Karachi has changed so much since we were here last. I remember being introduced to Faiz when I was fifteen. Never before had I realized that Urdu could exist outside of Jamil Javed's classes where he read Prem Chand, mostly to himself, and occasionally insulted one of the boys. We would walk from Saint Pats to Cadgy's accounts tuitions, stopping for student biryani on the way. Then it began to strike me that X would always be there waiting for us while we spent the one hour between chemistry with Errol and accounts with Cadgy on the footpaths of Saddar. Somehow X thought I would like Faiz. Later in college when I emailed his "Mujh se pehli si mohabbat meray mahboob na mang.." to a Lebanese friend she shot me back an angry email saying she had experienced a whole lot of upheaval in Beirut, and had cousins who got killed.
Anyways, so we would sit in this one particular street in Saddar and watch the cars go by; once a girl drove by and he got mad that she had a car and he didn't. X came by bus from Shah Faisal. A straight "A" kid. Punjabi Christian with a huge chip on his shoulders about class, and on being a minority. He told me he hated the words "Islamic Republic of Pakistan" on his passport, and wished he could erase it; I would try to talk about equality and tolerance, except I was a political fool then.
Despite going to a school where Urdu was shunned and relegated to the status of second language, we had an active Urdu society; every year we did bait baazi, and memorized a whole bunch of sher. After newly discovering Faiz, I decided to steer away from Ghalib, Meer and Iqbal. Clumsily, I delivered "bahar aai to jaisay yaqbar laut aaien hain phir adam se, vo khwaab saarey shabab saarey..." and my voice tapered off, as I saw JJ shaking his head, and mumbling into the folds of his neck that said he could not accept it. Faiz started to mean something only because of Victor Kiernan (and later Agha Shahid Ali's) English translations.
Of late I have wanted to visit gandhi garden; its just a few miles away but seems like a different planet. I have only just looked at the area on google earth. There is a street called Udhay Ram. It shows up on the map - and it is the street we grew up in, the refugees of rizvi manzil, my accomplices in life-- scattered now as far as the shores of Jersey, still reeling . You all know who you are. There we suffered endless summers and berating from a certain sharp tongued aunt whose mission was to remind us of my father's financial failings. At the end of the street there was an informal settlement by the Lyari river. The newly constructed expressway has changed the look of the entire area on the maps. This expressway displaced 200,000 people, and they were never heard from again.
The entire garden-saddar-clifton bridge circuit was my world. It was safe; yet the odd blast at Bohri Bazar was a portent of changes to come. The owner of Liberty Uniform in a wheel chair from her wounds, a gloomy image of the future. I occasionally walked in Saddar alone, and even several miles from Metropole to Garden West. I took my five year old sister to the zoo; we were chased by a balloon wala who I tried to photograph surreptitiously. I once hitched a Victoria home alone with the same sister. We laughed the driver dropped the umbrella and it felt like we were sitting in the middle of the road. We had no money, and we were hoping we could find a grown-up when we reached home to pay the fare. My mother and I took rickshas to jubilee and once she got into an argument about the fare and the driver got mad; he drove off in a huff and we were both afraid he would come back and retaliate. The worst was the several minutes wait on "zed 2" on my ride home from Cadgys. The bus would pause at Regal chowk, and we would wait impatiently and crossly in the humidity and smoke as the bus driver filled some quota. The moment the driver stepped on the gas was truly a moment of relief -- as was when the conductor decided to have mercy on our smart upbringing and stopped near our house rather than the next official stop. My Parsi friend, S, and I would take a bus to Dar ul Sukoon where we volunteered on Fridays with Sister Gertrude.
Apart from a few strange character, nothing felt more natural, and more human than to walk in the streets, and take public transport - buses, rickshas, gora garis.
This story is not about X. I was not able to deal with his angst. Plus, his best friend and I started going out, and he was simply put, prettier, and a much more outrageous flirt. Never mind yet that he read Ayn Rand. Its about how much my experience of Karachi has changed since moving back here. Its true I was a child then, and you then take your world in without judgment and without too much introspection. You have nothing to compare it to, and its your own canvas. It often strangles you. Boston and New York are magical cities, but this isn't about their unbearable cuteness.
I was no longer on the saddar corridor. My existence was fast forwarded several years into the elite gangster streets of Clifton and Defence, with its graffiti of the 90s, the spray painted penis signs, its gallant army parks, its boutiques, and malls. The streets vendors around the seaside of Clifton and Seaview were forcibly removed, and the city streets were gentrified. Sea shell sellers and fakirs could no longer be a part of the posh seafront. Traditional camel walas were replaced with a more enterprising group of pathans. In the space where Playland once stood, a builder with military connections, is constructing a multi storeyed tower. He's excavated the earth with caterpillars. In the place where Mideast hospital once stood, we are to expect a five star hotel and a shopping mall. Where our mothers once haggled with store keepers, the society aunts of today, purchase lawn in air-conditioned stores at exorbitant prices. Our interface with dhobis and doodhwalas at a new minimal. The stores are filled with the children from Karachi -- a whole new generation of people in their 20s looking for jobs, and accepting Rs.5,000 for eight hour days; they dare not organize against the exploitative employers. There is high turn-over.
I started getting invited to parties at the golf club where a large lawn and line of villas overlook a body of water. Its green plains defy the fact that this is a city that faces acute water shortage. My sister, also a defence resident, got no water in her house. Her kitchen counter was lined with tens of plastic pepsi bottles filled with water. Urban still life of an utterly Pakistani generation.
From the golf club, you can see the Turkish power ship which supplies the city some of its power at rip off rates. Sneeringly it puffs. On the other side of the Turkish ship, there is the village of Ibrahim Hyderi where fisher families live in complete squalor. Here and in nearby Rehri Goth mothers do not send their children to school. There is a high incidence of drug use. Children peel shrimps at slave rates, and hygiene is so poor, its a stark contrast the the mothers on the other shore splashing their children's hands with sanitizers.
Its like the city has left them behind in its quest for ugly, mindless development. Senseless flyovers that appease the elite, yet as Tasneem Siddiqui points out, have led to pedestrians' being inconvenienced, and walking miles just to cross over to the other side.
The Pakistan fisherfolk forum (PFF) represents the interests of the coastal and inland fishing communities. Over the last decade they have waged a struggle on various issues - the contract system, the detention of Indian and Pakistani fishermen who inadvertently cross sea borders, the destruction of the mangroves (the birthing center of all sealife,) and the criminal excesses of foreign and local large trawlers who would scrape the seabed in search of quality fish, and would then throw the ones they didn't need back into the ocean, usually dead.
Their fishing boats are hopelessly out of date -- smeared, as we are told by a member of PFF, from the fat found in the bellies of sharks Their traditional practices of making ships and nets appear, beautiful, artful, but stranded in time. The contract system was and is economically crippling. A landlord fisherman grants licenses to indigenous fisherfolk and would take a lion's share of the proceeds from their catch. Despite PFF's campaign against the system, it remains in tact in many places in Sindh, and is a debilitating business model that has contributed to, in addition to state neglect, the desperation of the neighborhood Teenagers auction themselves to a Russian garment factory that dubiously promises them a diploma if they are work at exploitative low wages for three months. There seems little political will in leadership to do anything here. Its all about real estate and cuts now - and big businesses buying off small partners. Old trades ruthlessly crushed by modernity bereft of vision.
Anyways, so we would sit in this one particular street in Saddar and watch the cars go by; once a girl drove by and he got mad that she had a car and he didn't. X came by bus from Shah Faisal. A straight "A" kid. Punjabi Christian with a huge chip on his shoulders about class, and on being a minority. He told me he hated the words "Islamic Republic of Pakistan" on his passport, and wished he could erase it; I would try to talk about equality and tolerance, except I was a political fool then.
Despite going to a school where Urdu was shunned and relegated to the status of second language, we had an active Urdu society; every year we did bait baazi, and memorized a whole bunch of sher. After newly discovering Faiz, I decided to steer away from Ghalib, Meer and Iqbal. Clumsily, I delivered "bahar aai to jaisay yaqbar laut aaien hain phir adam se, vo khwaab saarey shabab saarey..." and my voice tapered off, as I saw JJ shaking his head, and mumbling into the folds of his neck that said he could not accept it. Faiz started to mean something only because of Victor Kiernan (and later Agha Shahid Ali's) English translations.
Of late I have wanted to visit gandhi garden; its just a few miles away but seems like a different planet. I have only just looked at the area on google earth. There is a street called Udhay Ram. It shows up on the map - and it is the street we grew up in, the refugees of rizvi manzil, my accomplices in life-- scattered now as far as the shores of Jersey, still reeling . You all know who you are. There we suffered endless summers and berating from a certain sharp tongued aunt whose mission was to remind us of my father's financial failings. At the end of the street there was an informal settlement by the Lyari river. The newly constructed expressway has changed the look of the entire area on the maps. This expressway displaced 200,000 people, and they were never heard from again.
The entire garden-saddar-clifton bridge circuit was my world. It was safe; yet the odd blast at Bohri Bazar was a portent of changes to come. The owner of Liberty Uniform in a wheel chair from her wounds, a gloomy image of the future. I occasionally walked in Saddar alone, and even several miles from Metropole to Garden West. I took my five year old sister to the zoo; we were chased by a balloon wala who I tried to photograph surreptitiously. I once hitched a Victoria home alone with the same sister. We laughed the driver dropped the umbrella and it felt like we were sitting in the middle of the road. We had no money, and we were hoping we could find a grown-up when we reached home to pay the fare. My mother and I took rickshas to jubilee and once she got into an argument about the fare and the driver got mad; he drove off in a huff and we were both afraid he would come back and retaliate. The worst was the several minutes wait on "zed 2" on my ride home from Cadgys. The bus would pause at Regal chowk, and we would wait impatiently and crossly in the humidity and smoke as the bus driver filled some quota. The moment the driver stepped on the gas was truly a moment of relief -- as was when the conductor decided to have mercy on our smart upbringing and stopped near our house rather than the next official stop. My Parsi friend, S, and I would take a bus to Dar ul Sukoon where we volunteered on Fridays with Sister Gertrude.
Apart from a few strange character, nothing felt more natural, and more human than to walk in the streets, and take public transport - buses, rickshas, gora garis.
This story is not about X. I was not able to deal with his angst. Plus, his best friend and I started going out, and he was simply put, prettier, and a much more outrageous flirt. Never mind yet that he read Ayn Rand. Its about how much my experience of Karachi has changed since moving back here. Its true I was a child then, and you then take your world in without judgment and without too much introspection. You have nothing to compare it to, and its your own canvas. It often strangles you. Boston and New York are magical cities, but this isn't about their unbearable cuteness.
I was no longer on the saddar corridor. My existence was fast forwarded several years into the elite gangster streets of Clifton and Defence, with its graffiti of the 90s, the spray painted penis signs, its gallant army parks, its boutiques, and malls. The streets vendors around the seaside of Clifton and Seaview were forcibly removed, and the city streets were gentrified. Sea shell sellers and fakirs could no longer be a part of the posh seafront. Traditional camel walas were replaced with a more enterprising group of pathans. In the space where Playland once stood, a builder with military connections, is constructing a multi storeyed tower. He's excavated the earth with caterpillars. In the place where Mideast hospital once stood, we are to expect a five star hotel and a shopping mall. Where our mothers once haggled with store keepers, the society aunts of today, purchase lawn in air-conditioned stores at exorbitant prices. Our interface with dhobis and doodhwalas at a new minimal. The stores are filled with the children from Karachi -- a whole new generation of people in their 20s looking for jobs, and accepting Rs.5,000 for eight hour days; they dare not organize against the exploitative employers. There is high turn-over.
I started getting invited to parties at the golf club where a large lawn and line of villas overlook a body of water. Its green plains defy the fact that this is a city that faces acute water shortage. My sister, also a defence resident, got no water in her house. Her kitchen counter was lined with tens of plastic pepsi bottles filled with water. Urban still life of an utterly Pakistani generation.
From the golf club, you can see the Turkish power ship which supplies the city some of its power at rip off rates. Sneeringly it puffs. On the other side of the Turkish ship, there is the village of Ibrahim Hyderi where fisher families live in complete squalor. Here and in nearby Rehri Goth mothers do not send their children to school. There is a high incidence of drug use. Children peel shrimps at slave rates, and hygiene is so poor, its a stark contrast the the mothers on the other shore splashing their children's hands with sanitizers.
Its like the city has left them behind in its quest for ugly, mindless development. Senseless flyovers that appease the elite, yet as Tasneem Siddiqui points out, have led to pedestrians' being inconvenienced, and walking miles just to cross over to the other side.
The Pakistan fisherfolk forum (PFF) represents the interests of the coastal and inland fishing communities. Over the last decade they have waged a struggle on various issues - the contract system, the detention of Indian and Pakistani fishermen who inadvertently cross sea borders, the destruction of the mangroves (the birthing center of all sealife,) and the criminal excesses of foreign and local large trawlers who would scrape the seabed in search of quality fish, and would then throw the ones they didn't need back into the ocean, usually dead.
Their fishing boats are hopelessly out of date -- smeared, as we are told by a member of PFF, from the fat found in the bellies of sharks Their traditional practices of making ships and nets appear, beautiful, artful, but stranded in time. The contract system was and is economically crippling. A landlord fisherman grants licenses to indigenous fisherfolk and would take a lion's share of the proceeds from their catch. Despite PFF's campaign against the system, it remains in tact in many places in Sindh, and is a debilitating business model that has contributed to, in addition to state neglect, the desperation of the neighborhood Teenagers auction themselves to a Russian garment factory that dubiously promises them a diploma if they are work at exploitative low wages for three months. There seems little political will in leadership to do anything here. Its all about real estate and cuts now - and big businesses buying off small partners. Old trades ruthlessly crushed by modernity bereft of vision.
Occasionally a blast will rock the news, and the city's itchy blanket will cover up quickly. Homes bustle again with informal labor, the fishers cast their nets. A slower violence is in motion now. They are driven out from more seas - removed further from prosperity. An LNG terminal will displace hundreds of fishermen from fishing grounds near Port Qasim. It is proposed to be built by the multinational alliance of Engro and Vopak. Its a $115 million investment and on the face of it has all the signs of an effort at earnest modernizing. Cheap acquisition of an environmentally safe energy source. But this super plant will not uplift communities it will displace - they still will not have access to safe drinking water. The environmental assessors copy and paste language from their database, give a passing nod to mangrove replacements, and compensation in case of accident. Things that never will be. To seal the deal, they end with a buffet at a fancy hotel. It would be nice revenge to bring thousands of hawks bay villagers to the hotel to listen in to environmental impact hearing. It would be funny if things were not so desperate. There is no room for anarchist pleasure here.
A place of multitudes of contradictions. A city of hard facts and hard working labor. Truly, a city of lights, that can't ever be romanticized. Its a slap in the face. Its the knock, one day, of a overly powdered hijra; its the fist, one day, of a mugger wearing a beard as a disguise. This is where hundreds of girls dream of becoming entrepreneurs as they glue bangles in their homes, feeling that they can beat the system, if they work fast enough. And they can. Its a city of nurses on strike. Its a city full of girls.
11 comments:
hmm i think we should do that tour of garden and saddar, like we had talked about.
That was beautiful.
May I use your "takht uchalein jaein gi" line in reference to the recent Osama Bin Ladin imbroglio?
possibly the best piece of writing i have ever read on karachi.
"My existence was fast forwarded several years into the elite gangster streets of Clifton and Defence, with its graffiti of the 90s, the spray painted penis signs, its gallant army parks, its boutiques, and malls. "
"He's excavated the earth with caterpillars. "
"Occasionally a blast will rock the news, and the city's itchy blanket will cover up quickly."
"Truly, a city of lights, that can't ever be romanticized. Its a slap in the face. Its the knock, one day, of a overly powdered hijra; its the fist, one day, of a mugger wearing a beard as a disguise."
Excellent observations. this blog just keeps getting better.
btw two issues.
you end with the city of girls. i remember once i was sitting at boat basin at 2 in the morning, and was surrounded by people. and i realised that the only women in view were on billboards. and that since women outnumber men in pakistan, then theoretically there was at least one woman in doors or out of sight for each of these thousands upon thousands of men. and it struck me as so bizarre that this was normal for us. for all the men to be expected to be out, and women to be indoors. one giant launda party. would have loved to read more of that as well, but you can't have everything.
secondly, you dated someone who read Ayn Rand? #FAIL
*"would have loved to read more of that"
i meant to say more on this 'city of girls' rather than launda party, of which i've experienced enough.
You know Sir Errol from Saint Pats too! Good to hear that I'm not the only one listening to his Sri Lankan adventures.
I second Karachikhatmal. I'm tired of this long launda party.
I've constantly been getting annoyed around all my friends and I realise that we have one long launda party going from Karachi all the way to North America. That "scattered now as far as the shores of Jersey" is appropriate. Please talk about this city of girls we haven't seen.
Wow.! I second (third)Karachi Khatmal.Really.
Awesome blog!
*Following u*
This was mesmerizing. Just mesmerizing. And made me think throughout that you need to write fiction.
I left a comment the other day. Where did it go? :((
I thought this piece was just mesmerizing and I think you could make a great fiction writer.
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