Here we go again. Not the first time. Definitely not the last. It’s like having a painful, toxic romance. There are time where you despise them. Abhor every iota of their existence. But then they put on your favourite cologne, utter saccharine dipped words, and it is all butterflies and rainbows again. These feelings hit…
Pakistan’s Line Of Defense
Pakistan has a robust line of defense. There is the army. Somewhat sexy, ever present, every where. There is the air force. Sexier, less visible, but still there. There is the Navy, neither sexy, not visible, but still there ( allegdley ) And there are the average every day nationalistic drum beating Pakistanis. Everytime something…
Surrey’s No-Solutions Election
Municipalities in British Columbia will elect new governments on October 15. The city of Surrey, BC’s second largest, is set to elect a mayor, eight city councillors and six school trustees, and the options are virtually zero for working-class Surreyites who want pressing needs such as housing, accessibility, and environmental sustainability addressed. There is no…
Affordable Homes Needed
The economic downturn triggered by COVID-19 has not spared any industry, and Vancouver’s housing market is no different, immediately hitting sales and in the future construction. Over 40,000 homes were built across the greater Vancouver region in May 2020, a mere two months after BC announced its state of emergency. Over two thirds of these…
South Asia and Black Lives Matter
It’s not easy looking at images of burning, looting and rampant violence. Not today, when the modes of inflicting said damage have become faster and more co-ordinated than at any point in our history. The only thing worse than looking at those images, is living through it and that is what African Americans have been…
Trudeau and Kashmir
There is a long list of current gut wrenching headlines on our phone and TV screens currently. From the puddles of blood in Gaza to the clampdown of protest in Hong Kong, we live in times where good news is an abnormality. In the middle of all this is Indian Occupied Kashmir. It has never…
Why Vancouver Scares Me
The first time I landed at Vancouver International Airport was June 2013. My earliest memory of that Air Canada flight landing was the view from the window seat – pristine water, lush green islands and somewhere in the middle of all that , the city of Vancouver. A few months later, and I would call…
Homeless In Vancouver
Having grown up in Pakistan before moving to Canada, homelessness and panhandling were not alien concepts to me. Like any developing country, the number of people who roam the streets without food and shelter were, and still remain astronomical over there. This didn’t make the revelation of a homelessness crisis in Vancouver easy to digest…
My Pakistan Cricket Romance
It was 1992, and I was seven. We were living in Goth Machi at that time, near the border of Punjab and Sindh. I remember Moin Khan’s winning boundary in the semi-final, and Wasim Akram dismissing Chris Lewis. I wasn’t old enough to comprehend what had transpired when Imran Khan eventually lifted the trophy, or…
PTM : New Movement In an Old Pakistan
My father used to work for an organization that would transfer him across different cities in Pakistan every few years. Not as regularly as military men, but regularly enough for me to have attended 3 separate schools in 3 separate cities by the time I was in grade 11. When I graduated from University, I…
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