Asif Noorani


Asif Noorani is a Pakistani newspaper and television writer.

Personal life

Asif Noorani was born in Mumbai, India in 1942. He belongs to a secular Urdu speaking family. His family migrated to Pakistan from Bombay, British India in 1950. He obtained his Masters in English Literature in 1965 from the University of Karachi. Two years earlier he joined the magazine, Eastern Film as Assistant Editor and rose to the position of Editor in merely one year.

Career

Noorani contributes to leading Pakistani, and occasionally Indian publications, articles on art, literature and music. He reviews books and music recordings. He is particularly known for his humorous writings and travelogues. He also appears on television and radio programs. He writes in English and Urdu.
He works with the Dawn Group of Newspapers as a consultant. He has written a book titled Tales of Two Cities with Kuldip Nayar, an Indian journalist, whose family migrated from Sialkot to Delhi, while Asif Noorani, who was only five at the time of Partition writes about his family's migration from Mumbai to Pakistan, when he was only eight. His second book, on the flamboyant Pakistani cricketer Shahid Afridi, was also a good seller. His labour of love, a book on Mehdi Hassan, with two CDs, one of rare renditions of ghazals, and the other a medley of folk, film and semi-classical numbers, will go into production for the third time. In 2012 he rewrote and updated the quick selling coffee-table book Journey Through Pakistan.
An ardent crusader of the need for close contacts between Pakistanis and Indians, as also warm cultural relationship between their two countries, Asif Noorani has spoken on the subject at various fora—in Boston, New Delhi and Karachi. These subjects have been a recurring theme in his writings too.