BOOK LAUNCH: HOME #ItsComplicated

Each time I come home, it’s with a foreboding sense that this time I won’t experience the same ecstasy and bliss of returning to an innocent and purer cocoon that still binds and bonds me to my childhood. Each time, I’m happily mistaken. The airports and points of departure continue to keep pace with my journey of self-discovery, but my mooring, my anchor, remains steady as ever. Despite the changes to the scenery and the people, there’s a part of Pakistan that all of us carry within us. It’s that part that calls us when we’ve been away for too long. And it’s that part that always makes me feel like I’m walking back in time to an era where everything seems to stand still. […]

Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa in an angry pose

How Rocky IV Inspired Me to Tackle Bullying

Unless you were living under a rock, marooned on a deserted island, or trapped inside a psycho’s basement, there was no way you wouldn’t have heard of Rocky Balboa. Although growing up in the ’80s in Pakistan felt like a version of all three of the above at different points, I wasn’t immune from the ‘Italian Stallion’ bug. If there was a vaccine to ward off the allure of those adrenaline-pumping muscles and fight scenes, it hadn’t yet breached through the martial law government’s iron curtain. Bullying was an Epidemic The point is, the day I skipped school with a fake fever  — a word to the wise, don’t believe the hype; the onion under the armpit trick doesn’t work. But there are other, more […]