August 2025
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Ghalib for Gen Z
A young reader’s review of “Thinking with Ghalib” by Anjum Altaf and Amit Basole, praising its transcreations and its epistemological reading of Ghalib’s poetry as a way into a poet…
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Why Indian English Loves Long Sentences
X.T.M argues that Indian English favours long, ornate sentences as an echo of Persian’s former prestige role, and that it borrows surface complexity without the deep roots of Persian, Arabic…
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Quite Hectic Days
Writing from fieldwork assessing the governance of 46 Pakistani universities, the author notes that universities grew from 95 to 269 and PhDs from 177 to 3,489 since 2002 without a…
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Madhuri is stronger than the Ambanis
X.T.M reads the Ambanis’ removal of the elephant Madhuri to Vantara as a clash between animal welfare and sacred tradition in Hindu veneration of nature, and contrasts a plural, absorbing…
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Ghosts of 1947
A Pakistani woman shares her grandmother’s memories of Partition in 1947, which took her nearly seventy years to speak about.
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India, Pakistan, all that jazz..
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🧵 Open Thread: Hate Speech, Travel Notes, and Diplomatic Surprises
Open thread. X.T.M says a comment glorifying Partition violence crossed the line and that the commenter must retract and apologise before posting again, and notes his travels and Pakistan’s diplomacy…
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🎶 Bravo, Kabir | Artists Across Borders
X.T.M celebrates a virtual Indian–Pakistani artists’ dialogue, including the singer Kabir Altaf, as shared heritage doing what diplomacy cannot, and lists the event’s moderator and speakers.
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📯 Back at Peak: 22,453 Monthly Readers and Rising
Brown Pundits reports 22,453 monthly readers, its highest in about fifteen years, with 100-plus comments on most new posts.
