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Sunday December 22, 2024
Salaar Khan
Salaar Khan

  • October 17, 2024

    Give us something

    Out of original proponents, PML-N has half-heartedly proposed half-draft that plagiarises proposals from the first

  • September 27, 2023

    Lawyering and its discontented

    In Pakistani litigation, the concept of the penniless prentice practitioner is a constant. To such a person, so too is that of the prosperous...

  • April 15, 2023

    Everything everywhere all at once

    The first bit of career advice I can recall getting was this: “A great lawyer knows a lot about history, a lot about politics, a lot about...

  • March 02, 2023

    News Analysis: Validation of Minallah-Afridi ‘orders’ by two judges complicates matter

    On the face of it, the order of the majority is straightforward. It affirms what was already obvious from the constitution: elections must be held...

  • February 26, 2023

    Obviating the obvious

    We begin with what appears to be the most obvious: when a legislative assembly is dissolved, elections must be held within ninety days. But, it...

  • July 28, 2022

    Strength in numbers

    There’s this quote that does frequent rounds on Pinterest, and the like: “Don’t judge me by the mistakes I’ve made, but by what I’ve...

  • April 17, 2022

    The hand that feeds

    Pakistan has had its fair share of men with a saviour complex. And it has been seen, always, as a damsel that needs rescuing from above: by those to...

  • April 08, 2022

    The constitution wins

    In the end, the constitution will ensure that elections will happen. Governments may change, and politicians may party-hop, but the constitution...

  • March 19, 2022

    Conjuring confidence

    If there’s one place where reality exists not as a line, but as a circle, it’s here. As the ruling party recoils towards its old haunt at...

  • November 27, 2021

    All glam, no dam

    The writer is a lawyer.In February of this year, I filed a request for information under the Right of Access to Information Act. It had been close...

  • November 11, 2021

    The ordinance dance

    The writer is a lawyer.It’s no coincidence that the Eiffel Tower, Golden Gate Bridge, and the Pyramids all consist of triangles. When pressure is...

  • October 03, 2021

    Defending the guilty

    Sampson Brass, the crooked lawyer in Dickens’ ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’ quips that “if there were no bad people, there would be no good...

  • August 28, 2021

    Noor Mukadam and the urgency of grief

    The writer is a lawyer.I used to think that adjectives that tried to describe profound grief and joy were equally barren. Like trying to draw a...

  • August 12, 2021

    The inferiority of seniority

    Allow me to begin by stating that, in most situations, I wouldn’t insert myself into a debate that is already saturated by the opinions of Salman...

  • August 07, 2021

    Therapy lurks

    The writer is a lawyer.In 2018, I had just returned from grad-school in New York. As if having to give up on free-refills and ubiquitous central...

  • July 18, 2021

    Counsel for ideologies

    The Council of Islamic Ideology is rarely in the news for reasons it is likely to appreciate. That may just be in the architecture of its DNA. Those...

  • July 11, 2021

    Gujjar, Orangi and Original Sin

    Karachi is a creature of the Frankensteinian variety – assembled by stitching together body parts from a dozen different corpses. Body parts that...

  • June 24, 2021

    Reductio ad Robot

    It was bad enough that he said it the first time. It is worse, yet, that after so many months where he might have attempted to understand the other...

  • June 06, 2021

    Big Tobacco’s at it again

    Here I am - slumped in my chair, in the kind of way that will only hasten the curvature of my spine into an indignant question mark. I am transfixed...

  • May 29, 2021

    The curious case of the curative petition

    When it comes to interpreting the constitution, invention tends to follow necessity very closely. One of the more notorious doctrines in the history...

  • May 22, 2021

    Palestine: call it by its name

    ‘Fire and thunder fill the night sky as Israel’s Iron Dome is tested’, proclaims the New York Times. The accompanying image is one that many...

  • May 08, 2021

    Justice Isa and the Bigger Picture

    The writer is a lawyer.In Pakistan, the Money Trail is in the eyes of the beholder. One of several pseudo-legal terms to have crept into common...

  • April 24, 2021

    Ansar Ali and the music of our times

    The writer is a lawyer.We are told that as the Titanic sank, amidst the clamour that ruptured the placid night sky, two sounds stood out. First, the...

  • April 10, 2021

    The fear of man

    The writer is a lawyer.In April of 2017, Indonesian artist, Adrian Syaf was fired from his job at Marvel Comics for slipping the numbers 5:51 and...

  • February 24, 2021

    Recusal and refusal

    In 2004, the late US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia went duck-hunting with the then vice president, Dick Cheney. A few weeks prior, the...

  • February 13, 2021

    The weight of our crimes

    The writer is a lawyer.Once you’ve attacked a hospital, you have to really try quite hard to disappoint. For the average Pakistani lawyer, it’s...

  • December 19, 2020

    Music to the profiteers

    The writer is a lawyer.In Pakistan, when it comes to music, you take what you can get. And more often than not, what you get is the backwashed...

  • September 13, 2020

    Dark days

    These past few days have been heavy. The kind of dark Pakistani Days where numbness waxes and wanes over an agony that is all too familiar. Where...

  • August 17, 2020

    In the matter of Black Lives: Part - II

    Churchill’s Finest Hour seems behind him. Colston – whose ships carried some 80,000 slaves – now, himself, belongs to the water. Columbus is,...

  • August 16, 2020

    In the matter of Black Lives - Part I

    As far as slogans go, it’s a modest proposal: Black Lives ‘Matter’. But for a nation whose first words were a declaration of this supposedly...

  • June 20, 2020

    To those who didn’t make it

    Every year, amid an assault of hieroglyphic acronyms, a new set of airbrushed headshots beams from panaflex standees at its future dominion.With...

  • May 31, 2020

    Betting on hope

    With ‘Great’ wars come the expectation of great endings – decisive moments when pale, sickly people re-emerge, squinting at the sun as it...

  • May 14, 2020

    On minorities -Part II

    The writer is a lawyer.A best-seller in the pop-up market of coping mechanisms is a type of joke with the punchline, ‘nature is healing itself’....

  • May 13, 2020

    On minorities - Part I

    The writer is a lawyerUntil earlier this year, Imran Ali Chishti’s fame was restricted to a small quarter of Nankana Sahib, and the 79 followers...

  • April 25, 2020

    The politics of poverty

    In physics, two worlds co-exist: the big and the small. The principles that a falling apple taught Newton apply to apples, but not to the atoms that...

  • March 22, 2020

    Now is the time to panic

    It started off as a crass joke: someone ate a ‘bat-sandwich’, and sent a billion and a half people into a frenzy. One hemisphere made Love in...

  • December 30, 2019

    A rose by another name

    Pervez Musharraf’s 2006 autobiography opens with a bang. That is to be expected from a book that borrows its title from a Clint Eastwood...