My Reflections

Reading Nadeem Aslam is like living with the characters of his novel. The words keeps echoing, the scene keeps flashing and the characters stay with the readers much after one finishes the book. The author has penchant for detailing scene, event, emotion and expression in his writings. The reader experiences and visualizes Color, smell, sound, pain, fury, cry, smile, and laughter in the course of reading his stories. In fact, the portrayal is so vivid and engrossing that reader is transported to the imaginary world created by writer. Without rousing the sentiments, the author lets readers simmer with the empathy and sympathy for the characters. “Many things in my books come from real life; but a novelist has to be careful in transporting a real event into the landscape of a novel. It is patient work, like moving a lake from one place to another with a teaspoon” writes Naeem Aslam about his own craft. The writer of five novels including “Maps of lost lovers” and “The ...

Book Review - The Party Worker by Omar Shahid Hamid When a cop writes fiction depicting the unholy nexus of crime, politics and religion, the line between fiction and fact is bound to get blurred. The party worker by Omar Shahid Hamid is a realistic crime thriller. After his father was murdered in cold blood he joined Karachi Police as an officer, witnessed crime world from close quarters, survived Taliban’s attack on his office, took sabbatical and decided to write. Omar produced three best sellers one after the other; overshadowing the previous ones. ‘The Prisoner’ is based on the killing of American journalist, Daniel Pearl, the second novel, ‘The Spinner’s tail’ is on root of terrorism within Pakistani society and the third one ‘The party worker’ is on crime and politics of Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi. Omar Shahid Hamid, son of slain bureaucrat is currently SSP Intelligence of counter Terrorism Department in Karachi. He studied at London school of Ec...

Warfare is as old as human civilization so is its history. Indian subcontinent has been witness to bloody conflict and clashes since ages. Epics such as Mahabharata, Ramayana, Alha- Udhal are masterpieces of South Asia's age old tradition of rendering and preserving conflicts in different literary and art forms. India inherited thorny issues left behind by colonial masters at the time of partition which led to altercation and conflict with neighbors. These issues are still pestering making understanding of military history an essential part of statecraft. India can ill afford to ignore the history of conflict in this part of the world. Still t here are few good books on this topic worth visiting. The academics have largely ignored this important area whereas one comes across account of military conflict in memoirs of politicians or retired soldiers. There is dearth of well researched accounts on military history of India. This gap has been filled by  Arjun S...