an itinerant observer

“Primum non nocere.”  (First, to do no harm) This is how I started a  blog  for the  Express Tribune  a few years ago. I wrote it then because I felt I had to speak out. A sweeper in Karachi had been rushed to a nearby hospital after he succumbed to noxious gases while trying to clear a sewer. The shocking bit was that the fasting doctor on duty refused to treat the critically ill sweeper covered in sewage water, claiming that doing so would have broken his fast. Interestingly, it is Ramazan again, so perhaps an apt time to remind my fellow healthcare professionals to recall their primary responsibility – the patient. Fast forward two years, and I’m once again recalling  primum non nocere , the starting phrase of the Hippocratic Oath – a solemn promise exhorting freshly minted medical and nursing graduates to heal their patients, but prior to that, to do no harm. I am again reminded of the oath, as there’s been a recent upswing in alle...

If you are lucky you may come across a book that challenges your assumptions, upends your convictions and knocks down your indoctrination. If you are really lucky then said book may present an alternative and limitless world view of possibilities that generates a warm fuzzy feeling within, perhaps because your assumptions have been challenged, convictions upended and indoctrination knocked down. I can safely say this has happened to me recently. After several years of sporadic reading of contemporary fiction, creative non-fiction and general non-fiction, I present to you….drum roll….Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari! This remarkable book belonging to the genre of ‘popular science’ per it’s cover is certainly that but goes far beyond. It is a highly evocative, provocative and candid outlook on Homo sapiens (modern human beings, in other words) – where they’ve come from, but more importantly where they are headed (hence, Homo Deus alluding to humanity version 2.0). All that, ...

I have always been the kind of girl who believes in true love. When I was little, I couldn’t wait for my own “happily ever after.” Dreaming of my own wedding, binge-watching romantic movies - all that jazz. My definition of love now is different than it was when I was fifteen; or even then it was just a month ago. To me, then, love was a perfect force between two people capable of healing all the hatred and violence in the world. To me, now, love is something too great and complicated to put it into words, but I’ll try. Love is interactions. People. Places. Events. Feelings. Colors. Love is the way my Nani (grandmother) reminisces about my Nana (grandfather). Love is my Abboo’s (father’s) embrace as I cry into his shoulder. Love is strangers offering you iftaar during Ramazan . Love is smiling at yourself in the mirror when you feel radiant. Love is a mother seeing her newborn baby for the first time. We are all bound by love; we are all connected in some way. That’s what’s so ...