an itinerant observer

It’s only right that Manto would be the source of shattering my writer’s block - a heavy over 5-year-old block. Not being a full time writer nor poet, over the years I have dabbled in both writing and poetry. I practice psychiatry - a conventional career that pays my bills. "Ah!", you might say, "That is why Manto got her writing. That man had plenty going on in terms of mental illness". Perhaps he did. Perhaps, we all do. But I’ll come to that later. On a sunny Thursday meant to be an official holiday, I set out to do a morning clinic, before joining friends at a theater to watch Manto, the much awaited film. My familiarity with Manto had been of a passing nature. Growing up in the O’ and A’ levels realm, I felt a far greater kinship to the Bards, Brontes and Hemmingways of the world than to our Urdu maestros. A couple of his short stories read in my 20s, in English, hardly warrants even an acquaintance-ship to Manto. But the billboard that I passed ...

Robin Williams is no more. I came across his death in a footnote in a local newspaper, a few days back. Considering the manner he decided to end his life, I was shocked although not entirely surprised. Robin Williams was an ‘intense’ actor to say the least. If you scratch the surface, actors, who perform comedies on screen, betray more of real life dramas and tragedies. I think they utilize humor as a strong defense mechanism, and they throw themselves into work (either one project or several) perhaps to keep “demons at bay”, as suggested by a recent article from the NY Times with the very suggestive title “Busy working, Robin Williams fought demons”. That concept in itself is intriguing because I believe we all have demons that we tackle on a daily basis in our professional and personal lives. I wonder if celebrities or actors have a harder time dealing with those demons than us regular folks…   Other than the statistics from the U.S. about white men being much more l...