Fabulous Machinery for the Curious: An anthology of six qissas in my translation from
@ucpress
. ORDER ONLINE AND SAVE 30% (Use source code SAVE30 at checkout)
Our public statement rescinding EU Sponsorship of Pakistan Spelling Bee () for its support of Israel's dehumanization and genocide of innocent Palestinian children, women and men, and criminalising lawful dissent by European citizens in their own societies.
Yesterday's adventure:
A neighbourhood couple came to visit. They mentioned how their 9-yr-old son was not doing well in studies. They were coming from the school where the teacher had recommended they take their child to see a psychiatrist.
Took a cloth bag along to buy fruit.
Fruit vendor told me it was the best way to carry fruit home.
And no, not for any environmental reasons. According to him, "iss tarah fruit per nazar nahin lagti!"
Working on a project analysing Grade 7 and 8 Urdu curriculum, and feel increasingly convinced that for children's education in Pakistan to have a chance, all the various textbook boards and government departments prescribing content for Grades 1-8 should be shut down for good.
The Aesthetics of Eating the Gulab Jaman: A Monograph
1. The 1st one is to be had for plugging desire. Nobody must judge one who consumes it hurriedly.
2. The 2nd one is to be consumed for enjoyment. It should be done with a degree of control.
3. The 3rd one is for indulgence.
If you want to use Roman Urdu, the word for country, ملک, is written MULK. Not MULQ coz it's not مُلق. Learning to differentiate between hard and soft K sounds is the first step on the path to adulthood.
Doctor Without Borders is reporting 70 dead and dozens with severe burns from a single strike. This is really bad—huge death toll, and unless there was a secondary fire they’re not mentioning, it doesn’t sound like a conventional explosive
Big day today! Announcing publication of 𝗧𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺-𝗲 𝗛𝗼𝘀𝗵𝗿𝘂𝗯𝗮 (Urdu) Vol 1 of 24, edited by me. Translations from the Persian by Prof Ahmad Mahfooz and glossary by Prof Abdur Rasheed. Cover art by Michelle Farooqi.
Purchase link:
Today, Pakistan Armed Forces gifted a plane load of PPE to U.S. Armed Forces as a token of friendship & solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Senior US officials joined our team at the hand-over ceremony at Andrews Air Base.
@OfficialDGISPR
@ForeignOfficePk
@fema
@StateDept
Announcing my new book for children from
@HarperCollinsIN
:
Monster Folktales From South Asia.
Five monster folktales from Pakistan's five provinces.
Illustrated by Michelle Farooqi
I would request all public representatives to have their Urdu language tweets checked for spelling and grammatical errors. In a country with a low literacy rate, Urdu tweets with spelling and grammatical errors show disregard for education. And please avoid Roman Urdu. Thank you.
This
#Javanese
version of the story of the popular hero Amir Hamza is over 3000 pages long. Is this a record? Read more about Amir Hamza in Javanese in our new post
#BLJavanese
According to the Persian lexicon Bahar-e Ajam, there are five degrees of intoxication. I have supplied the appropriate English equivalents:
سرخوش = buzzed
تر دماغ = sloshed
شیر گیر = bombed
سیہ مست = smashed
خراب = wasted
We need investigative reporting on the role played by
@CambridgeInt
and
@pkBritish
@BritishCouncil
in endangering the lives of Pakistani children through exposure to Covid. They play an active role facilitating the criminally insane who are heading education policies in Pakistan.
Announcing the launch of the online Urdu
@HijjayGame
, in which you have to make 20 words with 6 letters.
Look up the meanings of words by clicking on them.
Why children today have less exposure to stories:
1. Engagement with stories does not fit well in the testing-heavy model of modern schooling, so there is little focus on stories at school.
2. Constant academic testing takes away the downtime children used to have after school.
10:30 Monday morning and I'm still in bed, enjoying the weather and thinking about breakfast and plot of a new novel.
My batch-mates who finished their Engineering degree are fat and bald and planning their children's marriages.
P. S. I'm not fat or bald.
🔥
Honored to have been appointed to the Board of Governors of Archeology and Literary Heritage Endowment Fund of the Ministry of Information, Broadcasting, National History and Literary Heritage, Government of Pakistan.
The reason I hate cricket today is its projection as something more sacrosanct than human dignity and even human lives. You see it in the callous way citizens' rights are wilfully violated during the matches. And you see it in massacres interpreted mainly as threat to the sport.
Very pleased to announce that brilliant dastan scholar Mariam Zia (
@em_zia
) is the Syed Babar Ali fellow at Harvard University's
@mittalinstitute
for Spring 2023. She will be working on translating critical works on the Dastan-e Amir Hamza.
When will acountability start for the odious characters spearheading the Single National Curriculum team? That was a clear effort to undermine school education delivery and make it regressive.
Can't get around Lahore's love for milk.
Ordered a black coffee at a restaurant yesterday. As usual, a large pot of milk accompanied the order.
Me: Please take the milk away.
Waiter: You won't have MILK!?
Me: No.
Waiter (incredulously): Not even with black coffee??
So
@Twitter
has locked celebrated writer and editor
@anniezaidi
's account for "rules violation" because she called out peddlers of misinformation on
#coronavirus
Twitter should make amends by making Annie Zaidi's a verified account.
cc:
@NineDotsPrize
@verified
This kind of food snatching at meals is our cultural heritage. I suggest we register it with Unesco as part of our intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and organize food-snatching festivals worldwide.
lahore bar election gathering zindabad..lets slap each other to get first dibs on the meat - lets keep our facemasks off whilst we push and shove and lets show the next generation of lawyers what lies ahead for their time..
#barelectionsmatter
#andthefoodofcourse
Today’s
#GoogleDoodle
celebrates Dr. Ruth Pfau, a German physician and nun who was dedicated to getting rid of leprosy from Pakistan
In her many years of work, she established 157 clinics that went on to help more than 56,000 leprosy patients.
→
Caring for ailing parents makes you appreciate the wisdom of tribal societies where responsibilities of individual members are shared across the tribe. The modern community is not quite as effective.
I have tonnes of Urdu stories for children which I will be narrating online via
@StorykitProgram
youtube channel.
Link:
The session are being recorded and the first one will go online once we have hit 5,000 subscribers.
Subscription is FREE, of course.
Before friends in media ask me to translate SOCIAL DISTANCING, it translates perfectly into Urdu.
The word is مُقاطَعَہ which has come into Urdu from the Arabic.
مُقاطَعَہ = مل ملاپ چھوڑ دینا، علاحدگی اختیار کرنا
The word also means boycott, ostracization, etc.
I think we can all get behind the idea that all VIPs should travel by pogo stick. Not only is it the cheapest way to travel, it is also one of the most secure. Nobody could target a guy traveling on a pogo stick.
@StorykitProgram
I will continue with the story on Friday but later (I have to visit a friend for lunch) I will write about the wild moments during our meeting, and my observations about the encounter.
@zuhaibhayat
When the numbers were low we locked down - when the numbers rising we are being forced to open businesses and go towards a smart lockdown
The logic seems reversed - Sindh fired it's shot early and despite these
Karachi numbers (my city too) are going up
@historianess
Becky, your tragedy is greater than
@PhilipPullman
's. I hope he finds his pen, but if it is not found he would at least know that it lives on. You have to nurse a loved one's corpse while fondling the murderer.
This poem by Iqbal reflects how I try to lead my life. I urge our youth to understand and absorb the poem of the great Iqbal and I guarantee them that it will release their great God-given potential that we all possess as His greatest creation Ashraf ul Mukhluqat.
In January government imposed a 17% tax on the printing of non-curriculum books.
In effect, the policy penalises all such printed information and knowledge which is not an officially approved textbook.
My hero
@WaelDahdouh
. If he wasn’t Palestinian, he’d be the most famous face in the world decorating the covers of every magazine as person of the year. A man who has almost lost his life multiple times, yet never lost the will to keep covering the crimes against his people. When
Pleased to announce my new book:
THE MERMAN AND THE BOOK OF POWER: A QISSA
Told by Musharraf Ali Farooqi
Out from Aleph Book Company in October
Pre-order link available for the Pakistan edition:
I need help with identifying university student groups in Lahore, Peshawar, and Karachi who are active online and interested in any area of training or activity, from professional development, to literature, to performing arts.
Please RT.
One of the best things I have ever done is launch the Pakistan Spelling Bee, recently held for both English and Urdu languages across Pakistan.
I'll write about more about it later, but for now I give you little Palwasha and Noor Zahra.
#pakspellingbee
The
@StorykitProgram
team conducted a sponsored storytelling session at Abduallah Shah Ghazi Government Girls School in Karachi. The kids loved the storytelling and the storykits. Just look at them read, lost to the world.
My enemies will not like it, but here's proof that modern fantasy ends with me.
Thank you,
@AnnVanderMeer
and
@jeffvandermeer
! Received the copies and they look wonderful!