Maqbool Mirza

The uncertainty and unpredictability were highly coded in those days. You would never know what was about to happen. As compared to today’s world, where apps tell the weather and temperature, from stock market predictions to AI scans everything is more revealed. Humans are living with less uncertainty and life

Life moves in two directions for many of us, unless we do not take a pause at all to think in which direction life moves. To me, the two directions are: the general causation — the cause and effect — which may be called karma in certain religious traditions. The

The most crucial human faculty is not the art of learning, but the ability to unlearn what has already been learnt, or to forget the habits and practices of the past. This seems very tough to unlearn; it is like breaking the comfort zone and challenging your own conformity. The

The system, the status quo — the system at that time — was not a new word for me, like many of us already know about the ecosystem, digestive system, etc. But status quo was a new terminology for me. And when you are working with the public sector, you

History always remains doubtful, as the neutrality of the historian can always be questioned. Even in third-person narratives about an event, reality is shadowed under the influence of communication and linguistics. But the modern world is very different in the documentation of the present age; all happenings around us are

Epi 11 , Islamabad at the foothills of the Himalayas and surrounded by mountains on one side, adjacent to the older city of Rawalpindi, is one of the most marvellous capital cities in the world. The heart and mind of Pakistan’s politics live in these two twin cities. The minds

Can I call my work story a journey of learning, or a journey of passionate learning? I’m still not sure what to call it. The divine powers—if they exist—cannot be, and perhaps never will be, proven through science. Physics begins its implications only after the collision of bodies or through

Youth, when it is at its peak—like during my days at Orient—cannot apprehend the process of growth and learning. It is the same as when someone joins a gym at any stage of life and starts watching the mirror for abs on the second day, and nothing is visible. In

When I planned to write this chronicle of work life, it seemed like just a set of anecdotes to be documented in order, and it felt easier—especially if one keeps the personal self detached from the work story. But while grinding deeper into memory, it all appears mixed up, much

Our lives are determined by the humans around us—humans we have lived with, worked with; humans we have loved, humans we have hated; humans we have travelled with; humans we have made friends with and enemies of. It is all about humans. Either we are tied to them by nature,

It was not the first floor; I had actually gone to the basement of the building, which was not the admin or executive office. Someone guided me that if you are there for an ad for your magazine or Yellow Pages, you should go upstairs to the first floor. Entering

While talking about my side hustles alongside the Yellow Pages job, I felt like talking about the city, the culture, and the overall feel of the place I was roaming around in. My mornings were spent at ICMA H-9 campus (where, mostly, I was sleeping in class), and my days

Before moving to the story of side hustles alongside my job at Yellow Pages, I want to talk about my perspective on entrepreneurship, economics, finances, and career choices. My first job was something like, “You need to work to survive,” or “If you won’t work, who will give you money?”

Anything and everything I remember about economics from my academic years is the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. It applies to me in the sense that one always looks for change—something new, something different, something never experienced before. While recollecting memories of my first formal job, it’s not that I’m

The Yellow Pages job technically was not my first endeavour towards earning a livelihood. On a very small scale, I had also started a small academy for teaching after my FSC in Sector G-8, Islamabad. I also tried to start a magazine, “The Citizen”, around that age. All those failed

In the last post, I mentioned my visit to a university and the nostalgia I felt about old times. But somehow that nostalgia does not confine itself to one particular period of university days only; rather, it has provoked a whole spectrum of memories. The more specific one is the