All posts by Raza Jaffri

1971 as seen by a planter’s wife

Book Reviews, Guest Contributor, Social Issues

Reviewed by Naeem Sadiq

Sips from a Broken Teacup
By Raihana A Hasan
Ushba Publishing International, Pakistan
ISBN 978-969-9154-18-8
2011. 429pp.

The rattling narrow-gauge Surma train that carried a young urban bride to a far away and unknown world of tea plantations stopped at the deserted Shamshernagar Railway Station on a dark wintry night of January 1962. Little did the disembarking passenger know that her prolific and perceptive mind was already capturing the first outlines of what was to appear in the form of a book some fifty years later.

Raihana Hasan, the author

Raihana Hasan could not have chosen a more thoughtful, apt and immaculate title for her captivating book, Sips from a Broken Teacup. Each word depicting delicately woven themes that stretch from reminiscence of life as a tea planter’s wife to the traumatic events that preceded the break-up of Pakistan and finally the drama and the ordeal as the author and her family escape from then East to West Pakistan.

Sips from a Broken Teacup shows tell-tale signs of a meticulous and devoted diary writer who has Continue reading 1971 as seen by a planter’s wife →

Cheryl, the peace envoy

Education, Foreign Policy of Pakistan, War and Peace, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

BEFORE India’s external affairs minister arrived in Islamabad on Friday, there was talk of the low expectation of progress in bilateral relations between Pakistan and India.

We were warned against expecting anything ‘spectacular’ coming out of the visit. Do we need spectacular developments in everything we do? Mercifully a peacenik, ex-ambassador Aziz Ahmad Khan, was realistically positive when he pointed out that the ‘good atmospherics’ that exist today can strengthen the India-Pakistan peace process. Continue reading Cheryl, the peace envoy →

Health for all

Development and Poverty, Health

By Zubeida Mustafa

IT is said that modern healthcare is accessible to only 15 per cent of the population of Pakistan. In other words, nearly 150 million men, women and children in this country are denied adequate medical treatment when they fall ill.

This happens more frequently than it should, given the utter neglect of preventive health and the physical environment. It translates into poor quality of life for a huge chunk of humanity and low productivity of the national economy. Continue reading Health for all →

Education pitfalls

Development and Poverty, Education, Health

By Zubeida Mustafa

HEALTH or education? Which should be the government’s first priority? I would say education and health. Both have a symbiotic relationship. A government that recognises the importance of its social capital and the value of its human resources will address both sectors.

Good health facilitates good education, just as good education should promote health by teaching people the basics of preventive medicine and health care. But when a state is strapped for cash and focuses on other matters that it erroneously believes to be important for its national security, it tends to neglect ‘frivolous’ issues like education and health. Continue reading Education pitfalls →

A Voice from Pakistan: Of Martyrs and Marigolds

Guest Contributor

Aquila Ismail
Aquila Ismail
Karachi, Pakistan

“Each survivor owes it to those who do not survive to account for them.”

***

For forty years I wanted to write of the one bloody spring day when the land of my birth was no more mine. That soft, misty February morning dawned forty-five days after the sixteenth of December 1971, when East Pakistan, the land my parents had chosen as their home following the great partition of the Indian subcontinent, had become Bangladesh. And all those who had come to this land from India or had, like me, been born to parents who had made the trek to this land in 1947, were no longer of it.

Living in Karachi since August 1972, I willed my mind to only remember the golden land’s offerings of the scent of mango blossoms, of the delicate shefali, of the perfectly formed gardenias, the sweet happiness of childhood, the trembling ecstasy of first love, the smell of the earth when the first slanting monsoon raindrops fell on the waiting plains. But the odor of that spring day! The damned odor! The odor of the brown-red stain on white flowers growing among green grass, the odor of crushed marigold petals, of the damp moss covered walls, the smell of burnt globs of rice and lentil, and the rank smell of rotting hyacinth – all indistinguishable from what was gentle and what was not – always took over my soul and made me not want to remember.
Continue reading A Voice from Pakistan: Of Martyrs and Marigolds →