Alyan Khan | Official

In Rudyard Kipling's famous novel Kim , the Grand Trunk Road is described as being “the backbone of all Hind”. The road has witnessed so much history. Along this short stretch, there is the Gandharan capital, a holy Sikh site, Moghul gardens, and the spot where Alexander crossed the Indus.  Centuries later, the hustle and bustle of now an industrial hub still echoes an untold story; we'll be witnessing a fraction of it – the Grand Turk Road to Attock.  Our journey begins with an unexpected phone call. The Government of Pakistan decided to promote the cultural side of Attock through a campaign titled, Discover Attock . All things aside, it was refreshing seeing the youth marking top seats and taking such initiatives. The answer was “ Definitely !”.  Invitees and photographers gathered at the A. D. C. Office [Asad Ullah; 2021], Hasan Abdal – a city in Attock, located 40 km northwest of the country's capital city, Islamabad. Hasan Abdal is an interesting spot with a collection

Education is surely not what it ought to be in Pakistan today, where students are gravely caught in competitions struggling to keep their individuality in the society. To put things into perspective, an average student, including me before dropping out goes through around 10 hours each day preparing for the tests that are held thrice a year. That can additionally be separated into 6 hours at school, which encompasses on preparing the students for the finals, and 4 hours at private tuition centers where untrained tutors, as their side occupation set up the students for the school. Both's homework, then, is done in whatever time is left. At that point, the basic development of mind and critical thinking fades in memorizing certain subjects, which too contains highly censored and biased content, often selected on the basis of publisher's wealth or current government and political conditions. Sometimes, a curriculum may be repeated for years, or even decades due to the lack

When it was announced that the legendary bookshop Le Pont Traversé would definitely close down on the 31st of December in Paris, many French TV stations put in phone calls and tried to convince Josée Comte-Béalu to do a filmed interview. She refused every single one of them. “They are like vultures,” she said on a recent afternoon, while Paris was paralyzed by an unrelenting general strike and suspended public transportation. Her carefully cluttered bookshop was unusually calm, and Josée took advantage of the quiet moment to attach a price tag to her opaline glass chandelier—a rare early 20th century piece, now for sale along with the rest of her 11,000 books. “TVs suddenly show an interest in interviewing me because the bookshop is closing, but I think that we should rather talk about those who are just getting started,” added Josée, who, like her boutique, turned 70 this year. Despite her composure, it’s hard to accept that Le Pont Traversé—which means “The Crossed Bridge,” a

  This article is a work of satire   “ Burger Syndrome ”; a phenomenon of moderate to extreme cringe towards one's native culture, traditions and local language. Roughly half of the population is affected by this syndrome in Pakistan today, statistics show, and the virus seems to grow at an uncanny rate, especially in economically developing areas. However, no vaccines have yet been discovered or invented to cure the virus—alarming news for some yet quite reliving for others nonetheless. Although may not be in the exact context, but the mentioning of this syndrome has been present in our literature for quite some time now. Patras Bukhari's work, Anwar Maqsood's plays, and even the early dramas aired during the initial days of PTV to mention a few. Manto's name comes up again and again when talking about such writers, and Imran Khan in his autobiography thoroughly explains how cool it was to speak Urdu with lots of English mixed in during his time at Aitchiso

India and Pakistan have been, since their autonomy, in a state of war, either with or within each other. Truth be told, if geographical boundaries are set aside for a minute, the individuals of the Indian subcontinent have now turned out to be entirely distinct groups—three of them—rather then religious forces, totally antagonistic the founding bases of their countries. Over the most recent couple of decades, the countries have taken some unexpected turns with an end goal to change their characters, or national identity winding up more slanted towards securing nationalities instead of their establishing premise; religion. On one hand, the development of Pakistan, if worked out as planned, ought to have finished the on-going clash among Muslims and Hindus of the Indian subcontinent. Be that as it may, at that point the possibility of Pakistan, as planned, was not easily executed either. 66% of the Muslims relocated to Pakistan upon segment, while third chose to remain in India. Late

Your heart and soul have a deep desire for intimacy, but if you fear it, you probably do everything you can to push it away, despite your best efforts. Over and over, you find yourself getting stuck in a game of tug-of-war: "Come close, go away." Why? Why would you be afraid of something you so deeply want and yearn for? You want to be deeply seen, understood, and known. You yearn for the delicious joy of connection, for the exquisite flow of love that occurs between two open hearts who profoundly “get” each other.     A wide range of psychological research now confirms that although you can live without intimacy, you can’t grow and thrive in the same ways. There are even some studies that link a lack of intimacy with a shorter lifespan. Sometimes associated with an anxiety disorder, intimacy problems can show up in familial, platonic and romantic relationships. There is nothing more blissful and enlivening than intimacy. On the other hand, there may not be anything s

It has been too long you have waited for love to come around and now even though it hasn’t you are still wasting your time waiting for it. Waiting for love is not wrong but waiting, but not living is. In order to see yourself happy you need to let go of the idea that only love can make you happy, another person is a key to your happiness. If even it was true there would have been more happy couples in the world. We know it gets lonely at times, but there is strength in finding solitude, feeling it is a sign that you still feel things. Even though you think you are dying inside, it is not true. Stop chasing love. Love shouldn’t be chased it should come to you. It’s better to wait then to go after things that don’t mean anything to them or you, which makes you nothing but desperate. Stop telling yourself that you are not lovable. Don’t get into an unnamed relationship thinking they can complete you. Don’t do that to yourself. All that sex you have to feel something is not going t

When you think of a writer, do you imagine a person who is brilliant, eloquent and deeply philosophical? Someone who is charming and witty, able to hold forth on any subject and illuminate the workings of the inner and outer worlds? Or perhaps you think of a writer as a genius who worships at the altar of words, who is never seen without a book in their hand, who looks at the world and never fails to find inspiration in it. If you believe any of this, chances are you have never met a real writer. It may be hard to identify a writer-in-embryo: children are all delightfully weird in their own way, and that little kid who can’t make friends and lives with her nose in a book may not necessarily be preparing to win the Booker Prize; she might just be intelligent and bored. Similarly, a child who is overly talkative or displays a faculty with words beyond his or her peers might actually grow up to be a smooth-talking con artist instead of a writer. Most teenagers feel, at some point in the

Pain, far from its perceived context, is likely the most misjudged feeling in our universe. We cannot resist the opportunity to avoid the dread of being hurt, of being lost or sometimes, even found. Law offers cruel punishments for the culprits, and most of all, religion grants it as the final destination for the disbelievers. But even in all that, what we frequently fail to realize is the means by which, despite being a punishment, pain and agony never resists from teaching its bearers—as its initial purpose—a new way to look at life. Regardless of a murderer, a disbeliever or even a shattered heart, the pain one feels never neglects to teach its 'followers' a lesson in life, even in the face of demise. On the other end, there lies love; a relatively simple feeling yet often believed to be the key to our existence. Love fades, and true love, if it exists, does not call for itself. Love, regardless of whether for someone, a desire or even an attitude towards everyd

Hanging lemon and chilies, believed to ward of evil eye - ©  Anand Bharat Recently I was editing the second chapter of my manuscript, currently named [the chapter] 'Immutability' when I realized how it is almost impossible to complete a detailed study on the Indian subcontinent without the mentioning of superstitions — a belief in something beyond reason. The word superstition originated from the Latin word ' superstitio ,' which meant excessive fear of Gods. Although they have no basis in science today, many of them do have specific beliefs behind, which helped our ancestors during their time.  It's no surprise, then, that many such superstitions exist all over the world and are mostly based on religion.  The number thirteen, for instance, was associated with the biblical Last Supper , where Jesus Christ dined with his twelve disciples just before being arrested and crucified.  The resulting idea affected the Christians and their natio

Pakistan is often seen as a country with a small Birkin-bag-sporting elite, a poverty-ridden mass and little in between. The reality is that Pakistan does have a large urban population, which identifies itself as middle class. Being middle class is a status closely associated with a progressive modernity — in Pakistan, in India — that individuals and successive governments alike yearn for. In undivided, colonial India, the term “middle class” was associated with Indian officials, bureaucrats, doctors, lawyers and teachers who were linked to the colonial state. But while they displayed the values and ambitions of the modernizing English middle class — mediating between the rulers and the ruled — many of them came from aristocratic and landed backgrounds. After the formation of Pakistan in 1947, the families employed in the colonial government were at the forefront of the national project of modernization, along with emerging groups such as urban professionals from India and edu