| July 1, 2002 | Monday | Rabi-us-Sani 19, 1423 |
Mian Azhar fits the bill!
Galaxy of poets dazzles Capital’s glitterati
... they never miss a trick
Flying high on low budgets: KARACHI FILE
Victims of development
AFTER many a long year, we now have an elected city government. In Persian they say, if it arrives late, it come correctly. Let us hope so. If well begun is half done, we may safely say at least quarter done. The beginning has not been unflawed. But what human endeavour is totally unflawed?
A STAND-OFF between the security forces and the Bugti tribesmen has ended after tribal chieftains and others intervened in the matter. The fort of Dera Bugti had been under siege for three weeks as the Frontier Corps personnel demanded handing over of “wanted men,” held responsible for allegedly organizing rocket attacks on gas installations, reservoirs or pipelines.
The local administration and the security forces held the view that some Bugti tribesmen were allegedly involved in the rocket attacks but Nawab Akbar Bugti, chief of the Bugti tribes, strongly denied the charge.
The government claimed that the losses inflicted on gas installations in the past two months had cost about Rs250 million in the shape of damaged pipelines, burnt vehicles and suspension of gas supplies to other parts of the country.
A spokesman for the OGDCL claimed that the company had paid Rs200 million to the Bugti chief on account of land acquisition, royalty, water charges, use of road linking Pir Koh and Loti gasfields during the past three years. The payment was made under an agreement for carrying out exploration and exploitation of gas reserves in Loti and Pir Koh.
Again, another agreement was signed last September and the Bugti tribe chief was paid Rs80 million. Under the agreement 50 persons were appointed and services of 80 others regularized by the OGDCL, the spokesman claimed.
However, the local tribesmen complained that the gas companies had not done justice in providing jobs to them. Even qualified people were denied jobs while people from other regions were brought and given employment. This discrimination was the main source of complaint that forced the local people — the young and the educated tribesmen — to go on hunger strike, take out rallies and hold protest meetings against the gas companies.
The agitation was brought to an end with an indication that the companies would be providing jobs to the locals and stopping recruiting people from other regions and cities. The real trouble started when unidentified people lobbed rockets and tried to destroy the gas installations, pipelines, gas reservoirs and wells.
Some attacks were termed “serious” as they had targeted the “most sensitive spots” of the gas installations. The attacks could have disrupted the gas supply to the whole of the country, a source claimed. The provincial administration thus took a serious view of the situation and decided to ensure uninterrupted supply of gas to the whole of the country, as well as to save the vital installations from rocket attacks in future.
Personnel of the Frontier Corps were deployed in large numbers. Reinforcements to the Bambhore Rifles were sent from other units of the civil armed forces in Balochistan. Security thus beefed up, the gas pipelines, installations, wells and reservoirs were made safe through “police action”.
The contention of the local tribesmen was totally different from what the government spokesmen claimed from time to time. They refuted the official claim that they were the beneficiaries as far as the supply of gas to the country was concerned. “Their localized protests should not be misconstrued,” a Bugti notable said.
A spokesman for the provincial government denied any involvement in the matter, saying that it had not financed the deployment of the Frontier Corps personnel in the Bugti tribal areas to ensure security of gas installations and pipelines, as was claimed by some people. On the contrary, he said, the charges were paid by the gas companies. He confirmed that the gas installations had come under severe attacks.
It was a newsman who had charged that the government agencies were responsible for such actions in order to justify their deployment on security duty and to get financial benefits from the provincial government. Senior officials, briefing the newsmen on a post-budget news conference, denied the charge, saying that the provincial government had paid no money or allowances to the personnel of the civil armed forces for the Dera Bugti operations.
On Saturday, the credible reports suggested disengagement of the forces in the Dera Bugti stand-off, and the easing of the tension following intervention from the tribal elders. The fort of Dera Bugti has mostly people from the minority community, besides the enlarged family of Nawab Bugti. The affected people claimed that during the siege they had been denied water, electricity and other necessities of life for more than two weeks.
A week ago, the elder of the Mazari tribe had intervened and established contacts with both the government and gas companies on the one side and the Bugti tribal chief on the other. Although all routes were sealed and the Dera Bugti fort was cordoned off, the Mazari elder was given a safe passage in order to enable him to hold talks. It was an indication that the government intended no police action. It desired to keep the Bugti Nawab under pressure and withdraw the civil armed forces once the objective was achieved. During the second visit to Dera Bugti by the Mazari elder, the situation had calmed down and disengagement of the forces reported.
However, the law and order situation is still a serious problem following the terrorist activities all over Pakistan. Protection of the highly sensitive spots of gas installations from attacks are beyond the power of the tribesmen, observers feel. Highly-trained terrorists must have carried out the attacks, they argue. The Uch gasfield is personal property of Nawab Bugti. Even his enlarged family has no share. “How come Nawab Bugti will lob rockets on his personal property?”
General Tanvir Naqvi of the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) when he was rewriting the powers of an elected President in the future democratic dispensation perhaps had in his mind the de jure and de facto powers that a Pakistani COAS enjoys while in uniform. I am sure Naqvi did not have in his mind any of the personalities behind the uniform. In fact people like Ayub, Yahya and Zia, like Musharraf, were decent human beings. All of them had only the good of the country at heart like Musharraf. And all, like Musharraf, only wanted to restore democracy and go home and live happily ever after. If fate had not made them the COAS at the right time, perhaps, all of them would have gone about their lives like any ordinary Pakistani cursing the military rules, the corruption of politicians and ever-rising prices. As they say power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, they were all, however, corrupted absolutely by absolute de jure and de facto powers inherent in their offices. And when they started to enjoy this absolute power they wanted it to last forever so they assigned people like Tanvir Naqvi to tailor the Constitution to turn them into constitutional monarchs in the interest of democracy. And the Naqvis of this world have always come up with plans to dole out the illusion of democracy to the hapless and godforsaken people at large while letting the generals retain all the powers.
Unlike in the case of the powers of the President, which he modelled on the office of the COAS, the NRB chief seems to have picked up a living personality as his ideal while making adjustments in the powers of the next elected prime minister and that personality seems to be none other than the chief of the King’s party, Mian Azhar! After they have gone through the proposed amendments rather minutely I do not think those among the King’s party leaders, who have been nursing the ambition to replace Mian Azhar through some intrigue at some future date, would any more wish to be even in his shoes. Now the office to vie for is that of the President, not the PM! Perhaps even Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto would now agree to let Raja Zafarul Haq and Makhdoom Amin Fahim to be nominated as the next prime ministers, if their parties win the majority in the next elections and then offer themselves for the post of the President when that comes up for elections after the new Parliament is sworn in. But then would there be elections for the office of the President after the next Parliament comes into being? There has to be, if Musharraf gives up his COAS cap because under the Constitution a government servant cannot hold an elective office. The referendum is supposed to have given Gen Musharraf the mandate to remain the President for the next five years starting October 2002. But this mandate is for Musharraf the COAS, not for Musharraf the civilian. The Supreme Court ruling on this question has also made it very clear that while under the PCO the President can hold the referendum the question of the legitimacy of its mandate can only be decided by the next parliament.
When Naqvi was asked by Dawn (Interview published on June 30, 2002) whether or not Musharraf would offer himself for election for the post of President after the new parliament comes into being, he refused to answer the question. Earlier, talking to Dawn just a couple of days before his referendum the President in an answer to a question had promised that he would not include his name in the Constitution like Zia did even after winning his referendum. The amended 1985 Constitution had said that “I President General Ziaul Haq would be the President of Pakistan for the next five years.” In the BBC’s HardTalk with Riz Khan some weeks ago, the President sidestepped a direct question on the issue by saying that he would cross the bridge when he would come to it. All this has created an impression that the government is either preparing to spring a surprise on the nation on the matter of President’s election at the right time or has no clue how to negotiate the problem without upsetting the apple cart it has so painstakingly put together for the coming elections. And this has given rise to the speculation that if the government does not find a logical answer to this question say by end August, it would perhaps be left with no option but to postpone the October elections.
On the face of it, it appears that only Nawaz and Benazir, the leaders of the two largest political parties in the country, qualify to occupy the all powerful post of the President created by Gen Naqvi besides the incumbent COAS heading the third largest political party in the country, the institution of the Army. Any other person if elected to this office by accident would have neither the political, nor the moral nor even the institutional backing to enforce all the powers that he would be bestowed with notwithstanding his total immunity from parliamentary accountability. Mind you, Naqvi has only curtailed the powers of the PM and enhanced the powers of the President vis-a-vis an elected parliament. He has not curtailed either the de jure or the de facto powers of the COAS. So, among the three power brokers, we would have one with his de jure and de facto powers intact and the other enjoying almost identical powers but constitutionally sanctioned and the third a total weakling. You know what would happen in such a situation? An immediate turf war would start between the COAS and the President both trying to win over the weakling and offering him in the process more room to operate than the Constitution allowed him. This, then will unleash a chaos that this country has never seen before. Even if the two, the President and the COAS, would not fight for the turf on their own what is the guarantee that a man like friend Tariq Rahim would not, somehow, worm his way into the PM’s office and then use his pathological talents for intrigue to get the two to start fighting?—Onlooker
Islamabad seems to have come of age in arts and literature. At least, this was the impression that one got from a grand All- Pakistan Mushaira (where a poet had even come all the way from New York) to honour a Pakistani poet, Mansur Mojiz, living in London.
The event, Jashn-i-Mojiz, which was arranged by an organization, Harf-o-Bayan, at a local hotel on Saturday evening, continued till the early hours of Sunday.
Name any great Pakistani Urdu poet, and he was there, except Ahmad Faraz, who is, perhaps, abroad these days. The organizers seemed to have taken care that all prominent poets of the twin cities took part in the event! No wonder, there was hardly any space left on the stage, and some of the poets had to sit with the audience. One counted more than 40 names being called on the stage.
The Mushaira was presided over by senior and popular poet, Munir Niazi, while Iftikhar Arif introduced the “bard” from England.
Mansur Mojiz shifted to England from Karachi many decades ago. He was the first among the public relations professionals in Pakistan and was working for a foreign airline at that time. He has published a number of collections in various genres of poetry, including Geets, Qataas, Ghazals and Nazams.
Going through one of his collections, one felt a combination of classical tradition of Urdu poetry with romanticism in his poems, almost bordering in syntax on the diction that belonged to the moderns. And yet, residing in a foreign land, he can also nostalgically talk in simple, almost a textbook manner of national anthems, about love for his country. This thinking is much evident from his verses, “Seekho yaaran-i-Watan, mulk say ulfat karna. Hamwatan koi bhi ho sub say mohabbat karna. Yeh jo Allah nay bakhshi hay tumehen pak zameen, akhri sans talak is kee hifazat karna.” (My compatriots you should learn to love your country. You should vow to protect it till your last breath).
Compare this with a classic and romantic mood, couched in a typical modern and progressive diction. “Aj maqtal may hum surkh roo hogai. Apne hi khoon say bawuzoo hogaye.” (How honoured have we become by our death by murder. We have been purified by our ablution in blood).
Iftikhar Arif, who knew Mr Mojiz since his London days, spoke of his lovable personality, his meetings with friends like late Athar Ali of the BBC and his literary activities in the foreign land. Some one from the audience told this reporter of the poet’s concern for his friends.
Other prominent poets present on the occasion included Munir Niazi, Zafar Iqbal, Anwar Masood, Iqbal Shamim (who read a moving poem on 9/11), Tauseef Tabbassum, Amjad Islam Amjad, Nusrat Zaidi, Samina Raja, Izharul Haq, Shahida Hasan, Prof Pirzada Qasim (from Karachi University who enchanted the audience with his Tarranum and thought), Prof Ehsan Akbar and Jalil Aali. By the way, expressing appreciation by clapping is a recent protocol added to Mushaira. Previously, words like wah, wah (excellent) and Mukkarrur Irshad (kindly repeat) were enough for audience’s participation.
Humorous poetry is the essence of a Mushaira these days, and Prof Anwar Masood, Sarfraz Shahid and Dr Inamul Haq Javaid proved this point on the occasion.
An interesting aspect was the large number of women poets who received well-deserved applause from audience. Poet Ghazanfar Hashmi conducted the event and did not irritate the audience with the usually long introductions of poets made on such occasions.
Among the audience, one could see Asrar Ahmad, one of the very senior journalists who had come despite his not being well; Safdar Qureshi, one time head of the Associated Press of Pakistan; Ashfaq Gondal, the present head of the agency; Dr Alyia Imam, and a number of personalities from radio, TV, newspapers and the literary world. — Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad
I MUST be the laziest son of a no good gun in all of Christendom. On April 6, a man in the death cell, circle 3, Central Jail, Rawalpindi, wrote to me, appealing for moral support. My correspondent was Dr M Younas Sheikh, son of Al-Haj Hafiz Sardar Muhammad, MBBS, FRCS (I), Ireland. The home address given was 58/F, Power House Road, Chishtian, in Bahawalnagar district, Punjab.
I did not respond to Sheikh Sahib and I wonder whether it is too late now to do so. I hope not. I must share with you a letter he wrote to me from his death cell in the Central Jail, Rawalpindi.
Mr Younas Sheikh had written:
This is to draw your attention to the religious terrorism, violation of basic human rights and transparent injustice being perpetrated under the blasphemy law (295-C, PPC) in our country.
Religious fundamentalism, fanaticism and Taliban-style organizations also exist in Pakistan. These eerie organizations, led by the extremist mullahs have started abusing the blasphemy law (295-C, PPC) to the extent that they may be called religious terrorists. Like the infamous Indian law, POTO, 295-C, PPC is also open to abuse by the miscreants for political, repressive and vindictive purposes on the pretext of undefined blasphemy. Its abuse is indeed a sign of the creeping onslaught of religious fanaticism at social, political and cultural levels; a rising wave of aggressive ignorance, incivility and intolerance as well as mediaeval theocratic darkness.
On August 18, 2001, a learned Islamabad court, while sitting in camera inside the Central Jail, Rawalpindi, because of threats by religious terrorists, succumbed to these threats and after some dubious proceedings, sentenced me to death under the blasphemy law without good evidence. The facts of the case being that there was no tangible proof against me and all the oral and documentary evidence on record pointed to my innocence.
An appeal has been lodged against this decision, calling it transparent injustice in the name of our religion. It was a travesty of justice, a violation of basic human rights as even my lawyers were harassed with a fatwa of apostasy against them and threatened with the lives of their children and thus due process was badly thwarted in my case.
As a Muslim and as a law-abiding citizen, I protest against this highhandedness in the name of law and Islam. I request the president of Pakistan to repeal the blasphemy law with retrospective effect as it is being abused by the miscreants for terrorizing their Muslim and non-Muslim opponents and has become a symbol of tyranny. It is also petitioned that the
terrorizing organizations may be outlawed forthwith. May God protect and preserve our country from these malevolent extremists and save Pakistan and the Muslims from the evil designs of all miscreants.
In the end, Dr Sheikh has asked me to lend him my moral support. Well, Dr Sahib, I extend to you my moral support for whatever it is worth.
SOME more quotes now from Dexter Master’s book, The Accident, of which I gave you some last week.
Says Masters:
We beef about the military mind, because the military mind subordinates people to routines, and refers decisions elsewhere and makes an art of buck passing.
... You’re paid to defend us, and your thinking is appropriate to that, but you are not paid to make it necessary to defend us, which is what your thinking leads to.
Again,
“The point is also that you army guys slap a security angle on everything that embarrasses you.”
And a little further on:
“He hadn’t died that night. He recovered enough to move about, although not enough to resume his puttering in the garden. Instead he learned to cultivate within himself the dry fruits that grow only on the slopes of death.”
“In the book of Job, Job says: ‘Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee’.”
“Yes, I know, but what I mean is different. I mean, aren’t all the answers to everything just there — all around, waiting? Isn’t the important thing knowing the questions to ask?”
“On the quiet lawn, the faces were quiet, and the lunches uneaten; as when a dog lies dead the dogs come running for miles to sniff...”
“... Burns, blisters, bruises, breaks — they all cause pain, he thought; how many painful things begin with b, he went on, somewhat interested in this; blows and beatings, too; and beta rays, he added. Also bombs...”
And Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
“Out of seventeen hundred and fifty nurses in Hiroshima, sixteen hundred and fifty killed or injured. Out of eight hundred and fifty medical students in Nagasaki, six hundred killed outright. Out of forty-seven hospitals, three left usable. ... Out of two hundred doctors in Hiroshima, twenty left to work...”
“... The important thing about reading a chart is to read no more than is there.”
“When hope breaks, let patience hold.”
“They are people who ask questions only when they decide on the answers.”
“They get ‘em when they’re young and they get ‘em when they’re sick,
Oh, the Holy Roman Catholics, they never miss a trick.”
There was this headline in Dawn on Saturday: “Aisam Creates History at Wimbledon.” What history? Well, he became the first Pakistani to reach the third round of the Wimbledon doubles championships. In partnership with an Israeli player, he beat a South African-US pair. An AFP report said:
“It is the fact that Aisam is a Pakistani Muslim and Hadad an Israeli Jew and in the current climate in the Middle East, it’s a partnership that is becoming a major talking point.”
And what does Dexter Masters have to say on the subject?
Says he:
... I’ve known some awful dull Jews. Dull or bright, though, they always seemed to me ninety-seven per cent like everybody else. What people make of the other three per cent! Goddamnit, everybody’s ninety-seven per cent like everybody else.
Had Master known Sharon, the butcher, he would certainly have said that he was a hundred per cent unlike anybody.
Again,
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical, the sower of all true art and science.
And would you believe that
... In England, up to the latter part of the nineteenth century no one could get a degree unless he subscribed to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church?
About Adolf Hitler:
Hitler is a dedicated man. Who can doubt it? And the Germans revere him, that is, Most Germans anyway. After what the Israelis are doing in Palestine, and will do in Palestine, I think Hitler was perhaps right in what he did to the Jews. I have half a mind to found a Nazi party in my country but the trouble is that there are only a handful of Jews here to be put in the gas chambers. I swear to you I am not ninety-seven per cent like Sharon. If anything, it is Sharon who is ninety-seven per cent a Nazi.
It was so nice to see the City Council debate and adopt its first budget in a reasonably democratic manner. There was debate, argument, criticism, even some display of impatience. If it were satin-smooth sailing, one would have suspected that all was not well behind the scene. There is so much to complain about life in Karachi. You cannot expect an elected team to set things right in just about half a year.
That said, now to the flaws. The stickler for propriety would fault the proceedings within the Council Hall as too noisy — at times. This is unfair. Elected houses of vastly longer seniority at times tend to be too lively for the refined taste. Angry scenes and cross-talk is not unknown to the ‘mother of parliaments.’
Those acquainted with parliamentary culture in Pakistan would have no hesitation in giving the Karachi City Council pass marks. Stern critics must remember that maturity comes by experience. How much of experience has our history afforded, or permitted, elected houses at much loftier levels? Remember Nawaz Sharif had his constitutional amendments adopted in 15 minutes. That was moral inertia, not democratic discipline. Why be so finicky about our City Council?
There are shortcomings in the budget. The most crippling of ‘shortcomings’ in this case is the shortage of resources. There is so little money, so little of experience, so little of efficiency in the city bureaucracy. Our elected city fathers have to make do with the ramshackle officialdom they have at the lower rungs. And that is all they have.
On the face of it, the city government’s order of priorities is just about right. But in an academic sort of way. Education comes first. Indeed it does. Health is on its heels. That too is OK. But there are moments when even education would take a rear seat — when piles of filth are mounting and when mosquitoes and flies and pests have already occupied the front row. Children have to be protected against such enemies of life, before mothers would risk taking them to school.
Karachi must first clean itself up. Its lack of sanitation is its shame. No amount of education can hide this shame. The sewerage system that once was, no longer is. All of the sullage is now flowing through main thoroughfares. This should be rated as the city government’s priority No 1. So far the City Nazim has done little to suggest that he is aware of the lethal danger that lurks behind the mounds of uncollected waste and the streams of drain water all over the city.
Water is the vital fluid for all living beings — for man and beast alike. Both have an equally undeniable right to live. A child needs education — but its need for water comes much earlier in life and would only increase as it grows to become a school-going child.
This may sound as something designed to de-throne education from its high altar. That is not the intention. There are a few things we need in order to stay alive and well till the angel arrives to escort us to our home upstairs. Among these is clear air and clean water — and enough of both. In Karachi neither the air is clean enough nor water. And neither of these easy to come by.
To be fair to the infant city government, it is a herculean tasks to keep the city clean and in good health. It becomes more onerous when you look around for the wherewithal. You need money and also common sense. Neither available in adequate measure. It appears that this kind of scarcity is going to be there for the foreseeable future.
Thanks to Pakistan’s present culture, paying taxes has gone totally out of fashion. Dodging the tax collector is rated as triumph of a high order. Look at this crop of budgets, from the union council level to the federal. All have been “tax-free.” All “surplus,” too. All finance ministers, including our city’s, have taken the line of least resistance. Arguably, it is not so difficult to persuade the taxpayer to part with some money as it is for the tax collectors to collect it. The CBR has surrendered — not to taxpayer but to its own corrupt tax collector.
A “surplus” budget is the joke of the half-witted. How can you have so many basic problems of the citizen unattended to, and proclaim a surplus, at the same time? This fiction of “surplus” is absurd when there is not enough to spend on removing garbage from the streets. But before we blame the manager of our city finance, we have sorted this out with the finance minister in Islamabad? No taxes and a surplus too.
All this and heaven, too!
On Friday morning, a large contingent of army personnel descended on Sher Shah, cut off the electricity supply to the area and ordered the people to vacate their houses. The homes, they informed the people, were going to be bulldozed to make way for the Lyari Expressway. Many frightened people complied with the orders; others refused to do so. The ones who obeyed were the lucky ones. They were able to salvage some of their meagre belongings before the bulldozers moved in. The more defiant paid heavily. Their homes were bulldozed with all their furniture and possessions inside. In a few hours, some 100 homes and a number of godowns were reduced to rubble.
The shattered people, who were lulled into a false sense of security following an agreement with the authorities some three months earlier, are now homeless and living under the open skies. All they have to show for their former homes, built with great hardships and all their savings, are pieces of paper offering vague promises of rehabilitation in the Hawkesbay scheme. Most are convinced these parchis are useless. They have no plot numbers on them, perhaps because the authorities do not have any concrete rehabilitation plan.
The people are particularly angry because they had been assured just three months ago that there would be no demolitions until a proper rehabilitation plan had been chalked out. Many area residents had stay orders from the Sindh High Court as their properties were leased and legal
Residents and NGOs in the area claim that the authorities have never shown the residents any proper map of the alignment of the Expressway. This has spread deep anxiety in the area, with no one knowing whose house will suddenly be marked for demolition
The residents point out that if the Expressway is built some 14,000 homes will be demolished, 9,000 businesses will be badly affected and 40,000 jobs will be in jeopardy. Sher Shah is home to the solid waste sorting industry, which performs a vital task in keeping the city relatively clean. As such, an important sector of the city’s economy will be badly hit, increasing unemployment.
NGOs allege that the project went ahead without an environmental impact assessment, which is a legal requirement. There were also no public hearings to allow local people to air their objections. The current demolitions also violate a number of international agreements, such as the Istanbul Declaration and the UN Habitat agenda as well as the government’s own policy for kutcha abadis.
Critics of the project also wonder why so much money is being squandered on building an expressway that duplicates the far less disruptive Northern Bypass, which incidentally starts and ends at roughly the same point. Conspiracy theorists point to the vast amounts of prime inner city land that will suddenly be open to developers following the ‘clean-up’ of the area.
A colleague at work is quite peeved at the way the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) goes about doing its job. He says that in a residential building of say 60 apartments, even if a third of the owners are defaulters, the KWSB disconnects the water supply. He says why should the 40, who pay their bills regularly and on time, suffer for the 20 who don’t?
The colleague happens to live in a high-rise opposite the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and says precisely this happens in his building. The apartyments apparently have some residents who didn’t pay their water bills but the KWSB cut the supply to the whole building so those who do pay, and on time, also now suffer. He says that the KWSB should perhaps also take into the consequences of its actions before deciding to disconnect water supply to a whole building. In any case, this is hardly the sort of treatment law-abiding tax-paying citizens deserve.
These days if you drive on Mai Kolachi expressway towards Queens Road, you can see something quite unusually pleasant as you look to your left. No, it’s not the grey silhouettes of the cranes at Karachi port but something else, and quite unexpected.
As you cross the train tracks you see and get on to the bypass proper, keep driving till you go past the land being reclaimed, rather controversially, by the Karachi Port Trust, on your left. A bit beyond that is a stretch of shallow water, probably caused by the mangroves on the other side or by the tide. Here, every day I have been seeing the rather unexpected but very welcome sight of a large flock of pink flamingos in the water. In fact, each time I drive on this road, my head rather automatically — and rather dangerously — swings towards their general direction. I have seen them fly a few times and the sight is quite amazing because the pink in their feathers is sharp and striking. The only problem is that they are a bit further away from the road, so if you really want to get a closer look at them you will have to park your car on the side and walk as close to the shallow water as possible — hopefully without scaring them away.
Since I hardly know much about these birds myself except that they look really pretty and exotic, and apparently fly all the way here from Russia, I decided to do some research on the matter for the benefit of readers. And quite a few interesting things turned up including the fact that Pakistan along with India is one of the major places where pink flamingos can be found every summer.
The National Geographic website said that flamingos build nests out of clay and make them above the water. They feed while standing in shallow water and for this they have to lower their necks and tilt their heads so that their bills hang upside-down and face backward in the water. They apparently do this because this allows them to filter plankton, red and blue-green algae, insects, fish, molluscs, and small crustaceans from the water. The reason flamingos are pink has to do with the red and blue-green algae and insects they eat. These are high in certain pigments that cause the colour of the birds to become striking pink.
The birds do come all the way from Siberia in Russia’s far east and because of the war in Afghanistan they, like many other birds, have changed their migratory routes and now fly via Iran. The mangroves in and around Karachi and the Indus delta basin are one of the prime places in the world for these incredible creatures. In fact, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, over 80 species of birds flock to the mangroves every year, so it is quite unfortunate that these wetlands are constantly under threat from various government agencies.
The Sunday bazar held in Defence’s Phase VII manages to draw quite a crowd every week. A lot has been written about the finer points of the bazar and the things that one can buy there. However, this is about a different aspect, and a slightly unpleasant one.
For the past few weeks, the contractor who runs the bazar has taken it upon himself to literally place a makeshift barrier on the road where it happens. So each time you turn right on to Khayaban-e-Tariq expect to come face to face before a barrier right in the middle of the public road, manned by a couple of the young boys who hang around the bazar looking to carry your shopping to the car.
Last week, when I went one of the contractor’s employees also gave me a parking ticket. The parking is apparently free but the receipt is there for security’s sake, or so the man said. In any case, though, what gives the bazar organizers the right to block a public road? In fact, there is even an armed guard at the barricade who insists on taking your receipt from you before letting you leave. This only happens at the airport, and since when did you have to do this for going to the Sunday bazar. Perhaps, the Clifton Cantonment Board and the Defence Housing Authority, under whose jurisdiction the bazar is organized, should look into this — but then one can’t really count on them to do that.
— By Karachian