Guru: A Mere Pawn in a Sinister Game?

By S Zafar Mehdi Safvi To hang or not to hang! The debate over barbarous capital punishment still lingers on. Many civil rights activists, lawyers, and liberal intellectuals have been arguing against it on humanitarian grounds for a while now. A potent argument against capital punishment is that it has … Read more →

I: The Stars of My Sky

By Feroz Rather Along that solitary graveled path into a crimson evening, My eyes chase you and chase you until you ask them: ‘Where do these boys go after they kill them?’ ‘What happens to their hearts, the love-lakes, now mad with the tempests of freedom?’ In Kashmir, in my … Read more →

His Favorite Song

By Irtif Lone And we decided to meet again. In the orchards of almonds blooming flowers, shimmering sun the temping smell of garden I waited for long. I looked at Zabarvan, the calmness of Dal, the rowing noise. What on earth could stop him from coming? He never broke his … Read more →

Locks in the Mirror

By Dr. Shahid Iqbal If you are a pregnant door that holds all answers to my questions, I will unlock your billowing shapes and unzip your lips. But, a voice in my head warns, ‘You are the mirror image of what you see in others.’ So tell me, what doors … Read more →

For Milad

By Dr. Shahid Iqbal Mother Kangaroo Teach us the art of Pouch. For we live in the Land of Snakes. Snakes, that swallow, alive, our children. Children, born out Of eyes, not wombs. Holy Tear Drops Trickle down Mom’s Cheeks And pierce Pa’s Heart. Foretellers on seeing our Foreheads, beat … Read more →

Red

By Dr. Shahid Iqbal In the city of red on a red evening with Head on a red pillow in a red sleep I had a red dream. Far at the horizon is the red sky Where on a red planet dwells a red maid Who distributes red roses. From … Read more →

Jale-ae Watan (Banished to Exile)

Reviewer: Mushtaq Ul Haq Sikander Book: Jale-ae Watan (Banished to Exile) Author: Khaliq Parvez Publisher: Mir Son Publications, Baramulla Kashmir. Year of Publication: Not Mentioned Pages: 356, Price: 350 Indian Rupees The Politics in Kashmir was shaped by the events in the wake of partition of the subcontinent; hence partition … Read more →

A Conversation with Gautam Navlakha

Published on: Feb 1, 2011 @ 18:04   Gautam Navlakha is an Indian human rights defender and a peace activist. An Editorial Consultant with Economic and Political Weekly, Gautam is also the co-convener International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir. Here he shares his views on Kashmiri … Read more →

Humor in Mayhem

BY Hakeem Irfan The razor wires, barbed wire mentality, troops, dogs, garbage, bullets, tear smoke canisters, rubber bullets, pallet guns, murders, injuries, hospital, ambulance, protests, identity card, dialogue, peace, treason, apathy, promise break, impotent curfew pass and of course the CURFEW itself. The vocabulary has reduced to these words in … Read more →

Long Drive to Freedom

Long Drive to Freedom By Sajid Iqbal ‘We shall meet again in Srinagar, by the gates of the Villa of Peace, our hands blossoming into fists till the soldiers return the keys and disappear. Again we’ll enter our last world, the first that vanished in our absence from the broken … Read more →

Kathe Koar Woathe Zamane (A Tale of Times)

By Sohail Iqbal The legend has it that each locality in my homeland owned one pyjama only. Inhabitants of that locality would take turns to wear the solitary pyjama whenever they undertook a visit to another locality. Those times might have preceded me but the earlier period of the last … Read more →

Hindutva, Nationalism, and Fascism

By Nyla Ali Khan In the wake of Modi’s reprehensible attempt to stoke the flames of communal hatred and sectarianism in Gujarat and the judgment of the Lucknow branch of the Allahabad high court regarding the Ram Janmabhoomi site, our memories of the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation of 1989 are refreshed. … Read more →