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Beo Raana Zafar: Moind jor lengwej
Beo Raana Zafar loves the squealers. God help you if you’re sitting with a dour face in her audience when she’s doing her stand-up. “I call them the faalij brigade,” she says, referring to the people...
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Travel: Hong Kong in 5 Days
1. Getting there There is no direct flight from Karachi to Hong Kong, so you will either have to route your journey via Bangkok or Dubai. If your flight arrives mid-afternoon to evening time, check...
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E-cigarette: Put this in your pipe and smoke it
The people who use the electronic cigarette don’t seem to mind looking foppish while sucking on what basically looks like a colourful pen whose tip lights up. For what else is this new-fangled...
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Food wars: Amateur critics on Facebook
The knives come out on Facebook. The enzymes have not even begun to break down in the alimentary canal and the bile has already started to rise. The unhappy diner whips out their cell phone and...
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TV Chat: Da Vinci’s Demons - Our 21st century Renaissance Man
Meet Leonardo da Vinci, a sword-fighting superhero destined to invent fantastic machines and maybe even change the course of history. The Starz pilot episode of Da Vinci’s Demons promises a sweeping...
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Coast to coast: Safety at the beach
When the summer monsoons arrive, our coastal waters become extremely rough and dangerous as the winds travel across the seas and blow inland. The average levels of the high tide also increase. The...
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Book review: The end of my affair with Sophie Kinsella
We guiltily loved Madeleine Wickham aka Sophie Kinsella because of her best-selling six-book Shopaholic series. Since Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary in 1996, chick lit had no better champion....
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By the numbers: Facebook in Pakistan
Who would have guessed in 2004 that newly launched social network Facebook would end up with over one billion users across the globe today? Who could have made the even wilder prediction that 2012...
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The grateful dead
Life is stranger than fiction in the snarled streets of Peshawar’s walled city. Past midnight, I walk into one alleyway that brightens up from the sound of a muffled ditty. It is coming from a...
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Start killing off the channels
For the Pakistani television business to live, most of the news channels must die. The problem is a simple one: according to Dawn’s advertising Aurora magazine, during 2012, Pakistani television...
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Blurred vision
KARACHI / ISLAMABAD: Channel surfing now feels like drowning. You turn on the television and desperately search for clarity. Breaking news is the prime minister breathing. Talk show analyses smack of...
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Movie review: Space survivors battle oblivion
Oblivion is an ode to classic Sci-fi. It has the aliens, a devastated planet, an anti-hero, the satisfying click of a neat ending that resolves the mystery. And much like the brilliant Looper, you are...
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Movie review: Ironed out and flat
Let’s cut to the chase. Iron Man 3 did not strike a nerve. Maybe my expectations were too high. The only save was the action sequences. Billionaire playboy Tony Stark’s (Iron Man) Malibu pad is blown...
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Qawwali-Rock ‘Sufystical’: Flirting with fusion
Hamza Akram’s Qawwali-Rock ‘Sufystical’ fusion created with musician Ahsan Bari is an evolution of what Coke Studio producer Rohail Hyatt did with Fareed Ayaz and Abu Mohammad’s masterpieces such as...
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Portfolio: Fields of Gold
They sometimes lose their limbs while separating the wheat from the chaff. But for the farmers who work these fields of gold, if the harvest is good, they can make up to 2,400kg a season. This year,...
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Don’t get hot under the collar
We would all like to believe we are Don Draper from Mad Men — sharp, impeccable and crisp in fitted suits and plain, point-collar white dress shirts. But a dose of Pakistan’s summer heat is sufficient...
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The Qawwal also rises
Qawwali has been around longer than rock but these two genres share so much verve. You could feel the head-banging come on to the guy with the extended bootlegged version of Jimi Hendrix’s hair in the...
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Movie review: The Croods - What kids can teach us
In theory we want our children to grow up to be fearless and adventurous. We wish we had a little more spunk and didn’t scare so easy ourselves. A film like The Croods reminds us of those noble...
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Gadgets: Tech for Time Pass
The pen is mightier than the rubber band This is a working pen that doubles as a surprisingly accurate rubber-band shooter. Continue working while you protect yourself from invading seniors all for...
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Book review: Sethji - dirty old men and dark secrets
At a time when Indian society struggles to find ways to clamp down on rape, Shobhaa Dé’s new book Sethji opens with this crime. Sethji’s youngest son Suraj has raped a young girl. The wily old man...
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