March 2025
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Dr Manzur Ejaz. 1949-2025
An obituary of Dr Manzur Ejaz (1949-2025), Punjabi writer and Marxist activist who died in Virginia. It records his belief that defending the Punjabi language is central to working-class politics,…
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Twelve Days of Norouz
A personal reflection on Nowruz as a twelve-day ritual of recalibration, written by a part-Persian Bahá’í of distant Zoroastrian descent. The author describes cutting a cake at the equinox, calendars…
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Artificial Intelligence? A comment.
Shares a friend’s tweet on whether machines can be intelligent and adds a reply. It argues reasoning models and agents are advancing fast, but that machine intelligence will be fundamentally…
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Indra – the dragon slayer
The author describes a Python script built to search the Vedic corpus for verses on Vritra, then shares a Claude-generated summary of the Rigvedic myth. It presents Indra as slayer…
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India at a Crossroads: Superpower or Spectator?
Argues that the unipolar moment is over and five great powers now compete, each with its own grand strategy, so India must decide whether to shape this order or watch.…
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The Mirage of Exoticism & The Curse of the Almighty Dollar
Argues that places easily digestible to Western tourists lose their character fastest, and that the Persianate world feels more distinct than Japan. The author says India’s chaos shields it, while…
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“I’m not white, I’m Pakistani.”
Comments on a viral clip of a woman saying she is Pakistani, not white. The author reads it as showing how assimilated Muslims are in the English-speaking world, and argues…
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Yalta vs. Helsinki – Sir Alex Younger and the New Global Intelligence Order
Summarises a video by former MI6 chief Sir Alex Younger, who argues that the world is contested between a Yalta model of great-power spheres of influence and a Helsinki model…
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Modi’s Sufi Gambit: Is Hindu India the True Heir to Urdu Culture?
Argues that Modi’s patronage of the Jahan-e-Khusrau festival may position Hindu-defined India as Urdu culture’s heir, modernising it as the Pahlavis did Persian. The author sees this as a strategic…
