Things had changed. Bombay has metamorphosed into Mumbai (shining India is also more parochial); Sahar airport had been renamed (as Chatrapathi Shivaji International Airport) after the great Maratha leader Shivaji, who happens to be a villain in our textbooks for having defied the Mughals.
A common Punjabi aphorism, loosely translated, states that there never was and never will be anyone like Nur Jehan. With her incredible talent, fiercely independent persona, flamboyance and ingrained humility, she surpasses even the best of global icons. The complexity of her life and times have yet to be appreciated: breaking with convention, she defined a new set of rules in the patriarchal entertainment industry, manipulating it where possible to ensure that she would not become the archetypal exploited South Asian singer. Her wit and lust for life remained till the end, and with the exception of not having died in her beloved Lahore, she died with no regrets.
By Raza Rumi Sixty one years have gone by but the creation of Pakistan is still a heated debate: contested,
Read the captioned story in the Times of India today- politics of war mongering can be such a disruptive influence
My friend Annie’s post on Mumbai is a remarkable piece of writing. I am cross-posting it here: The other day,
Courtesy Three Essays Collective, I found this book review on an important yet less known facet of South Asian History: