Another Pakistan We're in Pakistan at mid-summer 2011 - "the country that could kill the world," in a native line that lingers. Or maybe the new normal. Think of Pakistan, we're told by Pakistanis, as a model or perhaps a warning of the rising, rough, tough inequalities in the world, even in our embattled United States…

Early on we planned to see this nightmare aslant - less with oft-quoted strategists, more with the imaginative class, so to speak: with the typically grim but mettlesome singers, story-tellers and artists of Sind and the Punjab. They are wonderfully available, individual, candid women and men who have their own dark, truth-telling traditions. They each tell different stories, of course - and almost all of them different from the standard line of an "Af-Pak" crucible of global terrorism. Many of them point rather to "Indo-Pak" roots of the modern turmoil, in the Partition that carved two wounded and unequal sibling rivals out of the British Raj in 1947.

I am deeply interested in the anxiety that has escalated in 2011, in the assassination of Salman Taseer and the official murder of the Sy Hersh of Pakistan, Saleem Shahzad, which has rattled our best friends in journalism. In general, though, I'm drawn to Pakistanis who can think about the long story, as far back as birth by partition, and who can think of Pakistan's trajectory ahead for a generation. It's part of the lure for me that Pakistan has a booming literary culture that is more and more linked and noticed in the West; also that it has a talented modern pop music culture that is heard all over the Indian airwaves, and all over Asia.

"Another Pakistan" is a co-production of the Watson Institute and the Asia Society; Zarminae Ansari helped produce the series in Pakistan. Beena Sarwar and Aman ki Asha provided essential insight and support.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

This Ludhianvi from Pakistan wants 'visa-till-death' By Nidhi Singhi
LUDHIANA: Partition saw him move to Pakistan but his heart still lies here in this city. Seventy-five-year-old Shabbir Ahmed Mufti Ludhianvi has .....more

Pakistani boy to undergo heart surgery in India Rotary International's District 3271, comprising provinces of Sindh and Balochistan, has facilitated the treatment and subsequent heart surgery of Pakistani boy, Muhammad .....more

Iftar with Puja By Zarminae Ansari
I made lasting friendships with Indians as a high school student in an an international school in Victoria, Canada, then later as a graduate .....more

Indian award for Pakistani workers' rights activist Kamla Bhasin, one of India's best-known women's rights and peace activists instituted the Meeto Memorial Awards in 2009 to honour young South Asian women activists, in me .....more

The spirit of Aman ki Asha By Beena Sarwar

Unassuming, down-to-earth and soft spoken, tennis ace Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi embodies the spirit of Aman ki Asha, together with his Indian do .....more

Aman Ki Asha wins two golds at Asian ad show NEW DELHI: In a time of bitter silence interrupted by shrill exchanges, it takes courage to be the voice of peace and reason. But that's what The Times of India and Pakis .....more