-
What kind of nationalism is it to live in India and have an Arabic name?
X.T.M posts an extract from Kanhaiyalal Kapoor’s satirical story in Rakhshanda Jalil’s anthology of non-Muslim Urdu writers, in which a narrator renames and re-dresses himself to prove his Indianness, and…
-
Obscure and Obscurity: Fatima Ijaz’s Shade of Longing
Furqan Ali reviews Fatima Ijaz’s debut collection The Shade of Longing, reading its abstraction and repeated, unresolved lines as an indictment of language’s failure to capture memory and longing, and…
-
Community Guidelines – Please Read
X.T.M sets out house rules: authors may not void or edit one another’s posts or comments, Nivedita is made Editor with full discretion to void content, and breaches will be…
-
Against Platonic Love
The writer introduces an interview with the Urdu poet Ahmad Faraz, whom he ranks behind Faiz, and translates Faraz’s answer rejecting platonic love in favour of passionate, complete love for…
-
Offline Life
X.T.M says he will share more offline life, mentioning a temple visit and his Indo-Persian wrestling training.
-
Koko, Williams, and me
Furqan Ali shares an original poem written after watching a video of Robin Williams embracing Koko the gorilla.
-
Reading the Reader: On Ammar Ali Qureshi’s Views and Reviews
Furqan Ali reviews Ammar Ali Qureshi’s Views and Reviews, a collection of essays on Punjab’s history, Pakistan, Iran and Iqbal’s love of Persia, praising its range and its melancholy portrait…
-
War in the Sanskritopolis
X.T.M reads the Thailand–Cambodia border dispute through the shared Hindu-Buddhist heritage of Southeast Asia, noting the Theravāda and Mahayana divide, and argues India should act as a civilisational fountainhead in…
-
Dead Poets of Pakistan
X.T.M argues that Pakistan’s creative energy lies with a Westernised, English-fluent ‘boundary class’ outside patronage and power, and contrasts India’s confident, 80 per cent one-faith civilisational script with a Persianate…
-
A commentary: Ganesh, in a confectionery mill
Furqan Ali annotates Afshan Shafi’s poem ‘Ganesh, in a confectionery mill’, reading its placing of the Hindu deity in an industrial setting as a surrealist, biting comment on consumerism, decaying…
The Indian Subcontinent Argues with Itself
Sunday, 8 November 2026Since December 2010 · 4,170 posts · 93,923 comments
