Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi, the recipient of Hilal-e-Imtiaz and Sitara-e-Imtiaz, the highest literary honors award by the Pakistan Government, is considered by many as the finest Urdu humorist. It is often said that we are living in the ‘Yusuf era’ of Urdu literary humor. He...

on the grass in Lodhi Gardens

a lone woman with the days’ work strung about her

in a bag or two, and shades kept ready for the 5 o’clock sun

sleeps, stock-still

every muscle in her work-day body schooled

to appreciate the shortness

of this hour of rest.

her regular breathing...

Home, hmm.

To me, home means everything and nothing, all at the same time. This feeling is a result of spending the most influential years of my life, searching for what and where home was or perhaps who were the people that made me feel at home. My parents' marriage...

I.

Its the kind of smell

you can't decide 

if you like or not.

Unidentifiable, inseparable

into ingredients

forgotten as soon as you toe off your shoes.

Lukewarm;

my spirit rubs its back upon the walls

rolling the scent

between skin and cement

now everything smells as it should.

I...

While I'm sure I first read about the partition, like most of us did, during a history class in school, the first exchange actually do remember is with my grandmother back when I was 11, I think.

I used to spend my summers with her back then, because she always had the...

I have spent a large part of my life in the Old Pereira house, my home.

It's hidden like a fossil, engulfed almost entirely by an overwhelming forest. Fat walls and ceramic tiles are worn and crumbling while scattered glass tiles on its high roof filter light into patte...

'Kafka's Monkey' is an Urdu adaptation of Kafka’s famous short story ' A Report to an Academy'. In this reading from the piece, Sunil delivers a stirring monologue that explores themes of isolation, cruelty and loss. A meditation on the meanness of human behaviour, the...