Zainab Mubashir

Pakistan’s education minister dominated the trends on Twitter today ahead of the announcement of the closure of educational institutions. After the minister confirmed that educational institutions in COVID-hit regions across Pakistan will remain closed until April 11, the “#ShafqatMehmood” hashtag reached the coveted number one spot. Students across Pakistan flooded the tag with prayers and gratitude for the minister, thanking him for the decision in a variety of creative ways.

This essay was originally written as a university assignment. Since the term was first coined in 1925 by Franz Roh, magical realism has come to encapsulate and transcend a variety of genres and media of expression. While Roh’s conception of “magic realism” specifically referred to Post-Expressionist German art, the popularity of the notion took off after being identified with Latin American literature. Navigating elusive categorizations of magic, magical, or the marvelous, a consistent understa

This was first written as a class assignment in May 2019. In her poem “Acquainted with Grief,” Helen Hunt Jackson asks: “Dost know Grief well?” This is a question of importance, for it aptly translates the need for grief, like all human emotions, to be acquainted with in order to be fully understood. In an attempt to explain this, she resorts to assigning her grief personhood, and Max Porter does something similar in his exploration of the human experience of loss.

Can you find belonging within the contents of your plate? An edited version of this article was first published on 18th January 2019 in the Kyiv Post as a food review. Stepping in through the doorway, you are sucked into a vacuum; all connection to the bustling street outside is severed as though with a blunt knife, and a blanketing warmth takes over where there was, seconds earlier, an air infused with chill. Walking past the vestibule, the warmth settles into a comfortable presence, and your

In the depths of a Kyiv winter, stepping into Himalaya restaurant is like entering another country. One of the capital’s oldest Indian restaurants, Himalaya is named after the famous mountain range, the name of which in Sanskrit means “Abode of Snow.” But any swirl of cold air that enters with you is quickly dispelled by the blanket of warmth inside, and the restaurant’s very décor conjures up the heat of the sub-continent. First impressions: The lighting is bright, but absorbed by the black a

To gather coherent thoughts about a work as remarkably unique as The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, is perhaps as taxing a task as making way through the novel itself. The literary masterpiece that popularly went on to be defined as the “quintessential novel”, and inspired works of literary giants such as James Joyce, is a category unto its own, that even in its own time refused to conform to ideas of what a novel should be. Written by Laurence Sterne in nine volumes over a span of ten years, Tristram Shandy veers into an uncharted literary territory that belongs more to the postmodern era than that of the eighteenth century, and despite its oddities, continues to be revered as an inimitable work of fiction.

If getting intimately acquainted with a character who navigates her way through various stages of victimhood – all the while bearing the torch of Virtue - is a tumultuous experience, one might expect her parodied caricature to elicit a more favourable response from the reader. However, such an assumption veers too close to forced optimism, and is, unfortunately, laid to rest when considering the case of Henry Fielding’s Shamela.

[This review was first published on 10th April 2017 in The LUMS Daily Student Vol.1 Issue 4 – Print Edition] The arrival of April marks what anime enthusiasts have been looking forward to for nearly 4 long years; following a post-2013 hiatus marked by many release date speculations and countless delays, Attack on Titan Season 2 has finally seen the light of the day and made its way to our computer screens. Shingeki no Kyojin, also known as Attack on Titan, is distinct in the quick following it

Orientation Week, lovingly known as O-Week, is something that is celebrated in most colleges around the world to ease you into the next transformative years of your life as gently as possible. It may also been seen as a clever ruse to tricking you into believing that your life is no longer a mess and all that is to follow is fun and games. Some describe it as the highlight of their college experience, some look back at it as the most cringe-worthy period of their existence, and heck, some simply

In school, you are likely to fall into a routine with the classmates you see and sit with every day. While this also happens in college, the shortness of the semester and the diversity of your classes makes it a little harder to get to know new people. It also gets complicated when courses are open to more than your own academic year. In order to avoid being isolated by already established friend groups within a class, you need to make an effort to interact with everyone you see and strike up fr

Yes, you right there. Oh, there’s no need to act all coy now. You know what I’m here to talk about. It is, after all, that time of the year once again. It’s really a pity, though, isn’t it? To be so early into a year full of ~fresh beginnings~ and to already be crushed under the weight of unfulfilled desires and unrequited emotions – the tragedy of it all makes you want to track down Paulo Coelho himself and demand repercussions for that one quote about the universe and all its conspiracies.