Apologia and some Thoughts

Well it has been over two months since I have posted anything on the blog - I did sort of disappear into thin air, but that was because much has been happening in my life. I completed my dissertation, moved back to Pakistan, and have started teaching once again. I hope to start blogging a little more regularly now.

Someone recently asked me what it was like being back in Karachi and how, if at all, things had changed. Perhaps perversely, the first thing that came to mind was the air.

In a relatively short span of time Karachi's air has become much, much more polluted than it used to be. Or perhaps it is much more visible now. I suppose its not surprising given the boom in car ownership over the past four to five years. The sky over Karachi always used to have more than its fair share of dust, but rarely do I recall ever encountering the kind of smog one gets, particularly when there is less humidity in the air.

Of course one could talk about the media, the congestion, the roads, the wealth or the poverty (yes, both of these seem to have increased in appearance), political discontent, philanthropy etc. Karachi is nothing if not vibrant and thrumming with activity, thought, movement, noise, argument, conflict and construction. All of that, though, I suppose I will cover at some point or the other over the next few months in this blog.

For this blog, I thought I would simply stop, take a breather, and smell the air.