Ark-e-Gulab
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Culture Bashing Cannot go Unabated
Have you ever considered why birds, those little sages of the sky, lurch their heads in abrupt, start-stop spasms rather than simply gliding their gaze? Unlike us, they cannot swivel their eyes—they must halt their whole world, however briefly, to see anything clearly. Now, modern man, with all his digital twitchiness, has inherited the exact opposite malady: a ceaseless, unreflective motion, a scrolling of mind and soul that sees nothing at all. And so, in the marketplace of ideas—Twitter, op-eds, and pseudo-academic squawking—culture is endlessly flogged, never understood. If you wish to actually see where we are, pause! Stand still, if only for the length of a thought. Cease your…
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The Catastrophe of One Generation: A Cultural Holocaust in the Making
The generation born in the 1980s and 1990s stands as a fragile bridge between a world lost and a world looming – a generation that did not merely encounter modernity, but was engulfed by it. They are now raising children without being raised themselves by a living tradition. These men and women, now parents, were the first to be shaped not by awraad fatiha, but by Shahrukh Khan, Honey Singh, Enrique Iglesias, and the algorithmic chaos of social media feeds. The names of their childhood are not those of saints or scholars, but of actors, influencers, and unanchored ideologues. Raised in nuclear homes away from the hearths of grandmothers whispering…
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Counter Narrative | A Culture that Silences Men or Men with a Culture Silenced?
An article, appearing in Kashmir Observer, laments Kashmiri men’s silence as a cultural flaw, failing to realize that this very critique is shaped by Western therapeutic individualism. It sees emotional restraint not as a form of self-discipline (a classical virtue) but as repressive pathology. This betrays its underlying ideological commitments—secular humanism, psychologism, and gender-neutral egalitarianism—which define the human being as a bundle of expressive needs rather than a moral actor bound by higher purpose. But traditional Kashmiri culture, steeped in religion and spirituality, never denied emotional reality. It simply ordered emotions hierarchically: grief in prayer, pain in sabr, joy in shukr. The Prophet Muhammad (saw) wept, yes—but in balance, in…
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Pop Culture Mysticism
“Popular culture” is a term we use for the broad spectrum of practices, beliefs, objects, and phenomena that are prevalent in society at a given time, particularly in Western culture since the mid-20th century. It encompasses the most immediate and contemporary aspects of our lives, often disseminated through mass media and driven by the interests, preferences, and trends of the general population. Pop culture (modern fast paced life has to have a shorter version of “popular”) is dynamic, reflecting the changing tastes, innovations, and societal norms of the day. Pop culture is marked by its accessibility to a wide audience. It includes music, television, movies, fashion, technology, and more, offering…
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An Alternate Academia
I believe in hierarchies. This I mean in two ways, one, that hierarchies are part of existence, that is to say I believe in hierarchies in the same way as I believe in Sun, Moon, Pacific Ocean, and other things that exist, without ascribing the value of good or bad to them. This also means that I believe that some or the other forms of hierarchies will always exist. Two, that some hierarchies are good and need to be protected. In fact, the protection of such hierarchy is in itself justice. Justice is placing a thing at its right place, doing a thing as it should be done. Justice is…
