Personal

Past

I was born in Daska a small town in Sialkot district of Punjab, Pakistan in 1980. Eldest among five siblings, I have been raised in Lahore where my father, a lawyer by education, settled as a HR professional working in private industrial sector.

My grandfather, a govt. servant had migrated from Amritsar to Sialkot just before the partition.

Unfortunately I have never been to any other city in Pakistan other than Sialkot/Gujranwala, Multan, Karachi, Islamabad/RWP and Kohat. Hopefully this will change someday.

It was not my dream to become an engineer. I was interested in history and fiction and had writing aspirations of my own. Still I have enjoyed the career path taken so far.

Present

I am married to Ambreen and we have two lovely daughters Shafay and Shifteh. We currently live in Ulm, Germany.

I still like to read as much as I can, and admire the works of Azad, Hamza alvi, Amartaya Sen, Ayesha jalal, stanley wolpert hemingway, franz kafka, Saadat hassan manto, Premchand, Milan kundera and Mohammed hanif. Pre-revolution Russian fiction is a firm favorite specially the writings of Alexander Pushkin, Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy In poetry I like Majaz, Yagana, Daagh and Peerzada Qasim

I am also interested in translations, in particular from German to Urdu, here is a sample