees.

On the other hand, in Pakistan, the government has deliberately kept a tight fist to protect the existing local car industry. The Federal Board of Revenue, which is the brains behind the import policy on hybrids, openly says it will not be opening the doors on this new technology because local manufacturers will be affected. FBR spokesman Israr Rauf admitted the previous government hadn’t done much to encourage it either. “We have to wait for the next budget first,” he says. “Even then, it is unlikely of the government to take any drastic steps to push local manufacturers to incorporate greener cars.” There is no roadmap on how to factor it into the budget either.

Honda Civic Hybrid

“The real issue today is that mainstream parties we have spoken to have little clarity on the long-term role of hybrid automobiles,” says Syed Umair, the head of the Lahore Chamber of Commerce’s environmental committee. It is certain though, that globally petrol-only cars will go, he adds.

Features and what to look out for

Hybrids are popular because people think they offer better mileage. Honda’s hybrid switches between the battery and fuel at a speed of up to 40km. The Prius operates dually at a speed of up to 120km, says dealer Hameed.

The ordinary hybrid car will likely have automatic windows, steering, a push start button, a remote key and a CD player. Others feature bluetooth, a GPS system, a back-view camera, an auto parking system, a hard-disk drive and a mini-disc player. Some more modified versions have two additional features of cruise control, a keyless entry by touching the car door and a keyless start option.

The deal-breaker is that these used cars don’t come with insurance. For some models the battery needs be changed after 200,000km which is about five years. When you buy one, advises Hameed, make sure you check that the battery is original and the synergy driver has not been tampered with.

Another concern is whether we have enough mechanics versed in this technology to repair them. But as has been proven in the past, when the market grows, eventually the manpower catches up. For now, it seems though that unless the government moves, hybrids will be stuck in the back seat.

Hybrids available in Pakistan

Cars                         Price                     Models

Toyota Prius            Rs1.4m-Rs3.2m          2003-2011

Honda Civic             Rs1.6m-Rs1.8m          2006-2010

Honda Insight         Rs1.7m                         2008-2010

Porsche Cayenne     Rs17m                          2013

All the cars mentioned above are imported

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, May 19^th, 2013.

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Correction: An earlier version of the article incorrectly stated that the Cayenne gives 13.75 kilometres a litre. The error has been rectified.

Nearly a century and a half ago, a political agent of the former state of Bahawalpur called Colonel Minchin is said to have set out to explore the ruins of Pattan Minara. This structure is believed to be a 5,000-year-old Buddhist monastery of which only a single burnt sienna column remains about  eight kilometres from Rahim Yar Khan.

Col Minchin was drawn to the mysterious site because he had heard that treasure was buried in tunnels that were part of the remains. Oddly though, even the records of his adventure are as fuzzy as the legend of Pattan Minara. In several places on the internet it says he went for the dig in 1870. But according to peerage records he was born in 1862, making him just eight years old at the time.

The dig apparently ended in disaster. Minchin and his team “came upon some putrid semi-liquid matter over which swarmed flies of a large size and peculiar colour,” according to Salman Rashid, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. His coolies were stung and died on the spot. Minchin abandoned his search.

Very little is known about the minara, but the general consensus is that it was built during the Hakrra valley civilization of the Mauryan period (250 BC). According to Rashid, in the absence of any scientific investigation, it is only the Gazetteer of Bahawalpur State (1904) that is the teller of tales of Pattan Minara. The travel writer extensively describes the structure, which has a single doorway facing west. There appears to be no way to reach the top floor, leading to the assumption that a ladder was used. At some point in time, the minara is said to have been used as a watch tower.

The minara is named after Pattan Pur which is said to have once been a lush city nestled on the bank of the River Ghagra, an offshoot of the River Indus. Pattan Minara thus means ‘Tower on the Ford’.

Fazal Qureshi of Dawn writes that Alexander the Great passed through the area during his military expedition to India. As was his practice, Alexander set up a cantonment here under a Greek governor. A university complex was even set up here. But with time, as the River Indus changed course and River Ghagra dried up, the place lost its importance. This slice of history surfaces in folklore, according to research carried out at Bahawalpur University. The legend was that the river god fell in love with a damsel who was already betrothed. In vengeance, the rivers rose up in fury and drowned the entire city.

By the beginning of the 18th century, Pattan Minara’s surrounding structures were so dilapidated that a chieftain ordered for them to be demolished. It was during this that a brick inscribed with Sanskrit was discovered. It said that the monastery was founded during the time of Alexander, the Macedonian conqueror. The Gazetteer does not record what became of the brick.

Today, in an ironic twist of fate, it appears that another form of putrid, semi-liquid matter is back at the minara — though fortunately this time it is unlikely to kill anyone.
A major sewage scheme, undertaken by the government, is destroying Pattan Minara even though it is an officially declared heritage site. Informal housing is creeping up in the surrounding area and the construction industry is excavating for reti-bajri or sand around the ruins.

For whatever it is worth, however, people from the area are willing to try and save this site by pledging to bring back coins they found. Perhaps, after all, someone discovered the treasure that Minchin set out to find.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, May 19^th, 2013.

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Eve Ensler is lying on top of Coetzee. Roth is cheek by jowl with Rilke. Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K. The students greet each other with comic cries and sodden collapse. Their summer has been bloated with criminal pleasures. My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning)…

This is the world that awaits anyone who walks into The Last Word, Aysha Raja’s independent bookstore. It is not the place to go if you want the latest Paulo Coelho or a Sophie Kinsella. Only those used to the onomatopoeic somersaults of Tom Wolfe and the kind of syntax that emerges from German translations will feel at home here. E-book fans. Don’t bother.

Of course, Pakistan has a selection of solid, serious bookstores from Quetta to Islamabad (see box), but what sets this one apart are Aysha Raja’s likes and dislikes.

“Like any self-respecting independent book[store], [The Last Word] is informed by my tastes and preferences,” she says unapologetically. “A lot of publishers I work with often say that by their standards I have a very intellectual readership.” They have commented on how highbrow her customers’ tastes are.

This debunks the myth that Pakistanis don’t read or that we don’t enjoy a little Leviathan post our postprandial constitutional. “I never seem to have enough copies of Infinite Jest,” Raja explains, “but I will struggle to sell a single copy of the Twilight series. My business runs on my taste so I have to be really careful while choosing the right kind of books.”

And thus, while she prefers having a range of titles in fewer quantities to a handful in large quantities, this means higher costs and the risk of running out of certain copies. “But at least the book shop is in a position to constantly yield gems to discerning book buyers,” she adds.

Selfish motives

PHOTO SHAFIQ MALIK

After having moved to Lahore in the early 2000s, Raja found herself returning from occasional trips to Delhi with suitcases full of books. “I couldn’t fathom why we didn’t have the same variety across the border. I was always envious of their bookstores,” she says. “Accessibility to books with ease is a fundamental right.”

And then, in 2005, when she was pregnant with her daughter Leila, she visited a bookshop in Istanbul called Robinson Crusoe 389 on the hip stiklal Caddesi. “It was the perfect embodiment of a small independent book shop and served as the inspiration [for my own],” she says. The name The Last Word summed up her ambitions. She wanted the book shop to be the destination for cutting-edge, definitive works of fiction, non-fiction and the creative arts.

Raja, who was a lawyer for eight years, started out by opening her home to readers with a small exhibition that relied on their interest and her coffee table more than anything else.

“You can do such things in Pakistan with ease. It is an unregulated society, where there is no need to seek permits and loans. I never felt the limitations taking on a huge endeavour here.”

She is candid that the business plans that were drawn up for her would have in all probability turned her off the idea except for the fact that she was committed. Guts made up for a lack of business sense.

PHOTO SHAFIQ MALIK

She invested heavily in the inventory before publishers extended her credit and after starting out in her own house she was lucky to get space at PFDC. “I am eternally grateful to Seher Saigol for allowing me the opportunity to set up shop with no overheads whatsoever,” she says. The Last Word eventually found its home at The Hot Spot in Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore and recently moved to Roadside Café in Karachi. She is going to open at Mocca café in Islamabad by the end of May or in June.

The big break came when a Random House editor urged her to promote Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes. “The manuscript was amazing and I was sure that this book would create ripples in the literary landscape,” she says. “I never had imported from India [though]. It was my first time, and there were obviously problems because of the animosity between the two countries. The people at the customs office were suspicious about the name of General Zia on the book.”

It has been names like Hanif’s that has made reading sexier in Pakistan in the last decade or so. It also helps that in the sub-continent we are still in love with the feel of the weight of a book and the smell that nestles in its spine. Bricks-and-mortar bookstores still have plenty of cultural currency in Pakistan.

“I remember talking to Hanif Kureishi about the turnout on the reading gathering which is merely fifty abroad,” recalls Raja. “He was amazed that we can easily gather 200 people at any reading gala. It shows that there is a lot more intellectual curiosity over here.” For Raja this means that it is more and more important for publishers to target this part of the world.

PHOTO SHAFIQ MALIK

Aside from benefiting from a serious reading population, Raja’s success lies in stocking what she is curious about herself. “I tend to enjoy more left wing literature, by that I also mean non-fiction.” This means increasingly buying from Verso (Tariq Ali) to stocking the shelves with works on the movement of the Arab Spring. It is at The Last Word that you will find Jane Jacobs, the Hummingbird Bakery’s Home Sweet Home, Jeanette Winterson, Oliver Sacks, Phaidon’s art books, Le Corbusier, The Velveteen Rabbit.

She has close to 5,000 titles in stock from publishers ranging from the big six, including Random House and Penguin, to the smaller imprints such as Verso, Persephone, Hesperus, Quirk and specialist publishers such as Phaidon, DC Comics/Vertigo, and Gollanz. “Being a boutique book shop we largely air-freight our titles in to keep the wait time as little as possible,” she explains. And readers are free to interact on their Facebook page if there are any special requests or recommendations. Her range of fiction is heavily influenced by customer preferences and feedback. These days, Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka are flying off the shelves.

On her bedside table, metaphorically speaking, is Come to the Edge by Joanna Kavenna, one of Granta’s recently heralded Young British Authors, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore that will hit the shelves in June, and Sex and the Citadel by Shereen El Feki. “I read a lot and yet not enough,” she admits. And like any serious reader, she is usually juggling two to three books at a time. She reads every day, in the car, at home, in waiting rooms. Forget TV and Twitter. You’re more likely to find her behind a book.

Although she prefers 20th century works to the more contemporary literature coming out today, most of what she reads is usually published within the last 12 months. (She abhors chicklit). She is drawn to explications of the human condition and the art of writing. “I find it imperative to read [about] how superficial and base we’ve become. That’s what literature does; it puts our values and ideas under the lens and shows us how flawed we are. We could do with the constant reminder[s].”

Don’t ask to borrow a book. She doesn’t lend them to friends because she becomes “unbearably passive aggressive trying to secure their return”. And while she can’t bear to damage a book, somehow they always end up ravaged by the time she is through with them. She only recently started annotating the ones that she was reviewing. Now Leila’s school permission slips, shopping receipts, flyers are morphed in bookmarks.

As for perhaps writing her own book some day, Raja knows it is unlikely. “I cannot open myself to be scrutinised that much.” She would rather read about the lives of others.

Kitabain.com

Founded by Usman Siddiqui and Jawad Yousuf, this website provides an online marketplace for independent sellers of new and used books, as well as rare and collectible titles.   (021) 32426851

Gosha-e-Adab, Quetta

Housed in the historic, Kabir Building off Jinnah Road, Gosha-e-Adab was founded in 1962 and is one of the oldest and most prominent bookstores in Quetta. The place to go for books on Balochistan and its society. (081) 2820375, 2843229 goshaeadab.com.

We also recommend Bookland on M.A. Jinnah Road  (081) 2824295 and New Quetta Bookstall on Jinnah Road  (081) 2842882

Ferozsons, Lahore

This bookstore is over a 100 years old. It was founded by Al-Haj Maulvi Feroz-ud-Din. (042) 111-62-62-62

 Readings, Lahore

Readings opened in 2006 and claims to be the largest bookshop in Lahore that provides a large range of old books at affordable prices.   (042) 11-11-26657

Thomas and Thomas, Karachi

The oldest surviving bookstore in Karachi, Thomas & Thomas has been standing tall since before Partition and was run by a British gentleman before it was bought in 1948 by Mohammad Yunus’s family.  (021) 35682220

Saeed Book Bank, Islamabad

The well-stocked Saeed Book Bank was founded in 1955 by Saeed Jan Qureshi with the aim of “making books assessable and knowledge affordable”. It has expanded to Peshawar as well. Phone: 92-51-2651656-57-58

Liberty Books

Established in 1961, Liberty Books is best known for distributing new titles. They deliver to your doorstep as well (libertybooks.com).  (021) 111-117-323 

The Strand, New York City

If you are ever in New York, do visit The Strand at 828 Broadway (at 12th St.). It opened in 1927 and has 18 miles of books or over 2.5 million used, new and rare titles.

Foyles, London

London is full of beautiful bookstores but we thought we’d mention Foyles because of the one-of-a-kind Ray’s Jazz cafe on the first floor. Open up the new book you’ve just bought, take a seat at one of the rough hewn wooden tables and lose yourself for hours.

Daunt Books, London

Even if you don’t buy anything here, you have to see Daunt Books at Marylebone High Street once in your lifetime if simply for its Edwardian interior. You will never want to leave the long oak galleries that are bathed in sunlight filtering in from the graceful skylights above.

Primrose Hill Books

One of Aysha’s favourite spots. PHB has been called one of the best small bookshops in London. It is located on a quiet Victorian terrace — the best natural vantage point in London for a spectacular view of the whole city.

London Review Bookshop

According to Snipe’s Kate Weston, LRB’s classy dark exterior opens into a small yet spacious, light and well stocked bookshop. It opened nine years ago to bring people a range of literary and academic titles.

Robinson Crusoe 389, Istanbul

Whether you’re looking for a specific book, or just want to browse, Robinson Crusoe 389 is perfect with its floor to ceiling book stacks. Twenty-minutes away from Taksim Square, it’s the most well-known English language bookstore in Istanbul.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, May 19^th, 2013.

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This 2013 report explores the attitudes of people in Lahore towards modern technology and its influence on values and culture. One hundred people from Gulberg, DHA, Allama Iqbal and Jauhar towns were interviewed in 2011. More than half were young, under 35 years. Half of the women were from DHA and 92% had access to internet or owned cell phones. Here are some excerpts

RESEARCH BY: Dr Ashraf Khan Kayani, Dr Khalil Ahmad, Dr Aamir Saeed

University of the Punjab, Lahore

 PUBLISHED IN: South Asian Studies

A research journal of South Asian studies; Vol. 28, No. 1, January – June 2013, pp.127-138

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, May 26^th, 2013.

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We are not done with Twilight spin-offs. This time the boy is mortal and the girl is facing a coming-of-age dilemma of whether she will be claimed by the dark or good forces as a witch. The inelegant choice of word for ‘witch’ in Beautiful Creatures is ‘caster’. At least, it is an appropriately Southern-sounding nominalisation or verb-into-noun transformation — someone who casts spells is a caster.

The book, and film, taken on by screenwriters Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl is set in the small town of Gatlin in South Carolina. The hero is Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), whose father remains confined to his room (and is never revealed on screen). The apple-cheeked lad dreams of escaping the town but meets and falls in love with the dark-haired Lena (Alice Englert) only to learn that her family isn’t quite ‘normal’. This just means plenty of Addams Family couture trotted out in a True Blood setting of the gallant South: Lashings of black eye-make-up for the ashen-faced mother and silk cravats for Jeremy Irons, who plays Lena’s father.

As the plot trundles along, Lena and Ethan slowly begin to uncover secrets about the founders of Gatlin, which ultimately affects their relationship. As Lena’s 16th birthday approaches, the action intensifies, as this would be the D-day to decide which force she will side with. Her decision-making is complicated by the arrival of über-caster, Mrs Lincoln played by a stout Emma Thompson. Poor Ethan, with no powers as a mortal, is caught in the middle of the family feud over which way Lena will go.

And thus, the supernatural is the theme of this film much in the same vein as the Twilight saga — a mortal loves an unnatural being. In another similarity to the Twilight saga, here too family and friends are drawn in as pawns in the “war” of good vs evil. And as it rages on, it becomes difficult for the viewer to pick a side because the antagonist characters are the ones providing the most entertainment.

The other side of young adult fiction

1. Hatchet

Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is on his way to visit his father when the single-engine plane in which he is flying crashes. Instead of panicking, crying, and giving up, he decides to own the wilderness. He learns how to build a fire, eats turtle eggs, and fights off bears. And that’s all before the tornado shows up.

2. Watership Down

In the rabbit warren, Fiver, sees terrifying visions of the destruction of his home. Led by his brother Hazel, a small group of them leave in search of a new home. Reminiscent of the dystopian 1984 by Orwell and We by Yevgeny Zamiyatin, Richard Adams’s Watership Down is a classic that has terrified and enthralled children and has never been out of print. Also watch the 1978 animated film.

3. The Book Thief

Given the novel’s title, you might think it’s about a Da Vinci Code-type character finding clues in the world’s oldest books. Nope. The Book Thief is about nine-year-old Leisel in Nazi Germany. She loves reading so much that she steals books from Nazi book burnings and from the mayor’s wife’s personal library. Oh, and the novel is narrated by Death.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, May 26^th, 2013.

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You’ve finally received the offer from your dream college. You couldn’t stop babbling about it at the dinner table until someone’s threatened to shove roti down your throat. Haters can hate, you’re still happy.  But don’t take it easy, you still have to get a visa. We’ve focused on the US and UK even though Pakistani students travel the world. We scoured embassy websites, pestered officials and asked those who’ve already received that treasured thappa on their passports for words of advice — but the best advice is to keep abreast of all the rules as they can change any time.

How to apply for a student visa for the US

Part(l)y in the USA

Some Pakistani students turn the same shade as the colour of their passports when they start thinking about getting a US visa. But the truth is that horror stories are actually few and far in between. “My entire visa process took two-and-a-half weeks and I didn’t apply particularly early either,” says Rabail Habib, who is studying film at Northwestern University, “I got an interview date for the week after I applied. They told me my visa was approved at the interview and I picked it up just three days later.”

The only irritant in her experience was getting roasted in the sweltering heat as she waited in line outside the US Embassy in Islamabad. “But the people at the embassy were great,” she says.

Yours form-ally

The process of applying for a visa is a fairly simple one: there are several visa categories and the first thing you need to do is pick the right one. Students enrolled in an undergraduate, Master’s or PhD programme usually need an F-1 visa to set foot on US soil. Exchange students and those planning to embark on a short vocational course must apply for other categories. Here we’ll discuss how to apply for an F-1 visa.

Once you accept the admission offer made to you by a university, their international office should send you what is known as the I-20 form. This is perhaps the most important piece of the visa puzzle. The form is proof that you have indeed been offered a spot at a US university. It also includes how much cash is required for the duration of your studies and the amount you told the university was in your bank.

You don’t need to fill this form — this will be done by the university. The most important item in this document is the SEVIS number, a unique pin through which the Office of Visa Service can access all your university information on an online database.

Once you have your I-20 and the SEVIS number, you can begin filling out the main form called DS-160, the link for which can be found on the US consulate’s website. Tree-huggers rejoice — there are no paper forms. At the login page, you will be issued an application ID number: save this, as it is needed to access your online application later.

Once you hit the submit button, you will have to pay $160 and print out the confirmation. Next, head over to your local American Express office with the items mentioned in our checklist (see Checklist) and schedule an appointment for an interview. They are conducted at the US Consulate in Karachi and the US Embassy in Islamabad.

If you don’t have a clue, no visa for you

Quite a few students underestimate how important it is to be able to explain your study plans at the visa interview. “My experience was quite embarrassing. I went in there and must have sounded like I was high,” says a girl who was denied a visa in 2010, “When the interviewer asked me why I had chosen to study economics, I just didn’t know what to say. I told them it’s because I want to ‘take on the reins of my family business’ or something lame like that. I could have sworn the interviewer rolled her eyes. I didn’t get the visa in the end.”

The bottom line is that you must be ready to explain your study plans and the reason why you applied to your particular university.

How to apply for a student visa for the UK

Beware of the Tier 4

Do not think of the tier 4 — the name of the category to which students must apply — as your enemy. Embrace it like an old friend. The documents available on the UK Border Agency (UKBA) website are daunting. After reading the first couple of pages it gets confusing but just remember to take a deep breath and keep going.

A UK visa application works on a point-based system and you get points for submitting certain documents.You need a total of 40 points to show that you are a genuine student — these include the 30 points you get by submitting the Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) letter from your university. You can get the remaining 10 points by proving that you have enough money in the bank.

Once you get your acceptance letter, apply immediately. Do not waste time. The first thing you need to do is to make an appointment at the International Organistaion for Migration (IOM) for the TB test. The website will suggest that you call and make an appointment but it is better to email. You will end up spending a couple of hours at IOM but will get the test results the same day.

Next you need to fill out an online application available on the UKBA website. This will contain questions such as name, date of birth, where you will study, if you have a criminal record, if you’ve ever been rejected for a visa etc. After you submit this, you will be able to make an appointment to submit supporting documents.

Don’t forget to fill out the Appendix 8 application. You will need to submit that with your supporting documents. This will also be available on the UKBA website. Remember to keep your current passport and previous passports along with photocopies. You’ll also need one passport photo, but just keep two to be on the safe side.

Make sure your university sends the CAS letter on time. This has their sponsorship number and other details — which you will need for Appendix 8.

The bank statement should be your biggest concern. The UKBA is not interested in the entire year’s statement; they just want to know that you have the money in your account and have had it 30 days before you applied for the visa. Make sure you have enough money in the account to cover fees, rent and living expenditure. This could be a minimum of £25,000 if you will be living in London.

The day before you have to submit your papers, remember to take a bank draft of the exact amount for the visa fees, cash is also acceptable.  Remember additional supporting documents will always help your case. Previous school transcripts are necessary. If your family has any property or extra income, do include the papers just to show that you are financially sound.

After the visa officer checks all your documents and puts them in a black plastic bag, they will direct you to the biometrics section. With that done, the officer will hand you a receipt and tell you to wait for a call.

Words of wisdom

Despite the simplicity of it all, there can be snags, so you need to apply well in advance. “Applying for a student visa was stressful and annoying,” says Alai Naseer, who is studying film in London, “I didn’t receive it until after my first term had ended. And that’s despite applying from London.”

Tips and advice

• Apply three months before the start date of your course — typical processing times span up to 60 days.
• Book your ticket once you have the visa in hand to avoid cancellation charges which may arise if there are any administrative delays in visa processing.
• One student’s experience shows that applying for programmes such as systems security and nuclear engineering could lead to delays. The student had to ask a professor whom he had done research work to write a special note to the embassy, assuring that the only reason he wanted to enroll in that programme was purely academic. This eventually helped the student get a visa.
• If at the end of the interview you are told that your visa requires further administrative processing, ask your university’s admissions office to write to the US Embassy or the consulate. One applicant claims this helped expedite the process.
• You can’t appeal a visa denial. So if rejected, have to apply again, which costs more time and money. So make sure you submit a complete application in the first go and can explain why you’re planning to study a specific course at a particular university.
• Some students have been caught off-guard, assuming that old visa rules were in place. Make sure you are familiar with the latest rules.

Mythbusters

• Are you worried that your high school is too obscure? Officials at the US consulate in Karachi deny this matters. “Visas are always based on an individual’s eligibility — and not on the school the applicant attends here in Pakistan,” says an official from the consulate. One of the key factors that help a student with their visa process is an actual plan of study.
• Another myth is that certain names, such as ‘Osama’ or ‘Khan’ might be on some sort of blacklist and applicants with such names will be scrutinised more. “There are no ‘blacklisted names’,” say consular officials in Karachi. “Some visa applications require further administrative processing, which takes additional time after the visa applicant’s interview.”
• One myth surrounds the length of the interview. In the corporate world, job interviews that are short and end abruptly are taken as bad news. This rule does not apply for US visa interviews. Most of the successful applicants who shared their experiences said they were stunned how quickly it went by. You’ll spend more time in the waiting lounge than in the interview.

US Visa Checklist

At the American Express office, you must submit:

• Your confirmation of the submission of the DS-160 form.
• A passport photo with a white background.
• A photocopy of the passport valid for the length of the trip to the US and photocopies of the passports held during the last 15 years
• Your complete travel history for the past 10 years
• The full names of your siblings, and if you’re a Master’s or PhD applicant with children, their names are required too
• Take the following documents with you to the interview:
• Your interview appointment packet with one copy of the interview letter
• Your current passport as well as any old ones you’ve travelled on
• A completed DS-160 form with a printout of the confirmation of submission page
• Original school report cards, Matric and FSc documents, O’ and A’ Level certificates, university transcripts and university degree
• Four 2×2 passport photos
• Financial documents such as bank statements and tax return forms to show that you have enough money to cover the expenses stated on the I-20 form

UK Visa Checklist

• Make an appointment to be tested for TB at the International Organisation for Migration (http://www.bia.homeoffice.gov.uk/countries/pakistan/applying/tb-testing/).
• Fill out the online application (http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/visas-immigration/studying/) and keep a printout as proof. Once you submit the application you can make an appointment to submit your papers.
• Remember to fill out Appendix 8 (http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/applicationforms/visas/vaf9-app81.pdf)
• Current and previous passports.
• Two passport photos.
• Acceptance letter and a letter from the university for visa purposes.
• Bank statements. Make sure they are up to date. Do not give entire year’s account, just 30 days prior to applying for the visa.
• Visa application fees.
• CNIC
• Keep photocopies of all original documents
• If you need supporting documents, take family financial/property papers, A’ and O’ level and other school transcripts
• One copy of the interview letter
• Your current passport as well as any old ones you’ve travelled on
• A completed DS-160 form with a printout of the confirmation of submission page
• Original school report cards, Matric and FSc documents, O’ and A’ Level certificates, university transcripts with all courses taken with grades obtained and a university degree
• Four 2×2 passport photos
• Financial documents such as bank statements and tax return forms to show that you have enough money to cover the expenses stated on the I-20 form

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, May 26^th, 2013.

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Pakistanis are slowly going out of their minds. Going to a psychiatrist is out of the question. And even if we did, we’d probably have to wait weeks for an appointment: We only have 342 in the entire country. There is virtually no point in listing the triggers. We all know them. They range from deranged mothers-in-law to drive-by shootings. For many it is just that slow attrition of faith that we made the right choice to continue living here.

As a result, we bought 476 million anti-anxiety tablets in 2012 in Pakistan (see box on how numbers are calculated). The most popular household names are Xanax and Lexotanil. Others include Valium. If you think that number is high, consider that it wasn’t enough to meet demand, which is estimated to be double. According to Tariq Ikram, the CEO of Opal Laboratories that deals in the basic ingredient for anti-anxiety medication, the government has capped how much they can import. This means that drug stores run out of these pills at least twice a year. There isn’t enough to go around.

 DOWNERS AND UPPERS

Men and women in Pakistan like anti-anxiety pills or benzodiazepines because they work immediately. One of the most popular ones is Xanax that was introduced here in 1991. It will, when properly prescribed by a doctor, relieve anxiety, help you get to sleep and relax your muscles. But what most people do not know is that if you abuse it, it can actually drag you down and depress you more. Abuse means habitually taking a drug to alter your mood, emotion, or state of consciousness.

People who take it without a prescription at higher doses get a Xanax “high”. This is like the effect alcohol has as a downer or the depressant effect of intoxication. Your inhibitions go out the window and your judgment is impaired. Oh, and one of the side effects is a lowered sex drive.

Psychiatrist Dr Uzma Ambareen says a large number of people who use and abuse this medication are women. They are increasingly becoming dependent on anti-anxiety pills to get to sleep. They take it themselves and hand it out to friends as well.

“The stress level is very high in our society and we are not very skilled at managing [it],” says Dr Uzma, as she is known at the free clinic in Karachi run by the Pakistan Association of Mental Health. According to her, the people who are abusing Xanax, Lexotanil and similar medication are actually masking symptoms of clinical depression or some other disorder that should be checked out by a specialist. “People are taking drugs to suppress their symptoms and are not seeking proper help,” she says. “This is primarily due to the stigma that is linked with going to a psychologist or psychiatrist. So a lot of people with depression or severe anxiety disorder never get diagnosed because they don’t get proper help.”

Anti-anxiety pills are just a temporary solution that carries the risk of addiction if not prescribed. “In my 35 years of work experience, I have seen many women, especially those belonging to affluent families, using Xanax as a quick fix for anxiety and stress, instead of going to a trained therapist,” says Dr Sadaqat Ali, the project director for Willing Ways (Pvt) Ltd. The treatment facility in Karachi has been seeing a rise in the number of people using Xanax. “These people think it is a solution to marital problems, relationship issues and life stresses, which in fact it is not.”

There is a significant risk of becoming addicted to an anti-anxiety medication if you are just buying it over the counter. If you continuously take one it stops being effective, driving you to take higher and higher doses.

Dr Sadaqat advises abusers against going “cold turkey” and stop taking it all of a sudden but consulting a doctor to wean yourself off it.

We become addicted to these anti-anxiety pills because we would rather die than see a doctor. “People are either scared of psychiatry, or they think it is mumbo jumbo, but it is neither!” says psychiatrist and psychotherapist Dr Unaiza Niaz. Even if anyone suggests that they need to see a psychiatrist, people around them are full of ridicule. They suggest the depressed person goes for coffee with friends to unburden or take up yoga. And while having a good support system and doing regular exercise are crucial for anyone’s wellbeing, sometimes our problems really require medical attention. We’d go to a doctor if our kidney developed an infection, why wouldn’t we go if we had constant depression?

Anti-depressants have become popular in Pakistan in the last two decades. And one of the best-selling ones is Prozac, a part of the new generation of pharmaceutical offerings that revolutionised this kind of health care. The new anti-depressant also treated anxiety so doctors didn’t have to prescribe two sets of medications, say practitioners. One pill treated them both.

“The change in prescription trends truly started with the introduction of fluoxetine (Prozac), the first SSRI,” says Tariq Ikram of Opal laboratories. SSRI stands for the complicated-sounding Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. SSRIs block the reabsorption (reuptake) of the neurotransmitter serotonin (ser-oh-TOE-nin) in the brain. Changing the balance of serotonin seems to help brain cells send and receive chemical messages, which in turn boosts mood. SSRIs are called selective because they seem to primarily affect serotonin, not other neurotransmitters.The first SSRI, Prozac, worked for patients who had no psychiatric illness but were depressed and anxious due to stress in their environment. “It became the rage in the US and the effect spilled out elsewhere,” explains Ikram.

“The new generation anti-depressants have the advantage that they treat accompanying anxiety … as well [as] depression,” he says. They are safer as well and, contrary to what people believe, lack the potential to become addictive — unlike anti-anxiety pills.

People in Pakistan are not that well-informed about this line of treatment and tend to buy into negative myths about it. There has been an advantage to this ignorance. It means that anti-depressants are not abused or taken freely without prescription. People are generally less aware of their names and more hesitant to take them.

Dr Niaz says that Prozac is considered one of the most effective and useful anti-depressants, but, as with all medication in general, it is extremely dangerous to take it and other SSRIs without a prescription from a trained psychiatrist. She warns that this is particularly important for patients with a family history of bipolar disorder or major psychosis.

It is also vital to understand this: “One anti-depressant doesn’t work for all,” she says. “Treating patients with psychotropic drugs is an art. It’s not as simple as antibiotics, in which you know which one is given for which infection.”

Anti-depressants are extremely sensitive drugs and should never be taken on the advice of a non-clinical person. They should be prescribed only by an expert after they take a detailed history of the patient and closely observe them “People [taking] such drugs have to be closely monitored and observed by a psychiatrist,” Dr Niaz adds. “Reading about it in books or on the internet and taking them on your own can be catastrophic.” People should understand that popping pills can cause severe reactions from a simple drug interaction or allergic reaction.

While this may be a silent epidemic in Pakistan today, there was such an alarming abuse of barbiturates by housewives in the 1960s that the British band, The Rolling Stones, recorded a twangy song, ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ in 1965. It went like this: Things are different today, I hear every mother say. Mother needs something today to calm her down. And though she’s not really ill, there’s a little yellow pill. She goes running for the shelter of her mother’s little helper…

Been down so long, it looks like up to me 

The Peshawar region has only a handful of psychiatrists 

It’s getting worse. Psychiatrists, and there are only about 25 of them in Peshawar, are seeing up to 50 patients a day. One indication of the severe shortage of doctors is that a patient should ideally get a one-hour session. There aren’t enough hours in the day in this part of Pakistan.

When people can’t or in many cases won’t see a psychiatrist, they try to solve the problem themselves. “A majority of patients with depression and anxiety self-medicate and this leads to addiction,” says Prof Dr Wajid of the Hayatabad Medical Complex. While he says he is not aware of any specific survey, he would put the rise in patients over the last few years from 23% to 55% across the country. The shortage of psychiatrists is so bad that people consult him during informal meetings as well. Every major hospital has set up psychiatry department and each of them receives a huge number of patients.

For those who can’t make it to hospital in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and FATA, including Bara, Dara Adam Khel and Miran Shah, one popular but dangerous solution is mixing a locally made Cabinot syrup with moonshine in an attempt to de-stress. “The increase in the demand for Lexotanil and Xanax means that shortages develop in the markets and shopkeepers rake up the price,” Wajid says. “But people still buy them no matter what the price.”

And when nothing else works, hashish is an old-time friend, especially when the tablets are not available in inaccessible areas. It’s cheap and has a strong effect. But it certainly doesn’t get the beast off your back.

The history of anti-depressants in Pakistan

Historically, antidepressants in Pakistan were given to established psychiatric patients only. The most commonly used was amitriptyline (Tryptanol). The first tetracyclic maprotiline (Ludiomil) was received well but did not replace amitriptyline, according to Tariq Ikram of Opal Laboratories. Paroxetine (Seroxat) is from the same group of medicines but it never became as big as Prozac. Then came citalopram, which made big splash. Sertraline and venlafaxine did not become a blockbuster but Escitalopram (Cipralex) became even more popular than its parent compound citalorpam.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, May 26^th, 2013.

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When Princeton history professor, Gyan Prakash, came to Karachi, he saw a lot of Mumbai in it. Both are port cities, and as cities on the sea, both have an “expansive sense about themselves” that comes from not being tied by their hinterland or location in the nation.

He visited Pakistan much after the publication of his book Mumbai Fables (2011) and The Express Tribune asked about his perceptions of the two great cities. As a historian of modern India, his perspective is sweeping. But more sexily, Mumbai Fables is being turned into a film called Bombay Velvet by director Anurag Kashyap for Fox Studios. It stars Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma and tells Bombay’s story as an evolving metropolis through the 1950s and 1970s. Shooting begins in June.

Professor Gyan Prakash

Few people in Karachi would disagree with Prakash’s assertion that the city has “a distinct urban consciousness”. He sees it as a sense that the city has a life of its own, one that enables or disables aspirations. “I think this is why both [Mumbai and Karachi] also attract migrants from near and far,” he said, “Not just for livelihood but also for the possibilities, real and imagined, that the city offers.”

Of course, there are quite a few differences. He had planned to visit Orangi but cell phone services were suspended. “Even if there isn’t any violence, the fear of violence affects [Karachi],” he said. “One way the city derives its energy is through mobility. And we have the entire city … closed off through containers and blocks.”

Fear perhaps colours life in Mumbai too. Prakash is honest enough about admitting, as he did in an interview once, that Mumbai is the “centre of terror and fulfiller of capitalist dreams”. But there is one important difference from Karachi. The terror “doesn’t seep into the everyday life of [Mumbai]”.

His new work has branched out to explore homelessness. When people move and the pace of change that they experience is speeded up, they begin to ask what home is. “So, as people flock to cities like Mumbai and Karachi, they have to patch together social relations and home in the city,” he explained. For example, the attacks on Shias in Karachi cannot but affect how secure or at home they feel. The same can be said also of anti-nativist campaigns in Mumbai.

Prakash intends to organise conferences that would include scholars who work on, among other places, Karachi. “Consider, just for example, the anti-terror furniture on Karachi streets. The ubiquity of the containers on the street, I would think, must affect how people feel about being secure in the city.”

The message, it seems, is that these sprawling, heaving beautiful entities are paradoxes. In Mumbai Fables, Prakash divides this into the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ city. “Urban life and experience [are] not just a matter of demography and statistics but also of dreams and nightmares, hopes and disappointments, imaginations and aspirations,” he said. Literature, cinema, signage, shop displays become part of the “soft city”. They feed our imaginations, produce desires, inflect how we see and live our daily life. What Christopher Morley once wrote seems to apply here: “All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful, but the beauty is grim.”

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, June 2^nd, 2013.

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If Side Effects played in Pakistani cinemas it would only have the effect of reinforcing our popular dread of anti-depressants. Emily Taylor’s (Rooney Mara) husband (Channing Tatum) is about to be released from jail after serving a sentence for insider trading. A day or so after his release she attempts suicide by ramming her car into a wall. In the ER she is introduced to Dr Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) and agrees to go into treatment for depression.

She asks to be put on a new drug whose side effect is sleepwalking. As expected, and we are on the edge of our seats even though we know what is coming: the medication has disastrous consequences. Dr Banks is blamed and Emily ends up in jail.

This was the preamble to a film that is divided into two distinct parts. Up until the medication leads to disaster we cannot help but feel nerve-wracking suspense at every camera pan. But in the second half of the movie, the treatment of the film feels disjointed. The suspense disappears and we just see Dr Banks fumble through a series of discoveries about the drug as he seeks to clear his name. Still, the kicker in the end is satisfying.

The star of this work, however, is Rooney Mara’s performance as a vacant-faced patient who we can’t quite trust. The triumph of her acting is the ability to imperceptibly alter her expressions as the ‘depression’ progresses. Don’t bother registering Channing Tatum as he does little more than fill in for the supporting actor. A smaller and perhaps undervalued appearance is made by the eerie Catherine Zeta-Jones as Dr Victoria Siebert, Emily’s former psychiatrist. But as Dr Banks must discover, that spate of treatment entailed more than prescription writing. We’ve seen Jude Law in stronger roles but he manages to do justice to the prominent psychiatrist who falls from grace.

Side Effects was in the top 10 on the US box office for a few weeks. It is a shame that its director, Steven Soderbergh, who brought us We Need to Talk About Kevin, is giving up film to move into TV. But it seems that his fascination with the human physiology and psychology continues with his new series The Knick about a hospital during 1900 when antibiotics were being discovered amid high death rates.

Three films that made us understand the madness

1. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Milos Forman

The director who brought us Amadeus created this classic from the novel in 1975. Jack Nicholson is sent to a mental asylum where he wreaks havoc and challenges the system. Bittersweet and terribly funny. One of the best films on psychiatry.

2. Leaving Las Vegas by Mike Figgis

This 1995 film won an Oscar for its treatment of alcoholism and won accolades for Elisabeth Shue and Nicholas Cage, a prostitute and a washed up Hollywood screenwriter who fall in love even as he insists on drinking himself to death. Haunting soundtrack includes work from Sting.

3.  Interiors by Woody Allen

If you’ve been depressed or known anyone with depression don’t watch this incisive non-funny Allen work. After her husband divorces her, a woman finds she cannot function. Her children are in their 30s and struggle to help her. A brilliant and painful portrait of the debilitating condition.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, June 2^nd, 2013.

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Imran Qureshi’s exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rooftop in New York is almost a classic case of Pakistani artists suffering from vertigo. The condition often results in a balance disorder and motion sickness. Looking down can be disorienting enough to make you fall. You stay where you are and move as slowly as possible. You focus on a point in space and block the peripheral. Mr Qureshi did exactly this. The work, which intended to open up dialogue, took as its point of departure the threshold from where the horror of violence meets hope. But, as I would argue, his vertigo paralyzed him.

Qureshi is a celebrated artist who was born in Hyderabad in 1972. He was trained as a traditional miniaturist in the classical Persian style of finely detailed paintings (1526–1857) made so famous by the Mughal courts. But here, he has spread himself too thin by aiming to transform a space that measured 8,000 sq ft.

“And How Many Rains Must Fall Before the Stains are Washed Clean”

-Installation by Imran Qureshi, 2013, acrylic.
COMMISSIONED BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK FOR THE IRIS AND B GERALD CANTOR ROOFGARDEN.
© imran qureshi and the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

The result is an endeavour that appeared to want to hit all the right notes or a checklist of obvious metaphors associated with violence. Red — check. The Muslim artist’s visual language crossed with ritual sacrificial iconography — check. Hope depicted through blossoming leaves — check.

“Blessings Upon the Land of my Love”
Imran Qureshi, 2011

acrylic and emulsion paint on interlocking brick pavement
Biennial, Commissions & Productions sharjah art foundation

© imran qureshi and ALFREDO RUBIO

His greatest weakness was, however, the site he was working with. The acrylic paint splashed across the space was more Jackson Pollock than Miniature Art. As a result, I would argue that the space wasn’t transformed; it was just painted upon. A comparison with his earlier piece ‘Blessings Upon the Land of My Love’ for the Sharjah Biennial in 2011 illustrate the weakness of his current exhibit. That space was the courtyard of Beit Al Serkal. The miniaturist in him took to the grid that already existed and worked with it. His visual language emerged with the intricacies of the traditional 16th and 17th Century style that he was trained in. The context, both in terms of the Middle East, and his visual language, were apt. The motifs were derivative of the same region and their shared history of violence gave them depth. The use of red, though obvious, was impactful enough to have a transformative effect. The courtyard of the gallery (formerly a residential space) became reminiscent of a mosque: a space for ritual engagement with God who then leaves room for hope.

“wuzu 2”
imran qureshi, 2006

acrylic and emulsion paint on walls and tiled floor
masjid sultan, singapore biennale, singapore
© imran qureshi and corvi mora, london

But then Qureshi departed from this approach and went the way of Muslim artists who have chosen to represent their countries torn apart by violence to the Western audience. For The Met he stuck to red even though the palette was really just a mix of US-Pakistan diplomatic relationships, 9/11, drone strikes, the Boston bombings.

“Blessings Upon the Land of my Love”
Imran Qureshi, 2011

acrylic and emulsion paint on interlocking brick pavement
Biennial, Commissions & Productions sharjah art foundation

© imran qureshi and ALFREDO RUBIO

Hope cannot be represented by lush foliage in a land where there is such little rain. To do true justice to the complexity of violence, the visual language has to be pushed to similar extremes.

The piece falls flat. Literally.

“They shimmer still” imran qureshi, 2013
gold leaf and acrylic on canvas, diptych, each 280 by 205 cm
© courtesy: imran qureshi and corvi mora, london

The exhibit will be open from May 14 to November 3 

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, June 2^nd, 2013.

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In June, Sinthia Rose will sit opposite a 65-kilogramme Uzbek woman and try to wrestle her. The 21-year-old has a firm grip and steady eye. Indeed, she hopes to bring back gold at the Asian Arm-wrestling Championship, buoyed by the pride of representing Pakistan as a Christian at an international event.

“Arm-wrestling is a new sport for us but I take it very seriously,” she recently told The Express Tribune from her Liaquatabad home. She tried to excel in other athletics and took part in throwball, long jump and basketball events but feels there is no scope in them. “I believe that arm-wrestling has a future.”

She and 300 others. They were scheduled to take part in the All Sindh Arm-Wrestling Championship 2013 before the elections but the event was postponed over bloodshed in Karachi.

Patience, however, is one of Rose’s techniques even though a match lasts just four to five minutes. The game is about patience rather than being on the offensive, as her coach Nayab Malik taught her.

“We need to keep eye contact so that we can read the other’s move,” Rose says. “Sometimes we just hold our opponent’s move for more than a minute so that they get tired, or till their hand starts to ache.” Only after exhausting the opponent does she make her move.

Sinthia Rose, pictured right with the glasses. PHOTO: AYESHA MIR

The second rule is that the fight is about subtlety instead of the strength. “We have to hold the hand at an 80-degree angle and pull our competitor’s hand towards us slowly,” she says. “If that isn’t done correctly, the game is over.” This technique is called ‘go’ and it is all about how you approach the opponent and direct their own strength against them. “I wouldn’t give away my own force into one match,” she adds. Her longest matches have lasted for five minutes and the shortest less than 30 seconds.

Rose abides by these rules for the game and in life. And they seem to have worked for her. In her two-year career, she has so far won two Sindh Games gold medals, a Karachi Games gold medal and the 65-kg title at the National Games last year.

“I’ve always been good at sports, but I also believe that [you] can only excel in any field if [you] enjoy it,” she explains. However, she adds that arm-wrestling is the most fun and the easiest sport for women who have already tried their hand at athletics or other sports and failed to make a mark.

The beginnings

When Rose was competing in another event at the Sindh Sports Board she found that other athletes were switching to arm-wrestling, which piqued her interest. Today, she and her sister Amniks (also a 45-kilogramme gold medalist) practice at the board every day with their coach Nayab Malik, who introduced them to the sport. She reinforces these practise sessions with a balanced diet of three meals a day and never skips breakfast. It was especially after her FSc at a convent boarding school in Gujranwala this year that Rose’s ambitions grew to really make a name for herself.

She will be training with 37 other women for the Asian Arm-Wrestling Championship, according to coach Malik, who also manages the national arm-wrestling team. More women are now keen on it because it helps change perceptions. The training sessions are more like a community gathering in which each woman comes with experience from her former discipline.

For Rose, though, it was not a feminist cause that made her roll up her sleeves. It was a personal struggle. “I remember that all the fear and the hesitation was coming from within me, others really didn’t care,” she says. “I’d lose the matches in the beginning because I thought it would look odd as a woman. But then I got over my own chauvinism.” She sometimes practises with her elder brother now. And her father, a tailor who has funded her education with his income from the business, watched her compete at the nationals. “It took them some time to get used to the idea but they enjoy it now.”

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, June 2^nd, 2013.

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Be honest. What was your first innermost reaction when you saw images of the Twin Towers falling in a cloud of concrete dust on 9/11? For some people it was instant awe — not wondrous — but incredulous. It was disbelief that something of this magnitude was unfolding before their eyes. But it is difficult to articulate that sentiment because you do not want to risk being misunderstood.

More than a decade since that day Pakistanis still find themselves on the defensive. In many cases, the makers of our art, literature, music and film too have to first extricate themselves or rise above the tiresome dichotomies spawned by 9/11. And even as our artists break free from these restraints, their work is still often helplessly informed by them — by sheer virtue of trying to overcome them.

Take this example: Mira Nair, the director of The Reluctant Fundamentalist that has just opened in cinemas, recalls the effort that went into turning Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 book into a film script. One potential scriptwriter had advised: “First off, we’re going to have to drop the title. You couldn’t drag me to see a film with the word ‘fundamentalist’ in it”. Deciding to keep the title became a question and its answer turned into an act of rebellion and submission at the same time.

Whether you liked Mohsin Hamid’s book or not, we would still highly recommend watching Mira Nair’s interpretation of it. For she takes us back to the Question of what 9/11 has done to us. No matter which side you were or are on, whether you cared or not subsequently and especially if you are fed up of it all.

The plot

At its heart, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a thriller but one that is less about well-choreographed fights. It is propelled by the classic conflict-crisis-resolution formula embedded in one man’s experience as he is thrust into a world where you were either with them or against them.

PHOTO: ISHAAN NAIR & QUANTRELL COLBERT

That character is Changez, who we first meet as a young professor in Lahore, played by the impossibly beautiful Riz Ahmed.

When the film opens Changez is being interviewed by a thickset American journalist by the name of Bobby Lincoln (Liev Shreiber) in ‘Lahore’ (recreated in Old Delhi). Bobby believes that Changez was involved with the terrorists who recently kidnapped his friend, an American academic at the university.

The American journalist’s perceptions of Changez are used to cleverly strip stereotypes: young fiery-eyed Islamist intellectual with a beard who rejected living in America after studying there (He must be a terrorist or at least a sympathizer). But as Changez keeps warning Bobby and us: Looks can be deceiving. I am a lover of America.

Mira Nair doesn’t stop there, though. She drives her point home repeatedly by making even us doubt Changez, right till the end. And then we are ashamed we ever did. This is one of the film and book’s strongest lessons: the stereotypes are hard to shake off, especially the ones we have about ourselves.

Changez agrees to talk but only if Bobby is willing to listen to his life story. This was another clever message — first you have to listen, to the whole story. Indeed, is this inability for the two sides to listen to each other not part of the problem? And is art’s job not to remind us?

We are pulled in to Changez’s transformation from an ivy-league school graduate to what he is today. We can all guess what made him go home after 9/11 even though he was working as a financial analyst and had a beautiful girlfriend who is a photographer (played by Kate Hudson who didn’t quite look right for the role). The strip searches, the police harassment, the widening schism caused by interpretations of the act of terrorism did not help. That is not what will interest you. It is how Changez reasons through the crisis that will surprise you.

Isn’t it an irony that the word ‘changez’ in French means change?

The great debate

Other filmmakers have taken on the vexing faultlines created by international terrorism. Karan Johar’s My Name is Khan aimed to re-analyse the identity of Muslims but its patina of Johar’s signature superficiality killed it. Pakistan was not at the centre of this story anyway.

Then there was Shoaib Mansoor’s Khuda Kay Liye, a film that played a seminal role in the rebirth of Pakistani cinema. It also tried to deconstruct the post-9/11 Pakistani identity as well. In a way, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is Khuda Kay Liye done right with a bigger budget and by a much more experienced director.

In the end, Mansoor failed to take a side. (This did not necessarily dent its popularity). Khuda Kay Liye was unsure of its own central message and failed to persuade that it had really understood the issues it was trying to tackle. For many it thus emerged as an apologist film. The audience feels some form of catharsis but the debate is not driven forward. We do not learn anything new.

This is where Mohsin Hamid and Mira Nair are right on the money. They lay out the unfair treatment meted out to many Pakistanis after Sept 11 but do not pander to their bruised egos. This would have reduced them to ‘victims’ and the film would have become a victim to the very black and white thinking it wants to move away from. (It failed on one front though, by demonizing the Americans towards the end)

There is a fine tightrope to tackling ‘victimhood’. The writers come really close to making us feel sorry for Changez when he says to Bobby: “You picked a side after 9/11. I didn’t have to. It was picked for me.” It is only Riz Ahmed’s non-whiny tone that allows this line to skim past by the skin of its teeth.

Riz Ahmed does a brilliantly restrained job of revealing his anger and frustration inch by inch as Changez’s life starts to unravel in New York. When his girlfriend Erica picks him up from the airport after he has been strip-searched, she incredulously asks how, just how could something like the terrorist attack have happened? Changez’s answer is curt but quiet and comes after the slightest of pauses: Why do you think I would know?

This kind of writing is the strength of this film.

When Erica and Changez are courting, their couple’s inner joke is: I had a Pakistani. But when Erica uses this line as part of her photography exhibition its double entendre ruins it because of a wider context in the post-Sept 11 New York. Was she reckless to use her shared private life with Changez to make a political point or was it simply a case of just another American not quite understanding just exactly what 9/11 was?

The performance

It took Mira Nair over a year to find the right man to play Changez, a Pakistani who spoke colloquial Urdu but dreamt in English and who was just as much at home at a Wall Street bash as a Lahori dhaba. British actor and rapper Riz Ahmed may have been a risky choice but he delivers through and through.

PHOTO: ISHAAN NAIR & QUANTRELL COLBERT

This is why the film is flooded with close shots of his face, treating us to a dizzying spectrum of nuanced emotional states. The secret lies in his wide eyes and their black pupils that dilate and narrow at the right times. Yes, he has been given five different looks and three beards, but the cosmetics would not have been able to carry a hysterical performance.

We encounter him as an eager young Princeton graduate, open-faced and full-lipped, almost Grecian in profile, a young prince in a world for the taking. He transitions from this, without the slightest of facial muscle flickers, to darken his expression when his life in America starts to fall apart. His weeping is real. His confusion expertly blank. How many actors can give an honest interpretation of helplessness while being cavity searched at the airport while holding their groin?

And then, he appears ever so slightly gaunt, even wizened towards the end after he has made his choices. His moustache makes his upper lip thinner, his look sharper. There is just a smudge of fatigue under his eyes. His stiff slick Brylcreened capitalist helmet has gone. Do we detect a hint of Zaid Hamid? We are not sure. The side parting in his hair makes him look innocent but we can’t trust the look.

PHOTO: ISHAAN NAIR & QUANTRELL COLBERT

Management of Changez’s physical transformations were carefully orchestrated with the choice of the film’s look. Mira Nair explains that she wanted to have a “palpable air of unease in every scene — a sense that anything can happen at any moment”. This is why the camera was never fixed on a tripod or static. It was always moving in the hands of cinematographer Declan Quinn or suspended on a bungee cord. It was a technique that worked without turning irritating or veering too much to the look and feel of a documentary film.

Happily, the filmmaker did not fetishize locations like ‘Lahore’ or Istanbul. There were no attempts to capture the ‘heat and dust’ of the city through some hackneyed Orientalist lens. Setting supported the story but mercifully did not overwhelm it.

PHOTO: ISHAAN NAIR & QUANTRELL COLBERT

A few strains of confusion creep in over Changez’s firebrand university speeches and the jihadi recruitment on campus. It was similarly a little unclear what the motivation for the riot was. For anyone familiar with the workings of groups like Hizbut Tahrir or Pakistan’s daily protests, it was easy to suspend disbelief but for foreign audiences perhaps these scenes could have been fleshed out a little more.

The music

Well, of course Mira Nair would have chosen Kangna, safely one of the most iconic pieces of music of these times. Critics will call it an orthodox choice, putting a qawwali at the opening of a film on Pakistan. But watch closely. As Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad sing it, we simultaneous cut to the scene where the American academic is being kidnapped elsewhere in Lahore. Mira Nair has said that she wanted Fareed Ayaz’s crimson paan-filled mouth to echo the blood of the kidnapping but don’t be distracted by that symbolism. Something much more clever happens.

PHOTO: ISHAAN NAIR & QUANTRELL COLBERT

As the kidnappers ambush the American academic and his wife on the street, the violent pitch of the refrain from Kangna rises to a near scream. “Kangna de de!” Give back the bracelet! The wife is beaten and thrown onto the street as the terrorists drive off with her husband. She runs behind the car screaming for help. “Tori binti karoon,” sing the qawwals. I beg and beseech you.

We are treated to another masterful use of a Pakistani song towards the middle of the film with Atif Aslam’s rendition of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Mori Araj Suno made legend by Tina Sani. It is placed at the point when Changez finds himself in Istanbul, ready to take the wrecking ball to a Turkish publisher’s company. We see him silhouetted against the Blue Mosque as Aslam’s quavering high notes tug at our heartstrings. Changez is at a crossroads, as Istanbul is between two worlds. He is shown sitting in the Blue Mosque but he doesn’t pray just yet in another example of sophisticated exercise of restraint in the film.

The film has been well received abroad and it should be dubbed for the wider audiences in Pakistan. Sadly, certain key pieces of dialogue are unfortunately blanked out and one or two sexy scenes have been cut.

Mira Nair could only understand so much of Pakistan as a relative outsider. But that does not necessarily matter because the film gets all the right pieces right. Indeed, perhaps Nair is unaware of the effect it can have. Take for example the magnitude of what she was saying in interviews to publicise the film: You never know what is going to happen next.

This, as any Pakistani will tell you, is how we live each day in this country.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, June 2^nd, 2013.

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Inferno is 461 pages of predictable, formulaic, unbelievable, breathless action that starts with Robert Langdon, our invincible Harris Tweed-clad academic, who sprints injured from a hospital bed in what he discovers is not New England but Florence, Italy. Only, this time he also has amnesia!

This book’s plot is overly ambitious even by Brown’s standards. Yet, more than 200 million copies of his books have already been sold. Indeed, the writer continues to command a fan-base for whom he is a demagogue. Hence, what critics think may be one of his worst works is already a chart-topper.

Brown’s readership is already acquainted with Langdon, art historian cum symbologist cum iconographer cum world-saviour, all in one. He lands in the most unthinkable situations with the world’s most gorgeous, brainy and spirited women (in Bond 007 fashion), and together they solve hidden mysteries, connecting the dots of symbology, just in the nick of time to ward off an apocalypse plotted by crazed men. With the blonde doctor, Sienna Brooks, the lucky-in-love Langdon finds himself racing through Florence, Venice and Istanbul. Istanbul clearly steals the show from Italy here.

Brown’s books are inspired by some of the most influential individuals, cults or books of the past. This time, as the name suggests, it is part one: “Inferno” of Dante Alighieri’s 14th century epic poem Divine Comedy.

In a standard Dan Brown 24-hour time limit, Langdon with his beautiful side-kick races to find a weapon of mass destruction created by a mad scientist as a solution to over-population in the world that is threatening the human species with extinction. This weapon is created to cut down a major chunk of the human population. Here, we see dark and twisted reflections of the neo-Malthusian theory at work.

Despite all the predictability, Brown’s art reigns over boredom. He manages to keep the reader glued.

His earlier books brought to life the Illuminati and the Holy Grail. This time round, global interest in Dante’s Inferno has re-surfaced. Dante has risen yet again, which more than the book itself, might be an off-shoot contribution from Brown. In a world that is quickly losing touch with epic poetry, the return of classics to the sphere inhabited by the mainstream reader is a good thing. It has certainly helped revive tourism in Florence, as Dante fever grips the city beside river Arno.

In Inferno, we see Brown struggling with his malapropistic tendencies, having fallen into the rut of predictability. But as long as Brown has a die-hard readership that enjoys the conspiracy theory formula, he is still in the running, and some of the flack he gets is a bit unfair, as his novels are fun reads.

The Divine Comedy by Dante Aligheiri

Divided into three Canticas (hymns), The Divine Comedy is a poem about Dante’s journey through the three domains of the afterlife; Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradiso (Paradise). The first Cantica, Inferno sees Dante descend into the depths of Hell. Guided by Virgil’s ghost, he goes through nine circles of Hell. The poem is a literal and allegorical attempt to find God and seek redemption.

The Psalter by Galen Watson

An ancient manuscript, the Psalter, is discovered by Michael Romano, a sceptical custodian of the Vatican library. An ancient manuscript expert, he is known to be inquisitive and meddlesome, traits the Church Inquisitors do not appreciate and for good reason. The manuscript leads Father Romano down a path of secrets and betrayals. It also brings to light medieval secrets that have long been buried.

The prophetess by Barbara Wood

Set in the Sinai Desert at the onset of the millennium,
The prophetess, narrates the story of archaeologist Catherine Alexander who has just discovered six ancient scrolls. These scrolls contain secrets that governments desperately want to know. There is however a missing seventh scroll concealing an even more important secret. Catherine battles super powers and intelligence agencies to get her hands on this scroll before they do.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, June 9^th, 2013.

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If Sarah Jessica Parker can do it, so can we. That is what women tell themselves when it comes to high heels. But Parker quietly shelved her Jimmy Choos and Manolo Blahniks after she developed an extra bone in her foot from constantly wearing heels. She now says they mangled her feet.

Orthopedic surgeon Dr Abdul Haseeb Qureshi explains that the trouble starts when you mess with the natural distribution of weight on your feet by wearing high heels. “Your forefoot and the heel are [then] not on an equal level which is important to transfer equal pressure from both legs onto the spine” he says.

As a result, too much pressure is put on the front of the foot, possibly leading to severe ankle, knee and spine sprains, as high heels throw off kilter the alignment of your hips, shoulders, back and spine.

Prolonged wear also leads to the formation of a painful bump at the back of the heel bone. “This is called a calcaneal spur, or heel spur,” says Qureshi. “It is common in European countries where women often wear high heels.”

Experts also warn that wearing high heels with narrow toes can thicken the nerves, as a result of which you can develop a lump on the underside of your foot.

In the long term, women who wear high heels will find their calf muscles become more rigid. “Since the calf muscles in your legs aren’t strong enough, they naturally contract when you wear high heels,” says Qureshi. They actually become shorter over time so when you do wear flats it is painful.

And while you may think that high heels flatter your silhouette, be prepared to suffer from calluses, corns and blisters when the heels throw your weight on to the ball of your foot.

Ironically, the kolhapuri chappal and khussa are not much better for your foot.

“Flat shoes don’t give you enough support,” says physical therapist Dr Usman Ghani, who has worked with the Pakistan cricket team. “Khussas have no arch support; they’re merely ‘cosmetic’ chappals that should not be worn when you’re on your feet for a long period of time.”

The lack of arch support and an inappropriately hard sole are the main causes of foot pain in the metatarsal area, the area just before the toes, explains Dr Ghani. “When you raise your heels, the toes go into extension mode and so the sole of the shoe needs to be flexible to allow this extension.”

Along with high heels, perfectly flat shoes also cause heel pain and tighten calf muscles. “This is commonly known as plantar fasciitis. It is essentially an irritation of the plantar fascia tissue, which runs along the bottom of the foot, connecting the heel to the arch,” says Dr Ghani. Thus doctors recommend that in many cases, two-inch heels can be healthier for your feet than flats.

Pregnant women are advised not to wear flats during their first trimester. Ballet pumps and flip flops are unsuitable for daily wear in pregnancy as they don’t provide your feet the necessary support. “During pregnancy it is preferable [for women] to wear low-heeled, comfortable shoes to tone up your back muscles,” explains Qureshi. They are ideal to wear till the time your baby bump starts exerting pressure on your back.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, June 9^th, 2013.

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Whether you are an employer making an important hiring decision, an interrogator extracting information from a suspect or a lawyer negotiating a settlement, the ability to measure a person’s personality is imperative. Instead of referring to a plethora of complex personality theories, you can simply take a lesson in graphology that acts as a window into a personality by analysing their handwriting.  

There is some debate on what is the best place to start: the speed of handwriting or the emotional energy of the writer (this entails the physical pressure exerted to write). Looking at speed helps you draw a detailed sketch of the writer.

While fast writers are often taken to be spontaneous, impatient, ambitious, negligent and quick thinkers, average writers are considered to be cautious, creative, organised and slow thinkers. To be able to profile your writer, it is important to examine speed using an objective criterion — correlating the speed of writing to the speed of thought of the writer. Factors which serve as distracting influences must also be taken into account. In Your Character from your Handwriting: The New Graphology, Harry Brooks makes this easier by establishing the 18 indicators of speed, half of them used to identify slow writers and the other half for fast writers. For instance, frequent corrections or readjustments, lines sloping towards the right, accurate placement of the tittle for the ‘i’ (dot on top) and ‘t’ bars and strokes moving towards the left are all characteristics of slow writing with the reverse holding true for fast writing. And as a rule, two or more indicators of any style will determine the speed of the writer.

After establishing the speed, the next step is to determine the emotional responsiveness of the writer. This involves observing the strokes: upstrokes (measured from the baseline to the apex of the letter) and the downstrokes (measured from the apex to the baseline of the letter). For instance, while writing the letter ‘j’ you are making a downstroke on the lower part of the letter and making an upstroke in the upper part while writing an ‘h’. The strokes represent life force and energy flow and the slant of the two strokes in particular, represents emotional responsiveness or reactions to immediate circumstances. In this regard, Angelina Jolie comes across as determined because of the pointy downward strokes at the end of her signature. The more the letter slant leans toward the right, the more an emotional response can be expected. Such writers often show a willingness to comply and possess the ability to get along with co-workers while extreme left-slanted writers are sometimes antisocial, non-communicative and even defiant at times.

With the two fundamental calculations out of the way, the spotlight can be cast on the intensity of certain traits in individuals. Each behavioural trait can be represented graphically and this is determined by the structure pattern for each letter and its frequency of occurrence.

Although this science of character reading has come under great criticism in the recent past, being labelled as a pseudoscience, its value in the workplace as an additional method of gaining an insight into the personality of others cannot be written off. The claim that “handwriting is brainwriting” therefore continues to play a significant role in mapping the inner self.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, June 9^th, 2013.

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Barbie, the iconic doll, recently checked into her Pink Villa in Berlin. The launch of her 2,500-square metre life-sized Dreamhouse located in the city centre literally turned into a nightmare for the organisers.

Its opening on May 16 was sabotaged by a FEMEN activist who ran around naked burning Barbie’s effigy. It was followed by a peaceful demonstration of 300 people organised by a leftwing group, Die Linke, which launched the ‘Occupy the Barbie Dreamhouse’ campaign. It has over 2,500 followers and the support of the Teachers Association in Berlin.

After all the uproar in the media, I had to go to find out for myself what the fuss was all about.

On a grey Saturday morning, it is pouring in Berlin as I make my way through its overcrowded shopping mecca, Alexanderplatz, till I reach a scrap of wasteland with a makeshift house in pink. A dozen little girls wait, eager-eyed, clenching their mothers’ hands in one and an umbrella in the other. To my relief, the line moves quickly. Girls and women alike are mesmerised at the entrance which is a long pink corridor that leads to the ticket counter and is lined with dozens of Barbies dressed in all shades of pink.

The ticket costs a whopping 15 Euros (Rs1,920) for an adult and 12 Euros (Rs1,536) for a child. You can add on an electronic bracelet for a deposit of 5 Euros (Rs640). This bracelet is used for the interactive experience that is enabled through LED screens in the Dreamhouse. You could also choose a VIP package for 29 Euros (Rs3,713), which includes a Barbie Career Experience. 

Gateway to Barbie’s pink world

There are two floors and a Penthouse to discover. The first floor is a kitchen, where you can virtually bake cupcakes in a series of interactive games. Barbie’s fridge becomes a page out of her week planner with a list of things to do, such as ‘Buy the latest pink nail polish’ along with date invitations from Ken and other invites and postcards from friends.

This is followed by the leisure activity section, which for Barbie is the Beach, where she hangs out in fashionable bikinis with her friends and Ken (her boyfriend who dotes on her). And to top it off is the penthouse where her bedroom is located along with a wardrobe closet on display in glass panels.

The penthouse opens into a large hallway where stylists and make-up artists are primping up girls and picking out outfits to get them ready for a catwalk. You are only allowed in if you have the VIP package. The rest are allowed to watch or you can colour Barbie drawings. There is also a stage where girls can become rock stars like Barbie by lip-synching to popular songs as they follow the instructor’s choreography.

All throughout the Dreamhouse experience, Barbie is omnipresent, gazing out of cabinets and swathed in enthralling fairy-tale outfits. But the doll is out of reach. She can’t be touched or felt. The little girls can look but not touch.

A bad role model?

Is the blue-eyed blonde doll then just a shallow role model with no real career to offer inspiration? Is her image pushing girls towards consumerism? I ask Katja, the mother of two girls and a secretary in a multinational company. She is out on a Saturday excursion with her five-year-old daughter. “A lot of girls like to dress up, put on make-up, like the colour pink and love to play with dolls,” she says. “There is nothing wrong with it. But, the problem arises when girls are not engaged in other activities by their parents. As a parent, it is my responsibility to give other important values to my daughter and help her shape an all-round personality.”

But what about the fathers? Little girls have a lot of leverage when it comes to these doting parents. Christian is out with his six-year-old daughter. He works as a caretaker for mentally challenged people. “It is my job to teach my daughter that there are other achievements in life that are more rewarding and worthwhile than being like Barbie,” he remarks. “This is just a day out. The ticket is so expensive that I have set a limit of 5 Euros in pocket money for my daughter and she can pick up whatever she likes in that budget.”

After talking to them I stroll into the gift shop, munching on my strawberry-frosted cupcake. I overhear snippets of private conversations “Mum, I promise to finish my homework as soon as I am back from school.” A little girl is negotiating good behaviour in exchange of a new Barbie. Deals are being made. Parents extract promises from their children while opening up their wallets to pay for the Barbies their daughters won’t let go of. Some are guilty for not having spent enough time with their children. Others are simply being bullied and embarrassed by spoilt wailing brats.

Life in plastic is not all fantastic

The ‘Occupy the Barbie Dreamhouse’ campaign continues to protest against gender stereotypes, a shallow lifestyle and Barbie as a role model that puts pressure on young girls to be skinny and to look beautiful. The group’s leader Michael Koschitzki said, “Our protest is not directed against kids playing with Barbie or against parents going there. The Barbie Dreamhouse presents a very narrow role model for women. The Dreamhouse experience shows cooking, make-up and singing as the fulfilment of a woman’s life.”

Thus, for many, Barbie is in many ways still stuck in the 1950s and has been reduced to her looks. Many feminists have protested over the years against this stereotype image that she projects.

Koschitzki adds that Barbie’s ideal could become life-threatening for many girls. He refers to a study conducted by doctors in Germany. “As a real woman, Barbie would be anorexic. She would have a Body Mass Index of 16.24, which is medically categorised as anorexic. She wouldn’t have a normal menstruation cycle and she would be infertile.”

Despite the protests, Mattel moves forward and Barbie is set to tour many European cities this year. She is in Berlin until the end of August. Another Barbie Dreamhouse was opened early May in Florida. Strangely though there have been no protests in the US yet. In the meantime, Berlin’s protesters hope that their campaign will push down the number of visitors and help create awareness among parents about the perils of selling Barbie’s dreams to their daughters.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, June 9^th, 2013.

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