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Broken Nets

Today I cast my net in lonely red waters. The red river looks redder today and the fish is scarce. Everyone else is fishing in the waters yonder. They have politely but firmly let me know there is no place there for my little boat. All day I have sat here and I haven’t caught half a regular morning’s worth. Shanti and Reva look at me with curious eyes from their boat. I know that wily old Ram ’kaideo has been wagging his tongue all around the village ever since the Army inquisition. Everywhere I go, I meet with the same glances — half curious, half afraid. And today I have been silently distanced from them all. Continue reading “Broken Nets”


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*Gasp!* Premarital Sex!

This article has been extracted from a blog I recently started, ‘Nice Mangos’. The blog deals with different aspects of Pakistani sexuality and the difficulties I as a writer have had, trying to convince people to talk to me about this unreasonably taboo subject. Nothing good can come from being so tight lipped about our sexuality, we need to open up, discover, speak and air out a whack-load of issues. I conducted these interviews several years ago during a not-so-brief stay in Pakistan…

Honestly, I don’t believe that most people in the world wait until they’re married to have sex. But many Pakistanis will tell you otherwise. And since, by this time, even more people have refused to do an interview with me, I’m getting a smaller slice of the Pakistani pie than before. So really, I now have access to less than a handful of people within a very limited age range because people outside of that age range are either too old fashioned to talk about sex, or too young to be asked about sex.

Not ideal conditions at all… Continue reading “*Gasp!* Premarital Sex!”