I am from Karachi

and that automatically makes me 10 times cooler than you?

With apologies to the expats who would rather remember Karachi as the embodiment of a cool, urban city - resilient, magical, quirky - hard as nails.  We have with truckloads of art; we have each evening topped by a Sheema Kirmani dance.  We are mired in poverty, but the fighting spirit of a black belt -- industrious, hospitable, and blacklisted.  

No one wants to come to Club Karachi because it's dangerous.  Yet you all want to be here, because once you get our love, everything is second best.  When you come here , we show you a good time.  We take you to Manora - we show you the Hindu temples, the sheedi bastis; we play you some nice tennis in private lawns in Malir.  We drink you some margaritas - we take you for Bakra on winter evenings that make you swoon.  We show you the city lights - still burning despite the power cuts.  Its kinda cool on a brief vacation, or a teeny development mission - when the lights go out- and the third world seems quainter, duskier, warmer.  You may even want to climb up a public bus and experience the quaintness from up there.  And we can talk  We talk and we talk.  And we tell you why we are so special.  And when you go home you even believe us. 

So here is why I am automatically 10 times cooler than you.

1. We can get drunk on Murree vodka at the french beach, and then toss the can, the bottle, and the box it came in into the sea, and watch the gentle warm waves toss these back and forth on the moonlit seashore, while couples greedily smooch back at the hut.

2.  If I am pretty boy from the slums, better still a pretty boy with white skin, I can dress up in drag, and walk the streets freely.  And with some luck I may be able to find safe, paying customers who simply want to weep all night as they tell me about their repressed sexualities.  (The worst customers are the taliban - they don't pay, they say hoors are prettier, and then they blow up.)

3. And if I survive till next year, I will have enough money to open a bank account.  And with 2 lakh rupees clutched in my nail polish hands, I will proudly walk into anyone of the 43,000 banks in the city. I can, if I want , choose Islamic banking or Silk banking.  Thank goodness for Dubai. 

4.  And thank goodness for the Chief Justice - he will take a suo motu for anyone and anything.  Will your CJ do that?  He even declared last year that transgendered people are people, you know, with rights and stuff.  (Ok, so that didn't get me a better job; but stop bitching because it's cool, WAY cool.)

5.  And if my sister asks me if I could be her pimp, (so she can have 2 lakhs too) I will tell her it isn't safe for girls to stand on street corners.  The taliban don't like that part.  But she can work at a beauty parlor, and wax rich women, and maybe find a madam that way.  We have so many freedoms. 

6.  I can, If I am menopausal, play tambola every night .  So what if they knocked down the casinos?  I can do Mondays Gymkhana -  Tuesdays Karachi Club - Wednesdays Sailors Club.  I can buy a dozen cards, and play full house, and I can go home with 500 rupees and toaster ovens every night and use terms like snowball and lucky for some, number 13, and pretend that its 1969 while my husband stares vacuously at 12 year old girls.

7. And on the weekend when I get a break from Bingo night, I do committees.  Forget, that it make no sense, and no interest - I just love Mrs. Jalbani's fried fish with pepsi.

8.  If I am 40 and single and male, no worries.  I have the distinct privilege of finding women 24 years younger than me to marry me because I am wealthy.  You may think  this is a form of legalized prostitution.  It is.  But all I gotta say is no one is bloody forcing these young women.

9. Ok, I think this one makes me pretty cool - I used to think it was so cruel that people begged with babies cradled in their arms.  Then I found out the babies were drugged.  I was crushed.  But now I have developed a thick skin.  I no longer worry when I see the kids.  They come to my window - their noses barely reach.  I know it's a harsh life, and all, but it really isn't my fault.  Pretty cool, na! How resilient we are.

10. I can hire a a child to be my maid and when anyone tells me, that is child labor, I can turn around and tell the wannabee social worker, I am saving her from a life of starvation in her village.  She was all skin and bones last year, and now this girl stuffs her face with spinach and cheese samosas.   And we let her.

11. We don't give labor rights so they have to protest in their factories and mills all the time, but the good thing is we don't get to read about it because media does not like such stories.  Life is not a bed of roses, but we don't like misery shoved down our throats all the time.  You have your nice life, your salads, your bars, and your meadows - we have to fight to get our peace and relaxation.


12. And we forget horrors fast, you know.  If you had jalooses of bombs, stampedes for flour, vigilantes burning, chemical explosions, 3 year olds being raped, witch hunts for talibs every single day - you would too.  And that's why you admire our spirit.  We cast these sordid memories aside, and we start each new day on a fresh slate.  We are the brave and the bold.  We are the cool.  


(And oh, I have no idea what happened to those women who were killed in the stampede for flour.  I don't think they got compensation.)  


Oblivion zindabad!

13.  Oh, we say inshallah and mashallah, not because we are religious, but it adds a touch you know...like we know we're not infallible, and maybe there is something, someone out there watching us and wishing us well (I think I saw his toe peeping out from a cloud) -- because we so cool, and we are, of course, automatically 10 times cooler than you.

Oh, fudge, I just realized I can't go on because there are too many reasons why we are cooler...I mean we run lights; we slaughter animals on the street and leave their remains and the bands we used to stop them from fleeing our blades.  Such cool urban paraphernalia.  


It makes you want to write a novel.