Intellisage

IF YOU WANT TO READ A MEDICAL THRILLER THIS WEEK TURN TO THE MAESTRO OF MEDICAL THRILLERS — ROBIN COOK’S NEW NOVEL INVASION

BUT IF YOU WANT TO ENTER THE WORLD OF MAGICAL REALISM READ ISABELLE ALLENDE’S PAULARead More

The Qur’an is a map of the geography of the mind. The Qur’an is also a template of the external world; that is to say, it is a microcosm containing the universe. The organization of the Qur’an as a logical or historical document is neither necessary nor useful. Since the pattern it follows is that of nature itself, it has contours of verses, subject matter, allusions, symbols, stories, motifs and cadences forming a vision of the universe externally and the human soul internally. The Qur’an is objective in the true meaning of the word – it objectively delineates the status of the soul on its journey to God as well as a landscape of that journey in inward and outward nature.Read More

Anybody who remembers the mad frenzy which gripped Karachiites (and other Pakistanis) about 18-20 years ago, at the turn of the 14th Islamic century, when broadsheets headlined “Shah Nematullah ki paishingoian” [The predictions of Shah Nematullah] were very popular, will enjoy this book. I remember the way in which an old man read aloud some of the items — “Musulman kay hath main talwar ajaay gi”(Muslims will get the sword again”) and the stars in the eyes of the passengers of the bus as they listened. My aunt burst the bubble for me with a single prick of common sense: “Notice he doesn’t say when!”Read More

With prose that flows like liquid silver, and the narrator’s emotions like the gossamer threads of a spider’s web waving in the breeze, Paulo Coelho’s new novel is a winner. On almost every page there are observations, dialogues, thoughts about love and loss and finding and yearning and truth and the quest for God so artistically interwoven that the book is one vast fluid look at the beauty of youth and idealism. I can do no better than to let the author take over. Read More

Sometimes it takes either a child or a Galileo to point out the obvious. It is true that to see the ordinary with a fixed unswerving gaze is to see the very inside of things; and then to point it out to mankind, to which they say, ‘Yes of course: that it is the way it must be!’ – is the summary of human achievement.Read More

There is much turmoil in our hearts as we read the papers; there is much broken and jagged in the world. At home, we have 7 police officers guarding Vaccination Team in Pakistan are shot dead (among others!); abroad, the global war against ISIS and the Syria black hole. Does it make sense then for a group of us to sit together in this room in Karachi and look at the issues of education? My answer is Of course! It is the most important thing we can do.Read More

There is much turmoil in our hearts as we read the papers; there is much broken and jagged in the world. At home, we have 7 police officers guarding Vaccination Team in Pakistan are shot dead (among others!); abroad, the global war against ISIS and the Syria black hole. Does it make sense then for a group of us to sit together in this room in Karachi and look at the issues of education? My answer is Of course! It is the most important thing we can do.Read More

It hit me suddenly. Just two words that sank in my mind like a single sugar crystal in a super saturated solution of sugar and water. My mind had been struggling with the issues definitions and paradoxes of modernity for the best part of the last decade and suddenly these two words sank in the mind creating in their wake a beautiful crystalline shape of sugar crystals: bright, shining, amazing.Read More

In this essay, I wish to review the position regarding the English Compulsory classes in the University of Karachi at the Bachelor or Arts and Bachelor of Science level.Read More