O Karachi

Mr. Kazi,

The Karachi that you talk of is dripping with wealth. Only a selected few will be able to relate to it. Your have missed out on a large part of Karachi. You`re reminiscing your childhood.

Continue living your picture perfect existence ensconed in a glass panelled office on the highest floor of a leviathan of a building, and we Karachites will consider ourselves blessed everytime you spare a thought for our city.

Cheers.
Cheers.

#2 by temporal on March 22, 2003 2:57pm PT
a quick query for now...are you talat`s brother?...more later....t

No I am not Talat`s brother.

Shahzad:

Very good article on a Pakistani city. You really grew up in a very good place.

Karachi that I knew as an outsider:

Getting shocked at realization of our `Paindooness` on our first trip to the city from the NWFP.

Getting even more shocked to see so many girl students at NED and Karachi University. Readily accepting that female students at the latter university outnumbered males by 2:1

Sindhi villagers racing their donkey carts every Friday between Malir Cantt and Nipa Roundabout using small drum to encourage the donkeys.

Private zoo of the Rukkunuddins located off the beaten path off super highway (Shahzad: I suggest that you go for `opt an animal program` here).

Driving off the beaten path to reach Hub Dam wildlife sanctuary and while on the way noticing some familiar NWFP related wall slogans like ``Benazir ka khana kharab `` in Frontier Colony.

Heading off from Manora Island for deep sea fishing, catching fish and then not being able to eat later for we had so much of sympathy for them.

Participating in 2nd Kidney Center walk.

Biking off to Paradise Point, French Beach and Cape Munro (?) with friends

I still enjoy visiting Karachi (last visit in 2001). I have enjoyed Karachi`s past, have enjoyed its presence and InshaÁllah will enjoy its future too.

Its good to cherish the past memories, but there is no point in living in them.

Re:#15 ...my dear fellow karachiite , yes i pretty much relate to everything u said
````The wind in my hair in a rickshaw (Paindu but fun as hell) ````
why is travelling in a rickshaw considered paindu? maybe you have a definition of paindu...on one hand u said u wish u could change ````Women who can spend lifetimes in status symbols ````
and on the other u cannot say u relished travelling in a rickshaw without clarifying u considered it paindu.
Some of my fondest memories include rickshaws and buses...does that qualify me as a paindu?
Im sorry im not attacking u - just want to know the psyche behind this statement..

This article would have been as appealing without the following.

1. your grandfather`s white De-soto
2. the white uniformed chauffer
3. your father`s buick roadmaster
4. The Sind Club
5. Karachi Gymkhana
however, if the idea was to impress the reader with your social status in Karachi of the bygone days,congratulations...you have succeeded.

More ``freedom`` in J&K. The only good thing to come out this sadness is that local people will understand better who they need ``azadi`` from...


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Kashmir-Guerrilla-Killed.html

Ex-Guerrilla Leader Assassinated in Kashmir

SRINAGAR, India (AP) -- Abdul Majid Dar, who once headed Kashmir`s biggest guerrilla group Hezb-ul Mujahedeen, was shot and killed Sunday by masked gunmen, police said.

Dar was killed in the town of Sopore, a separatist stronghold 30 miles north of Srinagar, the summer capital of India`s Jammu-Kashmir state.

Dar`s mother and sister were also injured in the shooting, a police official said on condition of anonymity.

Dar was supervising construction work at the site of his new house in Sopore when the gunmen arrived in a car and fired at him, the official said.

Police released no further details. The officer declined to comment on whether police suspect any group for the attack.

Dar was Hezb`s top commander in Indian-controlled Kashmir until two years ago, when the group`s Pakistan-based leader sacked him for offering to hold talks with the Indian government.

In response to #5,
How dare you, sir. How dare you question anybody`s right to do what they please with their time, present or past. If it is the wasting of your time that you are so very concerned about, germs of which are rarely seen in Pakistanis, then allow me to point to the Back button on your browser that will take you back to the point where you came from and I am not referring to the rock that was moved.

At the expense of being susceptible to a true Pakistani drug of choice, the dispensation of which, all of us Pakistanis like to deliver more than anything else, unsolicited ``non-constructive`` advice, allow me to point to the above made rudiment from the manual of common sense, emphatically, and add that you should invest in a good punching bag and leave the keyboard for the production of meaningfull critique of whatever material you come across. If you do not have that to offer please do not go out on a limb resting on conjectures about somebody`s memories/fantasies in whatever shape or form.

On your point of any other Karachiites or ex-Karachiites actively involved with the affairs of the metrapolis and as far as doing something about the situation in Karachi, I would like to take this opportunity, and invite you and others on this forum to go to the site,

http://www.koshish.org/

A site that represents an organization doing a great deal for Karachi and areas other than that great city. I live in the bay area where this organization is based and I am involved in it. I know I am doing my bit and I am sure the person who wrote this article is probably doing what s/he can too. On top of that if s/he is able to put a little bit together about something s/he cherishes and shares it with us, then perhaps we should learn to respect that.

Correct me if I`m wrong, but isn`t there a strange sort of invisible divide between the defence/clifton crowd and the nazimabad/korangi crowd? I can`t claim to know much about karachi but i have noticed this...it`s like two different set of cultures with separate ideals, ways of talking and dressing etc. living in one city, each looking down upon the other. Kamila Shamsi has also dealt with this in her book `Salt and Saffron`. Why is this almost tangible divide so pronounced in Karachi? I know it exists in Lahore too but not to the extent one sees it in Karachi. It`s not because Karachi is a cosmopolitan hodge podge of different identities etc. It`s more like there`s the `paindu` crowd (forgive me for using the word but it is just something this article and ensuing discussion has invariably brought forth) and then there`s the `posh` crowd of KGS etc...and between the two of them, it`s difficult to pinpoint where the REAL karachi is...what gives?

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#25 by Sobia on March 23, 2003 10:56pm PT
Correct me if I`m wrong, but isn`t there a strange sort of invisible divide between the defence/clifton crowd and the nazimabad/korangi crowd?

I guess the way it works is that the dividing lines are two rivers, namely the Lyari river and the Malir river. Historically Karachi stretched from the port of Keamari to a little bit beyond the Saddar area and the Garden area. There was nothing North of the Lyari river and only small fishing villages to the South of the Malir river. Post partition, the bulk of the immigrants settled in tent villages North of the Lyari river. Subsequently residential areas like Nazimabad, Azizabad and Federal B Area were created. The divide was hence created between the original Karachiites ad the new immigrants. After the creation of the Landhi and Korangi industrial areas to the South of the Malir river, labour colonies started to develop in these areas. So we can see some sort of ehnic as well as economic divide.

The old upscale areas were Garden, Clifton and Bath Island. Defence Housing Society is a relatively new phenomenon, ans was created in the sixties for army officers. Therefore, this area initially became Punjabi dominated. Most of the army officers subsequently sold the plots alloted to them and people aspiring to move up in life started to move in and made the area more cospmopolitan.

afrasiyab #23 Hmmmmmmmmmmmm....well....OK. If you say so.
:-)

Sobia,

You`re right in that there is a significant difference ``between the defence/clifton crowd and the nazimabad/korangi crowd``; it`s almost two different worlds. But I`d be hard-pressed to believe you don`t have the same in most large cities. I`m not sure you`ll agree with me, but I find the divide sharper in Lahore, maybe because people are trying to cover it up all the time.
The ``real`` Karachi; I`m not sure there is such a thing. Perhaps it`s better to say that Karachi operates on several levels of tolerance, a sliding scale where one end is harmony and the other breakdown or civic terrorism.

Kazi,

Take a holiday from the florida home, go to Karachi, learn some urdu so that you can read the backward reading language. All of its verbs are from hindi, a language of inaction.

In the street corners you can see large posters, they are calling for kashmir jihad. Go to a mosque, even in the poshest area, they will be making collections for jihad. Read about dawood ibrahim, ask a man in the street why pakistan treats dawood as a hero, find the similarity with gaznavi.

Go to the lakers meeting, see for yourself the money poering in from the mums and dads to keep the jihad alive. Kazi, pakistan is a society that legalises killings, laskers can thrive by stating that they are killing kafirs, well my friend, if the jihad is about killing to reach heaven after death, please have mercy on the so called criminals who wants good time right here. These poor criminals need your sypathy, a society that poromises heaven for killers has at least an obligation to have at least some happinss on earth for killings. Karach is living up to the principle of pak creation.

paagalinsan,

I am saddened by your post that CIA created jihadists, coming from an other wise very sane person. Pakistan as a society, having denounced everything india, having created the gaznavis as heror, was in a vacuum , looking for an identity. The last speach of jinnaha really confounded the people, the land created for islam cannot be a secular country, simple as that, especially with the doctrine of TNT and the ethnic cleansing. The CIA came as a solution to the pak problem, today it is Jihadic Republic of Pakistan. It has an identity, do not blame the cia, they acted only as a catalyst.

Look at the latest al quida arrets, they are from all over the country, from the well to do are the supportes of jihad, see tahmed as the shining example. NWFP has sharia laws, chopping and stoning are about to start, long live

Jihadic Republic of Pakistan. That is till the cookie cutters atart falling. Pak history and hope can only be a an afghan kind of liberation.

Would somebody like to post photographs of Karachi somewhere here?

Also, I have it on authority that kababs in Delhi are far better than kabas in Karachi.

#11 by ahmedmadani on March 22, 2003 7:39pm PT. L.A. Khan (Mohajir Supremo) was culprit he started campaign aginst ousting over 40% Hindus who were cream of society they were mwecilessly driven in madness to make sure that Indians are filled and LA Khan has secure base politically.

Here is a little tid bit of history that might interest some of the readers.
At the time of partiiton, Khan Bahadur Ayub Khuhro became the first Chief Minister of Sindh. Soon after partition riots started near the Empress Market in Karachi and a crowd gathered to burn the shops and homes of Hindus in the area. On hearing this, Ayub Khuhro took a contingent of police and went to the Empress Market. When he got there, he got out of his car with a revolver in his hand and told the crowd that he would shoot the first man who raised a hand against any Hindu or his property. The crowd took heed and dispersed.

On returning home, he was informed that the Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan wanted to speak to him. Mr. Khuhro called up the Prime Minister and when Liaqat Ali Khan came on line, he asked Mr. Khuhro about the riots in Karachi. Ayub Khuhro told him that he did not have to worry about anything as the riots have been quelled. At this Liaqat Ali Khan said to Mr. Khuhro that that was exactly the issue. He said that you should not have stopped the riots. If we do not force these Hindus to leave, how will we create space for our brothers who are coming from India.

I was not there, but have heard this story from someone who was told this first hand by Ayub Khuhro.