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For Whom the Door Remains Ever Open

The Land of Disappearances and Mass Graves In Balochistan, loss is not always marked by funerals. Some families never get to bury their loved ones, never receive a body, never know what happened. Their pain remains in the unanswered calls, the uneaten meals, the empty spaces in gatherings, and the doors that are never closed,…

ByDilshad Baloch

Brutalism: The Next Liberal Order of the 21st Century

At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama pronounced, ‘what we may be witnessing [is] the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’? What was predicted as the acme of civilizational development has instead turned into a perennial catastrophe for humanity,…

ByOm Prakash Dwivedi

The Odyssey of “Nako” Mayar and his Family

I had heard of “Nako” (Uncle) Mayar, who was looking for his missing son and to write his story I had to travel to the village Gilli in Tehsil Buleda. Buleda Tehsil is a peripheral region in an already peripheral province of Balochistan surrounded by mountains on all sides. It is located about 45 to…

ByHazaran Rahim Dad

People POLITICS

They killed Allah Daad Wahid – this land won’t forget

The University of Karachi is a world in itself. Walking through the shade of trees and exploring the long roads across multiple seasons, you meet a lot of people you wouldn’t otherwise encounter. Sometimes, you don’t even meet them—you just keep hearing about them. And sometimes, you don’t hear about them at all until they…

ByAleezeh Fatimah

The Ugly American Show

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.” —Henry Kissinger in William F. Buckley Jr. United Nations Journal: A Delegate's Odyssey (1974), pp 56–57. In the spring of 2008, a nation's intricate history was brought to the forefront in a televised spectacle: 'Great…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Gaza Is Not for Sale: Sovereignty Isn’t a Real Estate Deal

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things... can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

POLITICS Poetry

‘Your Madness Carries the Weight of Centuries’

As a Baloch child growing up in Balochistan, the years 2009, 2010, and beyond remain engraved in memory—memories that can never be erased. I often ask myself: how do the events of 2009 and years beyond, those that consumed lives, drowned memories, and silenced voices, continue to haunt us? Who can claim how a child's…

ByHazaran Rahim Dad

The Classroom as a Battleground: Teachers as State-Builders

By Narendra Pachkhédé "The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality” — Mahmoud Darwish In the dusty classrooms of Gaza during the 1920s, an unassuming act of defiance unfolded—a quiet yet profound rebellion that spoke to the paradoxes of colonial rule, the audacity of educators, and the fragile scaffolding…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

POLITICS Poetry

Temples of Memory, Monuments of Forgetting

There is no crop other than god and god is harvested here around the year. —Arun Kolatkar, verse 22, Jejuri, 1976 Located in the ancient city of Ayodhya in northern India, the Ayodhya Temple, is one of the significant spiritual landmarks. Revered as the birthplace of Lord Rama, a central figure in the Hindu…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Canada at the Edge of Its Idea

“Having to wait until one’s death to be allowed to live is really quite an ontological feat.” - Robert Musil, Austrian Novelist, Journalist and Writer Like a phantom limb, the unfinished The Man Without Qualities haunts the landscape of modern literature. It is…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Against the Tyranny of Fragmentation: Why Gregory Bateson Must Be Read in an Age of Genocide

“There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds, and its characteristic of the system that basic error propagates itself." — Gregory Bateson, Pathologies of Epistemology, 1971 The…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Poetry POLITICS Reviews

On Palestine And Narrative: We are in a new territory

“Gaza does not propel people to cool contemplation; rather, she propels them to erupt and collide with the truth.” — Mahmoud Darwish, Silence for Gaza (1973) Recognizing the Stranger - On Palestine and Narrative, a slim volume of 80-odd pages brings together Isabella Hammad’s the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture delivered at Columbia University nine…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé