Freespiritrida

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filming my life like a movie #london

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A little history lesson about the drink at your iftaar parties #roohafza #ramadanrecipes #iftaarideas #muslimtiktok #pakistan #india

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I love it so much 💖🥹 going back will always feel special to me #pakistan #travel #karachi #lahore

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Next up on my series of people you should know: Eqbal Ahmad, the Pakistani intellectual once accused of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger, who was then one of the most powerful officials in the U.S. government. That allegation placed Ahmad at the center of the infamous Harrisburg Seven trial, but it was only one chapter in an extraordinary life that also included working with Algerian revolutionaries, opposing the Vietnam War, advising Palestinian leaders, and challenging both Western empire and postcolonial nationalism. His politics were grounded in a rare principle: solidarity with the oppressed should never require blind loyalty. If you want to start reading him, begin with Confronting Empire. #pakistan #india #urdu #history #travel

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What happens in an empire’s colonies rarely stays in the colonies. The “imperial boomerang” describes how tactics developed to surveil, control, and police colonized populations can eventually return home, reshaping policing and state power there too. From fingerprinting in colonial India to counterinsurgency abroad and the militarization of American policing, this history shows that empire doesn’t just transform the people being ruled. It transforms the institutions doing the ruling. A quick history of the imperial boomerang, and why the concept still matters today. #america #history #pakistan

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Right next to Grand Central sits a century-old hotel owned by Pakistan. Pakistan International Airlines began leasing the Roosevelt Hotel in 1979 and eventually acquired it in 2000. Since then, the building has operated as a hotel, become one of Pakistan’s most valuable overseas assets, and even served as New York City’s main arrival center for asylum seekers. Its history reveals how deeply the stories of Pakistan and New York are intertwined, all behind a façade most people would simply call American. #pakistan #newyork #america #hotel

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Before the MetroCard, New Yorkers used subway tokens. Before tokens, they used coins. And now even the MetroCard is disappearing. I learned so much of this history at the New York Transit Museum which made me realize that even something as ordinary as how we pay for the subway can tell us a lot about technology, design, and the way a city changes over time. From the iconic Y-cut token to the original blue MetroCard, the yellow MetroCard, and now OMNY, this is the history of how New Yorkers paid to ride. #nyc #history #publictransportation #graphicdesign #explainervideo

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Ever wonder why NYC subway lines aren’t alphabetical, or why completely different trains share the same color? The system makes a lot more sense once you realize the colors represent the major Manhattan trunk lines, not just individual trains. I learned so much of this history from the New York Transit Museum, which is genuinely one of the best places to understand how the city’s subway system evolved into the beautiful, confusing map we know today. 🚇 #nyc #subway #southasia

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Chak De! India gave us a Muslim protagonist who loved his country and his religion at the same time, even when the country questioned whether he belonged to it. This isn’t me endorsing Bollywood. It’s about consuming different kinds of media to understand the politics and culture of the moment that produced them. Before Bollywood’s current turn toward increasingly Hindu nationalist and anti-Muslim narratives, some of its biggest actors, writers and lyricists were Muslim. So I want to take you back to that era through Shah Rukh Khan’s films, and explore why he may be the last of a generation of stars Bollywood might never produce again. #shahrukhkhan #southasia #bollywood #moviereview

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Little snipets of life

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The Saami Brothers have been intentional about making qawwali accessible beyond traditional spaces, both by teaching the form and bringing it to new audiences through performances like this one in Bryant Park. That feels especially fitting for an art form historically rooted in gathering people together, and part of a much longer history of South Asian devotional music occupying public space. Catch them next at Columbia University Sacred Music at St. Paul’s Chapel in NYC on Sept. 24, Saint Joseph’s University x 12Gates Arts in Philadelphia on Sept. 25, World Music Festival in Chicago on Sept. 28, and Miami Beach Bandshell with Live Arts Miami & The Rhythm Festival on Nov. 15. #nyc #qawalli #southasia #pakistan

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The printing press changed how people in South Asia imagined politics itself. Under British colonial rule, print became a tool for classifying languages, circulating laws, and making millions of people more administratively “legible” to the empire. But Indian printers, journalists, intellectuals, and reformers appropriated that same technology to circulate dissent, debate colonial rule, and create new political publics across enormous distances. Print produced bureaucratic power, then it helped produce the publics that challenged that power. Episode 1 of a new series exploring a simple question: How did objects change history? #india #pakistan #empire #history