#Pakistani who designed dresses for Angelina Jolie and Madonna sweeps an old house In #Ajmer. 


http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/01/14/yousuf-bashir-qureshi-ajm_n... … via @HuffPostIndia

Noted Pakistani designer and artist Yousuf Bashir Qureshi has fulfilled a promise he made to his mother, even if it meant taking a trip into the heart of Ajmer to first discover, and then sweep the floor of an old house quietly residing in Langar Khana.

Qureshi’s mother Abida Bashir had asked her son to fulfil her dream of finding her childhood home where she resided before migrating to her family to Pakistan in 1947, and clean it.

Making his debut trip to India, Qureshi managed to track down the house, and was overwhelmed by the memories that his mother had passed on to him come to life. “The moment I confirmed that is the native house of my mother’s family, I closed my eyes for a minute, recalling the childhood days that my four uncles and six aunts spent here,” Qureshi told ToI. He kissed the doorstep to his family’s past. “It was a very emotional moment… it was as if I was with my entire family as I went from one room to another.”

Qureshi spent two hours reminiscing in the home that has received a few modern makeovers, but retains a few elements of the past, including the fluting strains of qawwali from the dargah nearby. Just before he left –- accompanied with pictures of the old house from the present owner as a gift -- he swept a part of the building, to fulfil his promise to his mother.

A graduate from the University Of Nebraska in Food science, Qureshi has garbed celebrities such as Sheryl Crow, Angelina Jolie, and Denzel Washington, and Madonna, and is also an avid photographer and a gardener. Qureshi eventually returned to Pakistan in 2002 to start his label YBQ, that is based out of Karachi, that he runs alongside being a resident professor at Indus Valley School.

Banned in #Pakistan: A #Muslim #Porn Star’s Sexual Crusade http://thebea.st/1o8Ls18 via @thedailybeast


Pakistani-American adult film star Nadia Ali is famous for wearing a hijab in her porn films. She says she’s challenging how the veil suppresses women’s sexuality.
A woman enters. Donning a hijab, she prepares and serves dinner for her turbaned husband. She appears subservient, but when the man isn’t looking, swipes his car keys, slips on a pair of high heels, sneaks out the door of their posh mansion, and speeds off. When she returns, the enraged man grabs her by the neck and drags her into the house. She pleads with him not to use “the stones” to torture her, so he opts for beating her with a switch. The woman screams, “I’m sorry! I did something for you,” but he doesn’t relent. He begins to get aroused by the pain he’s inflicting, and before you know it, the veil is lifted and we’re in the midst of a full-fledged porn scene. 

Welcome to Women of the Middle East, a controversial adult film that comes with the tagline, “They may look suppressed, but given an opportunity to express themselves freely, their wild, untamable natural sexuality is released. This may just be what was in bin Laden’s porn collection, experience it for yourself.”
The veiled woman is played by Nadia Ali, a 24-year-old porn star and first-generation American from Pakistan. She’s been in the adult industry for just a year, but doesn’t mind pushing religious boundaries in the name of XXX entertainment. Oh, and she’s also a practicing Muslim.
Ali is often filmed wearing her hijab—and little else—while engaged in various hardcore sexual activities. Hijabs, or veils worn by many Muslim women to cover their bodies in the presence of males outside of their immediate family, are deeply rooted in Islamic culture and religion. Tied to the Quranic concept of female modesty, they’re also viewed by detractors as a way to subjugate and silence women. For Ali, donning a hijab in porn is empowerment. Determined to break down the barriers of this age-old taboo, she doesn’t think of her work as anti-hijab porn, but in a culture where it is conceivable for a cleric to ban women from touching bananas and cucumbers due to their phallic resemblance, she hopes to inspire change.


“I’ve been told, ‘you’re not a Muslim, you’re a disgrace to Pakistan, Pakistan won’t accept you,’ but I do come from a Middle Eastern background and I am Muslim, not the way my parents are, but by practice,” Ali tells the Daily Beast. “My sister covers her head, she’s modest, married, and has kids. My mom covers her head and prays five times a day, I pray two times a day but I’m still a practicing Muslim.”
According to Ali, one can be a practicing Muslim and a porn star. Aware of the potential conflict, she felt any consequences she might face over her choices would be worth it in the long-term. And since homosexuality is technically illegal in Pakistan, which is trying its damnedest to ban online porn altogether, she intends to film plenty of girl-on-girl action this year, too.

Rise of #Canada-born #SunnyLeone, massively popular #porn star and most-Googled person in #India. #Bollywood

http://theweek.com/articles/595515/bizarre-rise-massively-popular-p...


For four years in a row, the most Googled person in India has been Sunny Leone. Who? The daughter of Indian immigrants to Canada, Leone was a successful pornography star in America before returning to India to launch a movie career in Bollywood, where even kissing on screen is taboo. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi might win elections, he loses to Leone in Google searches. In 2014, the year Modi was elected in a landslide that effectively decimated the secular-socialist Congress Party that had dominated the country until then, he was second to Leone. And in 2015 he was a pathetic 10th.

India is a conservative society and Modi comes from a brand of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism that wants to stop India's drift toward the West and restore traditional standards of sexual modesty. Hindutva hotheads have been known to forcibly marry couples just for hanging out on Valentine's Day because romance before marriage, as far as they are concerned, is Western debauchery. Modi's health minister considers sex education in schools as an invitation to licentiousness and wants to replace it with mandatory yoga classes. So what is Leone doing in Modi's India?

However, to really understand India, the emerging nation, the better question might be: What is Modi doing in Leone's India?

The conventional explanation for the parallel popularity of Modi and Leone might be that India is a "land of contradictions": extreme poverty coexists with extreme wealth; extreme pacifism with extreme violence; extreme veneration of women with extreme disrespect. Hence, Modi, who seems never to have had sex with anyone (he left his wife without consummating his marriage and took a vow of celibacy that plays well with Indian voters), and Leone, who has made a career out of having sex on screen with everyone (men, women, and inanimate objects) are just another one of those Indian dualities. Modi appeals to the chastity-worshipping side of India and Leone the Kama Sutra-practicing side. They are India's yin and yang.

But this explanation misses the tectonic shifts reshaping India's cultural landscape.

All prudish societies typically have an underside that serves as a safety valve for pent up sexual tensions. But Leone is not merely the cyber equivalent of the red light districts of Victorian England — a taboo that libidinous Indian men secretly enjoy via a computer and an internet connection. To be sure, Indian men partake in their share of pornography (six of the world's top 10 cities for pornography downloads are in India), but Leone's appeal is not limited to them.

Her Indian movies, steamy B-grade blockbusters that push the limits of Bollywood (which itself pushes the limits of Indian prudery), are household favorites. Their song-and-dance routines are played at virtually every Indian wedding. In fact, Leone notes, she is "embraced with open arms" at private Indian events. Even wives and sisters eagerly pose with her for pictures. This is in sharp contrast to the Indian-Canadian community in her hometown of Sarnia, Ontario, which has ostracized Leone.

All of this would be less remarkable if Leone made some attempt to hide her past or apologize for it. But she doesn't. To the contrary, in her debut appearance on India's Bigg Boss, a popular reality-TV show, Leone, in a carefully orchestrated marketing move, told the entire country that she was an "adult film entertainer" in America. What's more, instead of saying she was forced into a tawdry career by economic necessity or family need, she nonchalantly asserted that this was her "choice" — meaning that of all her options for making a living, she chose monetizing her body. "I am good at turning a quarter into a dollar," she says.