Shakir Lakhani 
With the Commonwealth Games in Delhi fast approaching, foreigners should know how to use Indian toilets (assuming they can find a few). First thing to remember is that Indians don’t use paper at all to clean themselves after defecating. The second thing is that they use their left hands to … Read more
I had heard before that prize bond draws were manipulated, but there was no way of proving this. But in the Rs. 15000 prize bond draw (no. 45) held in Peshawar on 3rd January 2011, there is circumstantial evidence that this is indeed true. In that draw, three consecutive numbers … Read more
The good God works in mysterious ways. Sometimes it seems that those who steal and plunder have the best things in life. They believe that they are being favored by God, and nothing stops them from continuing their looting. Smugglers and those who sell stolen and smuggled goods, for instance, … Read more
According to the recent WikiLeaks data, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari want his sister to succeed him. I once heard that all that Zardari eats is first tested by his sister Faryal Talpur (apparently she either herself eats or makes others eat part of his meals before he is served). … Read more
The prime minister (Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani) said his government is not corrupt. And the very next day, Transparency International announced that Pakistan has jumped to place no. 34 from 42 in the list of corrupt nations. I wonder why it happens that whenever this government announces something, the opposite … Read more
I’m against capital punishment (because innocent people are often hanged on fabricated evidence), but when I read about this 34-year old homosexual Saudi prince raping, torturing and killing his black servant, I wished he’d be sentenced to death. But since the death penalty has been abolished in the UK (as … Read more
It’s been a long time (more than ten years) since I visited the Lyari area of Karachi, although I used to pass through it daily right up to 1998. In the last decade, gangsters have taken over the district and almost every day gang wars take place in which people … Read more
The so-called “historic” verdict by the judges of the Allahabad High Court in India has been welcomed by rabid Hindu fanatics because they now feel they can go ahead and demolish all the remaining mosques in India. Instead of recognizing that Muslims were the owners of the land on which … Read more
For some reason, a cleric in Qasim Masjid in Peshawar has been able to collect about twenty men (having remarkably good eyesight) who claim they saw the moon, when it wasn’t there. This has been going on for over fifty years. I was in Peshawar in 1973, and saw Eid-al-Azha … Read more
As if the world wasn’t already threatened by global warming, floods and earthquakes, a new enemy has appeared on the horizon. The superbug known as New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1 (NDM-1). This virus is resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics known, the class of antibiotics known as Carbapenems which are reserved … Read more