Bibi and Deedee are two characters that I hope my fellow travellers on the path of enlightenment, and by that I mean students of the English language and Creative Writing, can help develop into storytelling. Without getting into debates about what constitutes a story,...

Meedi Mydi Media "Mo"I scour the pages of friends and foeNight and day, a restless soulI cascade into a virtual hole Betwixt my Egyptian sheetsMy body aches, my eyes bulge Fingers scaling, skin peelingMy head vibrates, ping pong po  

Mirpur was the name of an historical settlement in the Princely State of Jammu & Kashmir (1846 – 1947), variably known as Kashmir State, Jammu Kingdom and/or the Dogra Raj. The name Mirpur postdates the principality’s alleged founding in the 1600s. Centuries later, the...

“Pakistan and India are fighting over Kashmir, a third people's land! One way to win this fight is by splitting the Kashmiris into different groups, ethnicities, religions, castes, social groups, languages. When people are divided, or adopt the identities of the Occupiers naively, the...

Digital Media particularly through interactive platforms like Wikipedia and Social Media, are vehicles of disinformation and political propaganda. Whatever the nature of an online conversation, be it a family’s travel vlogs, pictures, fashion tips, food stories - “dad’s visit to Israel” - when a...

This is a summarised account of my imprisonment in the UK for a crime I did not commit. I was imprisoned for 22 long years as a prisoner of conscience. I first wrote about my experiences in 2009, in a book entitled 'Dastan-e-Azam' (A...

Recently, given my father’s imminent demise, he is terminally ill with leukaemia, I started to ask him about his life in the land of his native birth, erstwhile Jammu, now split between India and Pakistan. I was quite startled about his individual story of...

You must have heard the claim that modern-day Israel is a country with another people’s language and religion?  If you haven’t, antisemitism has become so common these days (I’m speaking of hatred against Jews, and not criticism against Israel), that you’ve probably come across multiple...

This is how the Economist explains the "Kashmir" conflict using the colonial label of 'Hindus' and 'Muslims' - these are 'constructed labels' however common-sense they seem to us today! There is a huge scholarly body of knowledge that demonstrates that before the emergence of...

EXCERPT from "The Evolution of AJK Public Agency" "Before arriving here, I can confidently assert that I was neither a patriot, nor a nationalist or even a democrat. I was a journalist working in various conflict hotspots around the globe (Iraq and Afghanistan), had regular...