By Hira Hyder Published: August 14, 2018 0 SHARES Share Tweet Email After a tediously tiring and painful journey, families set foot onto the barren land that spoke of the massacres that had taken place. PHOTO: HIRA HYDER Every year as August 14th peeks around the corner, it is tradition to see stories emerge of what is known to be the bloodiest and largest mass migration in history. Similarly, there have been many instances where I have been told the story of my maternal great-grandparents and their journey from India into Pakistan. Before the Partition of 1947, my great-grandparents, Syed Hasan Mian and Syeda Sardar-Bano, resided in Muzzafarnagar, India with their three sons and daughter. Mian, after receiving his degree in law from Aligarh University, was an advocate by profession and the Uttar Pradesh (UP) Provincial General Secretary in the Muslim League. His friendship with Ayub Khan dated back to their university days, … [Read more...] about When the old Pakistan was a new Pakistan
Dawn of the justice league
Film review: Teen Titans Go! To The Movies
THE long-running animated TV series Teen Titans Go!, a tongue-in-cheek spin-off from the DC Comics universe, makes its big-screen debut with a grin-inducing flourish thanks to co-directors Peter Rida Michail and Aaron Horvath.Teen Titans Go! To The Movies pokes gentle fun at the glut of superhero films, which clog up multiplexes and earnestly expand the mythologies of well-known characters torn from the pages of comic books.A nimble script, co-written by the TV series' creators Michael Jelenic and Horvath, takes aim at predictable targets: the avoidable tragedies in superheroes' pasts, Stan Lee's obligatory cameos, that instantly forgettable Green Lantern film starring Ryan Reynolds.Most of the punchlines elicit knowing giggles as a perfunctory plot sermonises the importance of teamwork and self-sacrifice to younger audiences.Fleeting verbal gags, including a spoof of the Marvel Comics flip book title sequence, are complemented by knowing, self-referential dialogue that gleefully draws … [Read more...] about Film review: Teen Titans Go! To The Movies
70 years of Pakistan and two successful elected governments – should we celebrate democracy?
By Oroba Tasnim Published: June 14, 2018 0 SHARES Share Tweet Email Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif waves hands during the Parliamentary Party meeting of Muslim League (PML-N) held at PM Office in Islamabad on Thursday, August 4, 2016. PHOTO: PPI Democracy is a system of procedural consistency, which is perhaps why the reason Pakistan has failed to strengthen its democracy over the past few decades is because it has been marred by inconsistencies. As the government fulfils its five-year tenure once again, we see the emergence of a new dawn, something unimaginable even a decade ago. For the first time in our 70-year history, two democratic governments have successfully completed their entire five-year terms and engaged in a smooth transition. It has become a common habit for people to criticise our “desi democratic principles”. And why not, they ask? It has only led them into a stream of unemployment, poverty and poor living standards, a consequence of … [Read more...] about 70 years of Pakistan and two successful elected governments – should we celebrate democracy?
A review of the biggest, superhero-est movie ever made, ‘Avengers: Infinity War’
Of course it’s not really a movie so much as it is four seasons of a TV show and a theme park and the little toy at the bottom of the box — beneath the burger, to the side of the fries.And yet “Avengers: Infinity War,” the biggest and overstuffed-est Marvel movie to date, is only half a story. Following its shocking finale (I won’t spoil anything), it ends on a note of irresolution, its actual conclusion to be hammered out next year in the fourth “Avengers” movie. I guess we’ll all just wait a year.I’m not anti-comic book movie because it would be pointless to be so. Superhero movies are like capitalism or Kanye West or the inevitability of artificial intelligence one day killing us all — they’re just things we have to deal with whether we like it or not.I never try to resist the pleasures of a good, dumb blockbuster (Marvel or otherwise). I ride the wave. I’ll ride the wave right off into the abyss.But … [Read more...] about A review of the biggest, superhero-est movie ever made, ‘Avengers: Infinity War’
Civil rights chronicler and informer for the FBI
You know the photograph. It is from 1968, one week before the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. A sea of signs, proclaiming “I AM A MAN.” A sharp line of black sanitation workers, ready to march through Memphis. A purse-wielding woman in the left foreground, and a slim man walking across the line, gazing right at the camera.The man behind the camera was Ernest Withers. Besides that photograph, he supplied scores of images that shape our memory of the civil rights movement. He captured the dramatic moment in a Mississippi courtroom when Moses Wright identified the abductor of his great-nephew Emmett Till. He snapped the perfect shot of King staring balefully out a window while integrating a bus in Montgomery. He photographed the Freedom Rides, the funeral of Medgar Evers, James Meredith’s March Against Fear.Withers was also a paid informant for the FBI. That news broke in September 2010, after the Memphis Commercial Appeal published a report by Marc Perrusquia. … [Read more...] about Civil rights chronicler and informer for the FBI