| January 28, 2002 | Monday | Ziqa’ad 13, 1422 |
Mein bhi graduate hoon tu bhi graduate
Lets withdraw unilaterally!
Echoes of a musical region that has gone tragically off key
Cleanliness first, cosmetics later: Karachi file
A misunderstood community
IN the past the provincial government was bitterly criticized for ignoring the problems of pollution, congestion, lack of playgrounds, parks, civic services and other facilities. It had become a bureaucratic tradition to defend the outgoing officials though their decisions were wrong, absurd and anti-people.
However, at times well-meaning people would prevail on the policy-makers to change some of their decisions, if not all. Apparently, ill-conceived policies were motivated by a criminal intention to earn more money or plunder public funds through illegitimate means. It remained common in Balochistan till recently.
Almost a decade back there was a proposal for constructing a truck and bus terminal on the outskirts of the Quetta city, with the shifting of the vegetable and fruit market. An international donor agency had first spread the idea that it was ready to finance such a project. Officials dealing with international agencies or involved in parleys jumped over it as they wanted to mint quick millions.
Using middlemen, they bought the land for the project at cheap rates from the local people and then sold it to the government for building a complex, at present known as Hazar Ganji Complex. Strangely enough, the government entrusted those very officials with the task of constructing the complex. Now, the final stage has arrived for shifting the bus and truck terminals to the new place.
The present bus terminal, built in the 1970s, is located at Satellite Township whereas the new complex is over 15km away from the main city centre. The establishment of the bus terminal outside the city has been criticized by many people who cite the example of mega cities of the world where bus terminals are located in the main city centres. But officials in Quetta are asking the people to hire a rickshaw ( the least fare being Rs50) for reaching the bus terminal while the inter-city fare is about Rs20 for the nearest townships.
Secondly, the policemen in Quetta are not trained enough to curb the rising crime rate while the road leading to the bus terminal is haunted by criminals. It is not possible for passengers to reach the bus terminal during the night or in the early hours. The authorities will simply put the lives and property of the people at risk by shifting the bus terminal to Hazar Ganji Complex.
On the other hand, the local councillors and Nazims have an eye on two plots to be vacated with the shifting of bus and truck terminals. They propose to build a park on the one and a hospital on the other. Quetta has two major provincial government hospitals of BMC Complex and the Sandeman Hospital, besides the German-aided Children Hospital and the Sheikh Zayad bib Sultan Hospital in this provincial capital.
These hospitals are already eating away 75 per cent of the provincial health budget. The newly-commissioned provincial government or teaching hospital is receiving over 75 per cent Afghan refugees as patients. It is surrounded by two huge settlements of Kharotabad and Hazara Township with hundred per cent Afghan refugee populations.
When asked to offer comments, Mohammad Zakir, director-general of QDA, defended the decision, saying that shifting of the bus terminal was necessary for combating the problem of congestion and, consequently, the problem of pollution. Both the places would provide big open spaces for the Quetta city. On the one would be built a big park while on the other the Quetta City government plans to build a hospital.
Mohammad Zakir, who carries rich experience about civic bodies in Karachi where he held high positions in the KDA and the KMC until recently, insisted that the huge inflow and outflow of trucks and buses would have to be diverted to the entry point of the Quetta city. “ Without it, the Quetta city will continue to be the most polluted city of Pakistan,” Mr Zakir argued. He thought that Quetta is the fastest growing city of Pakistan, receiving the population influx from Iran and Afghanistan, besides the influx from rural areas.
He said two truck and bus terminals would be established at the northern and southern entry points of the Quetta valley. The heavy vehicles with unlimited cargo must be unloaded at the entry point, he said.
Secondly, the heavy traffic will have to be diverted far away from the main population centres to avoid pollution.
IT is hazardous under all circumstances to base your columns on newspaper reports. Such reports have a habit of evaporating overnight or being contradicted the next morning. However, I intend to stick my neck out for this once, at least. The report I have chosen today is based on a press conference addressed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman, Gen Tanvir Husain Naqvi. It was also telecast on Tuesday night before appearing in the morning papers on Wednesday. As we know, the number of the National Assembly seats has been increased from 237 to 350 —- a jump of 113.
Giving the breakdown of the seat allocation, Gen Naqvi said that the Punjab’s quota had been increased from 115 to 147, Sindh from 46 to 59, the NWFP from 26 to 32, Balochistan from 11 to 14 and FATA from eight to 12.
Very good, tres bien. This is a revolutionary step, indeed, because it will ensure the continuation of the NAB as a permanent institution to ensure that the 350 MNAs remain on the straight and narrow path of moral, financial and ethical rectitude. Furthermore, it will now become extremely difficult to break the quorum when the house is in session because it would always be possible to show the requisite number of stragglers in the NA cafeteria into the assembly hall.
And, since there will be fewer voters in any given constituency, they will play it hard to get with the result that the price per voter will increase which will lead to a more equitable distribution of national wealth. So, this will be our first step on the road to establishing a truly egalitarian society. At election-time at least, Pakistan will also become a Land of Opportunity. Just like the United States. If I were president, I would increase the number of NA seats to 700 for a more even handed distribution of wealth. Or wait. Why not have the largest parliament in the world by restricting each constituency to a maximum of 144 voters? With a population of 144 million we will then have a 1,000,000 —- member national assembly. Milk and honey all over and, above all, everyone will be as honest as the next man.
Another report: “A high-level meeting here on Tuesday (January 23) decided not to waive the compulsory condition of being a graduate for anyone interested in contesting the national assembly election.”
Excellent. Tres bien! But the bee in my bonnet continues to bother me no end. It has been nagging me ever since I read this graduation bit.
Everyone in the new assembly will be a graduate. Which means that we shall have the world’s most literate parliament. We have established beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is positively no correlation between corruption and graduation and that a man or a woman becomes an angel the moment he or she graduates and then he/she renounces all manner of wrongdoing. Have a look at our bureaucracy. Isn’t every bureaucrat at least a graduate? In fact, our superior civil servants have post-graduate degrees. Aren’t they serving the nation to the best of their ability? Hue, by the way, is a case for the abolition of the federal and provincial public service commissions. Look at the quality of public servants we are having. Everywhere there is a premium on corruption, nepotism and what have you.
I assure you that the quality of our graduate MNAs will be no better and no worse than that of the bureaucrats. (No disrespect is meant here to anyone. I also know of a handful of bureaucrats by whose honesty, impartiality and integrity I can swear. Anyway, since we are going to have an all graduate national assembly, how about these lines from Akbar Allahabadi?
Mein bhi graduate hoon tu bhi graduate
Ilmi mubahisa ho zara paas aa kay late
IFTIKHAR NASIM (he styles himself as Ifti) is a gay Pakistani. He has a collection of verse to his credit, Myrmocophile: Selected poems, 1980-2000. The name Myrmocophile, we are told, means “an organism that habitually shares an ant nest.” Well, Ifti has since migrated to the United States and the book describes him thus:
“These poems describe the transition of a homosexual immigrant poet from Pakistan into an all-American gay writer and activist. His poems depict the agony of the love that dare not speak its name. Finally, when his soul is free from an all internal and external pressures of tradition and religious hypocrisy he expresses himself in the poetry about his gay longings and desires. Provocative, funny and inspiring, it will make you cry and laugh at the same time. .....
“He is currently residing in Chicago. He also writes in Urdu and Punjabi.”
Ifti may be provocative, funny and inspiring but he is also at the same time really rather silly and who says he is a poet? I can only say that I have read worse poets and that he very nearly tops the list. However, I have the greatest sympathy for him and his way of life. Life can be quite difficult without being a gay —- at least in Pakistan. There is some merit though, in his poem, Death of a Princess in which he says:
What’s the difference if a woman is beheaded
Or blown away on the highway or
Put in a golden cage.
Death comes in without knocking at the door.
Grass grows between the marble slabs.
Life goes on.
But on that moment of
Fusion and confusion
Time stood still.
My angel
My fingers are bleeding
I am collecting your feathers and
Broken glass from the road.
Think about princess Diana while you read these lines and you will like them and the man who wrote them. And for praise? Read these lines from Sara Suleri:
Ifti Nasim is extraordinary, this book of poems performs extraordinary feats. The poet’s voice is both lyrical and humorous. It ranges from social satire to the most delicate mode of elegy. Ifti Nasim is a true poet, who knows precisely to declare a sense of presence to longing to a reader. A reader is left startled, touched and longing for more.”
Emphasis added, for all the wrong reasons.
Karen Hawkins of the Windy City Times was right when she commented: “It is a well-rounded collection equal parts silly and serious.” For good measure, I am censoring his gay poetry but even there he comes up with lines like this: Like a trophy won in a marathon of fake orgasm. May Ifti live out his life the way he likes.
A WORD now about the recent two-match Test series between Pakistan and Bangladesh. Pakistan won the one-sided series by massive margins. On each occasion victory came inside of three days. Senior Pakistan cricketers have since questioned the Test status given to Bangladesh. Former skipper Javed Miandad says that the Bangladeshis are not taking their Test status seriously. Rashid Khan wants the ICC to “cancel Test matches involving Bangladesh until they (Bangladesh) prove themselves against teams like Kenya and Canada. The matches, he said, were so one-sided, they were not a good advertisement for Test cricket.
However, Zaheer Abbas says that the ICC cannot rescind Bangaldesh’s Test status. He wants Bangladesh cricketers to play in domestic tournaments in England, Pakistan, Indian and Sri Lanka. That’s a more sensible proposal. I think Bangladesh must keep their Test match status and then follow the advice proffered by Zaheer Abbas.
FOR THE NAZIM
AND finally, a letter from Dr Khawar of 29, Abubakr Block, Garden Town, Lahore. Dr Sahib writes to say:
I advise the District Nazim, Lahore, Mian Amer Mahmood, to desist from acting as a Pakistani Taliban, because it would be an exercise in futility. Porn has never been wiped out by any stringiest laws and punitive action. Such measures only serve to make the thing costlier. One has seen the great bonfire in which tons of cassettes and CDs were burnt publicly only to be replaced with many more tons of new arrivals in a short while.
Ever since man started wearing clothes, taking them off, completely or partially, has been voluptuously sought. As far vulgarity, its cure lies only in education.
For the Nazim I have another job by doing which he shall have assured himself of a place in history. It is a grassroots evil and since our Nazims and councillors have sprung from the grassroots, they alone can uproot it. The evil I refer to lies in the use of metal wires for kite flying. If he succeeds in checking this vice, he will live in the hearts of Lahorities for ever. (end of message).
Ah, but hasn’t Dr Khawar heard? Mian Amer Mahmood is the keeper of his brother’s conscience.
AFTERTHOUGHT: Better by for to be in a state of undress than to be dressed in brief authority as the Bard put it. However, a state of undress is my option, not the Bard’s.
The government has created a fiction that its decisions to effect a 180 degree turn around in Pakistan’s Afghan and Kashmir policies were dictated solely by national interests and were not the result of what some believe the military regime’s failure to resist external diplomatic and military pressures. And the tragedy is, it has come to believe its own fiction, too. Not only that. It has even begun to count the setbacks the country has suffered on our Afghan and Kashmir fronts since, as grand successes. It seems that the fiction itself was actually concocted to escape accountability of the government of the day at the hands of the people of Pakistan. Indeed, so far there has been no attempt on the part of the government to identify those who were responsible for the framing, managing and mouthing the now defunct anti-national Afghan and Kashmir policies. No one has even been brought to book for having allowed Maulana Masood Azhar of Jaish-i-Muhammad (JM) the free run of the country after he was rescued by the still unknown hijackers from the Indian jail in December 1999 and let off in Taliban’s Kandahar. Had not Masood’s JE claimed responsibility for the Srinagar Assembly bombing (the claim was later withdrawn, but the damage had already been done) the Indians would not have found it so easy to convince the world that Pakistan had a hand in the December 13 Parliament attack.
And by including in the reconstituted Kashmir Committee all those official and non-official mouthpieces of the government who had been trumpeting the now defunct Kashmir policy as the very panacea for all the ills that afflict Indo-Pakistan relations, the government has only added to the international disbelief with regard to its commitment to the promises President Gen Pervez Musharraf had made in his January 12 speech.
The euphoria that this government has created through its fiction is not letting the people of Pakistan see clearly the trap into which the President is leading it by offering talks to India from every roof top. Talks anywhere, anytime and at any level suited Pakistan when in the pre-September 11 situation India was virtually under the gun of the Jihadis. Today it is we who are under the gun and that too of not only India’s but also of the international community’s. Talks on Kashmir today do not suit us as they did not suit us soon after the 1971 military debacle. That was why the late ZA Bhutto at Simla bent backwards to bury a discussion on Kashmir in a plethora of other issues which he said would be tackled first before coming to grips with Kashmir. We are in a worse situation today. If India, after having tightened the screws enough turned around and offered to talk on the ‘core’ Kashmir issue and even allowed the US in as a mediator would we be in a position to obtain an equitable solution of the problem considering the international mood today? Of course not. It was not in India’s interest to discuss Kashmir with Pakistan after the UN resolutions asking for a plebiscite were passed in 1948. So, it kept dragging its feet until Pakistan losing patience sent in infiltrators in 1965 which led to a war and then to the Tashkent Declaration.
India continued to drag its feet after Tashkent until the 1971 war of Bangladesh. It was India’s opportunity of the century to get Pakistan agree to an imposed Kashmir solution. But Mr Bhutto with his adroit handling of the situation as well as by exploiting the international mood to his advantage managed to ward off the Indian pressures and even did his own foot dragging and took time out from talks to launch his nuclear programme.
During the Afghan war the then military dictator, Gen Ziaul Haq, despite the massive international support he was enjoying at that time, had no time for Kashmir. He even lost the Siachen Glacier while he was busy fighting the American Jihad against the Soviet Union. The succeeding elected governments made their own respective bids to bring India to the negotiating table but India refused as it did not suit it during this period to discuss Kashmir with Pakistan. By 1999 Pakistan’s economy groaning under all kinds of sanctions had almost collapsed. So India once again saw an opportunity to force an economically down and out and friendless Pakistan to forget about the UN resolutions which most of the world by then was finding non-enforceable and accept the LoC as a permanent border. So, New Delhi agreed to talk. But it goes to the credit of the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that he did another Simla on the Indians with his Lahore Declaration. Kashmir cause was saved once again to be tackled at some more opportune time. The opportune time came in Agra in 2001 but we bungled it.
Now once again we find ourselves in no position to talk to India on Kashmir. So, we must try to postpone such talks as long as we could. One way of doing this is to declare that if India did not want to talk to us, then we too are not in a hurry for talks and; then force the Indian as well as the international community’s hand by announcing unilateral withdrawal of troops from the borders saying since the Indian government is keeping the troops on the border with an eye on the forthcoming domestic election and not to go to war against Pakistan, there was no reason why Pakistan should waste its money and energy on a futile exercise. In order to pre-empt an Indian misadventure we could allow a time of lag of at least three months between announcement and the actual withdrawal.
We are today the darlings of the world for siding with the US-led Coalition in its war against terror, but no one supports us in our conflict with India. But if we could exploit creatively the advantage we enjoy with the Coalition we could perhaps hopefully neutralize the disadvantage that we suffer from on the Indian front. But this will take some time. And till then we must avoid talking to India on Kashmir at all costs. Instead, let us offer India talks on confidence building measures (CBMs) which is what they have been asking us to do before coming to grips with Kashmir since Simla!—Onlooker
AT best of times it is difficult to tell the nuanced difference between the afternoon melodies of Raag Patdeep from Bhimpalasi. But there was a time when much of India could tell at least the variations between the morning music of Raag Bhairavi and Bhairav. There was no television then, and consumerism had not been discovered as a national glue. Everyone in northern India would wake up to a bhajan by Pandit D.V. Paluskar, followed by Ustad Vilayat Khan’s magical sitar, gently wafting through the rooms from the old radio.
How many times did we hear Vilayat Khans’s trademark Bhatyaali Dhun from his native Bengal sending breadwinners of families across much of northern India off to their workplaces, and the children to their schools? Indian nationalism was not an issue, it flowed to a great degree from its music.
And there was so much variety to it. Amir Khusro’s qawwaalis, all richly flavoured with classical raags, resonating in the khwanqahas of Delhi, Lucknow or Ajmer. M.S. Subbalaxmi regaling her southern audiences with the Carnatic genre, Balgandharva and Ustad Karim Khan creating new compositions of Natya-Sangeet, an enticing form of Marathi theatre music rooted in the classical form.
And just as there are two kinds of Raag Durga there were variations from Gujarat to Bengal on the ava-tars of the goddess that the raag was named after. And did it really matter that in Gujarat Durga rode a lion and in Bengal her mount turned into the more awe-inspiring tiger? Ustad Alauddin Khan, father of the sarod wizard Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Annapurna Devi, the great surbahaar player, worshipped Durga in her form as goddess Kaali while still keeping his Islamic moorings, like the dervishes and mystics do.
Aseemun Bi, whose repertoire of avadhi sohars is believed to have heralded the birth of many of my kin, was a fixture in the court of Raja Dinesh Singh of Kaalakaankar, the latter-day foreign minister in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet. How did she bless the mothers-to-be? Allah Mian mori bhauji ka deo Nandlal (Almighty Allah I beseech you to grant to my brother the boon of a son as charming as Krishna, the divine toddler of Nand.)
Aseemun thus cross-pollinated a large tract of Uttar Pradesh with her music, picking up Hindu and Muslim idioms from her distinctly diverse audiences and presenting them as the dominant theme of the folk music that nourished the masses.
A self-confident nation could frown, but not be offended, if a Josh Malihabadi decided to cross over to Pakistan, citing whatever grouse he had.
But Josh like Faiz Ahmad Faiz would remain part of a deep Indian — if it makes some of us feel better, let’s call it a subcontinental —- consciousness. We looked up to Faiz and Josh and Firaq, with some help from the Indian Peoples Theatre Association (IPTA) and the Progressive Writers’ Association, as the cultural inspiration for an independent India. But all this was before the advent of pop Nationalism on both sides of the border.
I remember meeting Malika Pukhraj and the long and candid interview I had with her in the eighties. This was during Gen Ziaul Haq’s time. For me, it was a wondrous meeting, to be speaking to the voice that has been part of my consciousness since childhood, specially the haunting Bezubaani Zubaan Na Ho Jaaye. “You can divide a country but you cannot divide its music,” the Malika had said.
“Sargam will always be sa re ga ma pa dha ni sa, which cannot be replicated by alif bey pey tey, “ she had declared. Within a week Malika Pukhraj was banned from Radio Pakistan. There is still the taste of ashes when I remember that particular interview.
Narrow nationalism has a tinsel quality about it. One who showed it up for what it is was the extraordinary Justice Anand Narain Mulla, a Kashmiri pandit who rose to become the chief judge of the UP High Court. Mulla Sahib was a well-known Urdu poet of his time. After his retirement from the judiciary, he was elected to the Uttar Pradesh legislative council where he created quite a stir with a couplet that derided bloody-minded patriotism thus:
Khoon-i-Shaheed se bhi hai qeemat mein kuchch siwa
Fankaar ke qalam ki siyaahi ki ek boond
(Is a martyr’s blood not quite as motivating as the drop of ink from a poet’s quill? My hunch is that is how it is.)
The Jan Sangh deputies, and perhaps those of other mainstream parties too, almost lynched Justice Mulla but he managed to survive. Among the many admirers of Anand Narain Mulla were a large number of men and women who had returned from Pakistan and wanted to stay on in India. Mulla’s method of helping them stay put was a simple trick used by lawyers all over the subcontinent. He would get a stay order passed on their deportation.
Among the dozens of such hapless Pakistani citizens who had returned to their ancestral homes in Lucknow, Barabanki or other neighbouring townships was Babu Mechanic, who had returned to Lucknow unnoticed. He was the scion of a musical family who had picked up the skills of a car mechanic in Karachi. Babu was a devotee of the Sufi saint of Devasharief near Barabanki. With his musical prowess, Babu won many hearts in Dewa and beyond; with his mechanical skills he kept his lifelong tryst with Lucknow and Barabanki.
This was several decades before the tidal wave of spurious nationalism began to swamp the country. The lunatic fringe of these flag-wavers look upon all Pakistanis as quasi-terrorists and their cousins in India as potential collaborators. Mindless violence goes well with freewheeling rootlessness in music, art and anything remotely aesthetic. So, perhaps, it should not be surprising that as the decibel of fusion patriotism rises to a deafening pitch that the heart of India’s cultural soul plays to empty halls.
Last week, the auditorium in Delhi that used to spillover with devoted music-lovers through the late-night concerts were starkly empty. And that too when the legendary Gangubai Hangal, no less, was performing. The same fate greeted the other musical dons. Ustad Imrat Khan, to hear whose surbahaar recital many of the older generation would give their right arm, the aging but still brilliant sitar magician Ustad Vilayat Khan, flautist Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, and dhrupad singer Ustad Fahimuddin Dagar, among a dozen luminaries, were virtually singing and playing to half empty halls.
What was happening outside Shankarlal Hall at Delhi’s Modern School was even more vacuous. Outside, the nation was being offered the ultimate jingoistic sop: the freedom to fly the national flag from every, every rooftop and home. It was almost the Great American Dream come true. What is missing, however, is the substance that informs the American spirit. Otherwise, we would not have moral vigilantes like the Shiv Sena in Mumbai and the fanatical Bajrang Dal elsewhere threatening to fix young people who want to celebrate Valentine’s Day. And what is infinitely worse is to find music director Naushad joining the chorus against “misled Westernized youngsters”.
There was a time when Naushad’s more famous colleagues in the film world borrowed music from the West without misleading anyone or confusing themselves. It’s a sign of the times.
* * * * *
TAILPIECE: I don’t know the technical definition of a Non-Resident Indian (NRI) but I am sure Justice Mulla would have found it strange that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis do not figure among the privileged lot who qualify for the perks that are being lavished on one-time Indians by the government. Perhaps Saarc countries should all sign agreements on dual nationality.
A. B. S. Jafri
AT a high-level meeting in Karachi, with Governor Mohammedmian Soomro in the chair, it was decided to “beautify Clifton beach — on a war footing”. That sounds rather like wedding gallantry with aesthetics, doesn’t it? Beauty on a war footing should be an ecstatic experience. Good luck.
All but a few thousand residents of Karachi’s posh districts would, however, wonder if beautifying came first or cleanliness. Or is it really possible — or desirable — to call for the beautician before the body is given a decent wash? Nearly 9/10ths of this gigantic city has not seen for some years the basic minimum of municipal sanitation. For the millions who live in less favoured localities, the idea of beautification is too far fetched even to dream about.
Let us be frank and fair. Nobody would grudge beautification of any part of the city. It is the parts that make a whole city. But first things must come first. For better or worse, the city administration has an ardent Jamaat-i-Islami adherent at its head. Haven’t we heard our pious maulanas preaching that cleanliness is the half of ‘Eeman’. The truth is that this half of ‘Eeman’ is conspicuous by its all but total absence in most parts of this largest city of our Islamic republic.
In any fair order of priorities in this city sanitation must come first. Most localities have piles of garbage rising a few feet every day. If garbage would not be properly collected and systematically disposed of, the piles would rise inexorably, as is the case in most localities. Solid waste is not collected. Underground sewerage system is in a shambles. Many streets are flowing sullage streams.
Another horrors is the used and carelessly discarded plastic shopping bags. It is no exaggeration to assert that in some areas, the streets and sidewalks are under a quilt of plastic. This city does not have too many open spaces. But the few patches we have here and there are plastered over by plastic. Barbed-wire fences have used plastic bags hanging and dancing in the breeze. Not the loveliest of sights, but seen everywhere.
Some years ago the government had clamped a ban on black plastic bags. Nobody can divine for certain why the ban was exclusively on black bags. So, thanks to Karachi’s ingenious manufacturers, the city has plastic in every conceivable colour and shade. That does impart a touch of colourfulness to our garbage and refuse. But that is little consolation.
Most people would agree that the menace that we live with in the shape of plastic articles is particularly disagreeable — and dangerous. This material does not easily, or completely, disintegrate. Thus so much the more difficult to get rid of. Tons of used plastic is added to our garbage dumps every day. It is a deadly health hazard.
Overflowing gutters are gushing into streets. Whatever open spaces lie in the path of these sullage streams soon become pools, then lakes of dirty water. Only mosquitoes and flies and, may be some other equally or more unwelcome pests, have something to celebrate over this sort of hazards to human health. Karachi can be safely defined as Asia’s most pest-friendly metropolis.
What about roads and streets? The less said, the better. Except for one or two, or may be three main thoroughfares, no road in Karachi is in proper shape. Indeed, scores of roads are corrugated and perforated with potholes. These crevices and recesses are usually filled with drain water. You cannot blame the dirty water for resting in these places where once there were roads. Water, clean or dirty, would simply stay if it is not allowed passage.
It is all very well for the governor to be thinking so seriously about beautification of Clifton beach as to invest it with the highest urgency of a “war footing”. Drawing his attention to more pressing needs of this virtually abandoned city is not necessarily opposing the idea of beautification of our beaches.
In principle, there can be absolutely no quarrel with the beautification of any part of the city. Beaches are among our very precious assets and ornaments. Any steps taken to beautify them would be most welcome. But the question is whether we can in good conscience undertake embellishment of the coastline just when the hinterland is one vast refuse dump and growing.
If this is seen as instigating any kind of rivalry between the inner city and the coastline, let us settle to look at both aspects of this city with a concerted master plan sort strategy.
We have the inner city districts. We also have what one would call the downtown. Then we have better residential districts. We certainly have the beaches. Why forget the mangroves? These, too, are a very vital part of the totality of Karachi.
Our City Nazim would find more support for the beautification of the beaches if this enterprise is accompanied by visible improvement in the sanitation of the city as a whole. Naturally, the areas where this problem is more serious than others would deserve a higher place on the Nazim’s agenda. Fixing his gaze on the beaches, with his back to the rest of the city would earn him more odium than applause.
With outstretched open palms, they clap in front of your face — if your window is rolled down — as you wait at the traffic signal. With faces as colourful as their attire, Karachi’s eunuchs seem as if they are out painting the town red. Unlike normal beggars who may leave after realizing they are getting nowhere — the stubborn ones though never seem to take a hint — eunuchs cling to your car, insult you and create a big scene till you are forced to cough up some dough.
However, there are some who say that at least these people ask for money with a sense of humour, and they generally end up providing a slight form of comic relief (for no fault of their own). Embarrassment has proven to be quite a good method in terms of making people pay up. In fact, some time back foreign banks in Bombay used exactly this method, employing eunuchs, to make some of their more chronic defaulting businesses pay up.
Back to Karachi though, and a female colleague tells me that a group of eunuchs have chosen her car as a prime target and whenever she stops at the Clifton flyover (on the Cantt side) they make a beeline for her vehicle. I, though, told her that eunuchs do this generally with all cars and she should not necessarily fear for her safety or anything like that.
But she is adamant that she is being singled out. “They threaten to shower me with curses and you know it’s commonly believed that if they curse you then you’ve had it. It makes me quite upset,” she says.
Well, to that I can add that I’ve never given money to a eunuch — or for that matter to a beggar, unless overcome by a sudden bout of compassion or pity — and I ask them instead on what ground should I pay them anything. And yes, I’ve probably been cursed, but here I am in front of you all writing away. So it can’t be all that bad can it? It’s more in your mind and a superstition is probably as true as your belief in it.
My colleague however takes the matter issue so seriously that she is now considering changing cars so that she isn’t harassed at traffic signals every time she goes home.
This sort of over-reaction was evident in another related case. Apparently, there is a tailor who has a shop near the Defence hockey stadium in the Khadda market off Shamsher. It had a reasonably robust clientele but things began to get out of hand when it became known to some of the customers that some of the other clients happened to be eunuchs. The poor tailor went out of business because of this social boycott.
The coldest month
January is arguably the coldest month in Karachi. It is arguably also the coldest month anywhere in the world you happen to be, but we will keep ourselves to this city.
This past month has seen a spate of weddings, balls (most notably the Old Grammarians’ one at French Beach and the Lady Dufferin which I’m told was ridiculously over-priced), lunches, parties and social evenings meeting friends and relatives in town for a short holiday from their homes overseas.
By month’s end, there seems hope for a reprieve from this life of endless eating out.
The latter half of the month saw a flu epidemic hit the city. You would have to be not of this earth to be free of a viral infection this time of the year. A dry wheezing cough that shakes your rib cage each time you sneeze, a runny nose, a slight fever, almost everyone
I know has had these symptoms at some time or the other during the past couple of weeks.
A friend who had some foreign visitors in town said she had a hard time entertaining them. Eventually, she found some interesting options. Took them jewellry shopping at the Sunday bazar in Phase VII (where you can get some excellent silver and bronze pieces), and then to Zainab market where you can get a good bargain on a kilim. And of course, she took them to The Point and to Clifton Beach which she insists continues to impress her.
Her friends, which by the way were from Lithuania, were quite an arty bunch. They enjoyed a good few hours walking along the beach, mingling with local people. The one thing that they wanted to do but didn’t manage to was a place to unwind and dance a bit. Unfortunately, Sapphire or Equinox is not on these days — as far as I know and I could be mistaken — but the Lithuanians could have gone to one of the many balls on offer. But then who wants to pay ten thousand rupees just for a few hours of partying?
Postscript: Did anyone notice that the days have become longer? In Ramazan it would be dark by 5 30. Now even an hour later there is light.
Sweet oblivion
It is disturbing to see death up close. Last week a friend saw a dead man lying on the road beside a scooter in a busy part of the city. She could see only his forearm and hand and that he was wearing a black jacket. She could not get a full view since a crowd had gathered around the dead man. Apparently, they were more interested in arguing with each other than in doing anything about the corpse, which lay just a few feet from
them.
Some of them even stepped on the dead man’s hand — rigor mortis had probably set in — as they argued and tried to get their point across. Many had mobile phones attached to their belts but no one seemed to be calling for help. Yes, perhaps the more cynical among us would say that the man was dead so what could they really do? Well, at least they could transfer the dead body; they could have searched his wallet for an address so that his family could be notified.
But no. They kept on fighting.
The death of altruism
You’d think people in the medical profession would have the public’s best interests at heart, that the suffering they see on every day would have made them gentler and humbler individuals, especially after seeing the transient nature of life. I guess not. People seem to be the same everywhere. It’s a dog’s world and everyone looks out for his or her own interest even in supposedly humanitarian concerns.
A friend found this out during a visit to a public hospital to do work on a story about a major disease that has the potential to infect a large part of the population. She thought that the doctor in charge would be only to happy to talk, especially when the result would mean increased public awareness vis-a-vis not just the disease but about the good work done by doctors.
The friend, perhaps a bit naively, thought that the very reason something would go in print would be perceived as a good service by everyone, especially doctors, and hence why shouldn’t they oblige and be more forthcoming about what they did. However, at the end of her conversation with the doctor, the friend was asked: ‘What am I going to get out of this?’
What did she expect? Money? And that too for a social service. It’s not as if she was giving advice on investment or financial matters or telling people which stocks to buy, so why this question.
Perhaps no one wants to do a good deed anymore, no one wants to be purely altruistic, everyone wants to get something in return.
But, is that something so bad?
— By Karachian