The great Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, King of the World (1592-1666), died in confinement, in Agra Fort, imprisoned by his son, Aurangzeb. As he lay dying, he looked down from the balcony of the Musamman Burj tower at the pearlescent dome of the Taj Mahal he created for his beloved wife. (more…)

It’s a grey evening in Washington, DC. The rain, falling heavily, creates a pewter gloss on the road as I am driving home from work. It makes me want to be back in Lahore, during the unexpected Spring showers, when we sit on the veranda in my ancestral home with my paternal grandmother, known affectionately by everyone as Mader; mother in Dari. (more…)

It was a hot day in Lahore. The kind of day when the Loo wind blows in from the Cholistan Desert, as the sun casts its tungsten-white glow on the people of the city. The canal’s water a dirty brown, small children leaping in one by one, to cool themselves off in the 40C heat. The willow trees lining the bank, drooped and in prostration, praying for the monsoons to come. (more…)

This is the recipe for the vermicelli pudding my mother, Ami, prepares every Eid, which I wrote about in my post about her on Motherhood: The Final Frontier. (more…)

It’s been an absolute honour for me to have had the opportunity to write a guest post on Motherhood: The Final Frontier (click here for link), for one of my favourite bloggers / friends, a British girl who blogs anonymously from California about her life as a mum. She inspired me to write a short piece about my mother. In Missing Person’s Report, I write about the difficulty in coming to terms with the fact that one’s mum has aged; I still see her through the optic of a young child. (more…)

Lahore, my birthplace, is a city of ornate derelict Mughal buildings and the place where Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh lays at rest; a true cultural crossroads. It is also the setting for Kipling’s stories, where you will find Kim’s Gun on the Mall; the main artery where the rickshaws, cars and motorbikes weave in and out of the lanes like tiny insects. (more…)

Madhur Jaffrey, the Dame of Indian cuisine says, “Well-cooked grains of rice should be like brothers; close, but not stuck together.”

In my family, we say “Each grain of rice should be elongated, separated, curved and slender like a girl’s eyelashes.” (more…)

The French have their pillowy, like-a-curdled-creme, soufflé-like version of scrambled eggs. The Latin Americans have their huevos revueltos; the Colombians serve theirs with pillowy arepas. Us Pakistanis & Afghans have our own version of scrambled eggs, called Khagina. (more…)