Despite my families grumbling I have tried to keep our iftars as simple as possible with the rule “no fried food” (this is followed by a filling meal after maghrib salah). It’s not easy to get away from samosa’s to open your fast, as my neighbours’ teens said when she tried to ban them: “If […]

This is one of the first things that my mum taught me to cook. Rice is not as central to the Punjabi diet as it is to the Bengali or South Indian one, being as it is, largely based around wheat (in the form of chapatti’s with each meal), this is mainly because Punjab is […]

This is one of the first things that my mum taught me to cook. Rice is not as central to the Punjabi diet as it is to the Bengali or South Indian one, being as it is, largely based around wheat (in the form of chapatti’s with each meal), this is mainly because Punjab is […]

This is the second, much-awaited novel by the author of The Kite Runner. Longer and covering an even longer span of time in the history of Afghanistan, this book is different in the first instance from The Kite Runner due to the fact that it is written from the viewpoint of women. Where the semi-autobiographic […]

This is one of the first things that my mum taught me to cook. Rice is not as central to the Punjabi diet as it is to the Bengali or South Indian one, being as it is, largely based around wheat (in the form of chapatti’s with each meal), this is mainly because Punjab is […]

This is one of the first things that my mum taught me to cook. Rice is not as central to the Punjabi diet as it is to the Bengali or South Indian one, being as it is, largely based around wheat (in the form of chapatti’s with each meal), this is mainly because Punjab is […]

Alhamdulillah, I think this has been one of the busiest times of my life. Fasionista’s baby, Kooky’s wedding, my little one being born making me a mum of five, with two Eid’s and Ramadan in between and Little Lady starting high school and then changing high school within half a term. It’s also our turn […]

Alhamdulillah, I think this has been one of the busiest times of my life. Fasionista’s baby, Kooky’s wedding, my little one being born making me a mum of five, with two Eid’s and Ramadan in between and Little Lady starting high school and then changing high school within half a term. It’s also our turn […]

I think our young people are often unfairly stereotyped and maligned. The papers often seem intent on creating an image of young people as lazy, spoiled and shallow, I have seen them described as “snowflakes” for being too sensitive amongst other things. I don’t agree with this and I think that youngsters today are more […]

I remember being a teen and sometimes getting unwanted attention, probably at a younger age than was appropriate.  I remember being a teen and being aware of my many perceived flaws alongside a cocky arrogance about my youth and how skinny I was.  Despite these things, I would rather have been a teen then than […]

Alhamdulillah, I think this has been one of the busiest times of my life. Fasionista’s baby, Kooky’s wedding, my little one being born making me a mum of five, with two Eid’s and Ramadan in between and Little Lady starting high school and then changing high school within half a term. It’s also our turn […]

Alhamdulillah, I think this has been one of the busiest times of my life. Fasionista’s baby, Kooky’s wedding, my little one being born making me a mum of five, with two Eid’s and Ramadan in between and Little Lady starting high school and then changing high school within half a term. It’s also our turn […]

My mum and dad recently spent a month in Pakistan catching up with family and old friends and enjoying a change from every day life.  Mum has lovely taste and loves shopping and came back with a stylish new wardrobe for herself.  She also made the effort to find or have made a  gift for […]

This book has sat on my shelf for a fairly long time and despite its sticker saying “winner of the 1997 Orange prize for fiction” nothing about it particularly attracted me. I thought I would give it a go just for a change of sceneAnne Michaels was a poet before she was a novelist and […]