Megalomaniac

Today, Pakistan will play against Zimbabwe at Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore. Pakistani cricket fans are ecstatic. They cannot wait to see the match. Tickets for the first T20 have been sold out. And why not? We have waited for six long years for this. The images of the Zimbabwe cricket team arriving at the Lahore airport on our television screens made me shout out loud with joy. It was an emotional moment because after six years, international cricket was has finally returned to Pakistan. It has been a long wait. I vividly remember the day the Sri Lankan cricket team was attacked back in 2009. Sitting in front of a television, I could not stop my tears while watching the horror that was unfolding in the heart of Lahore. We have seen many a terror attack in this country, but we all thought that cricket is too sacred to be attacked, even for terrorists. As Ahmer Naqvi, journalist and writer, recently wrote : “Until that moment, I was among several people (perhaps even a majority of Pakistan ...

Last month, I wrote a column about silencing dissent in Pakistan when an academic discussion on Balochistan was cancelled by the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) allegedly at the behest of the government and intelligence agencies. It was a disappointment for many at the university as well as our civil society. Sabeen Mahmud, founder of the Karachi-based cafe The Second Floor (T2F) and a peace activist, decided to hold the same talk at T2F. Titled ‘Unsilencing Balochistan (Take 2)’, the seminar went well. Sabeen posted pictures of the seminar on her Instagram feed. Later that evening, as she left T2F, Sabeen was gunned down in her car. Her assassination was absolutely shocking and devastating. Sabeen was a remarkable, honest, hard-working and genuine person. It was courageous of Sabeen to hold a seminar on missing persons and Baloch rights. She took up causes because she truly believed in them; she did not want fame, money or anything else. The night of her assassinatio...