KARACHI: No home, no happiness; Eid of the shelterless
By Rafique Jalal
KARACHI, Dec 5: New dresses, siwayyan and Eidi...our children are not looking for an unusual thing this year. This all is Eid specific. And since the most sacrosanct festival is falling on a cosy cool morning of early winter, there will probably be an element of warmth in the preparations.
In the wake of this all, who would like to be informed that there will be millions of people, our brethren in faith, spending the three-day gala in tatters? While these homeless souls might be able to have the leftovers of nice food — which would only come their way by either in the shape of charity given by the lucky faithful or they would find it by rummaging through the waste — how they will grab a few hours of sound sleep in the open is hard to imagine.
Like Mehfooz Ahmed, who is wholly dependent on Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s shrine for his survival, these homeless people do not have any feeling about Eid.
“What happiness? To us Eid, my brother, means an increased amount of alms, and nothing else,” he said.
Mehfooz is in his mid-50s. He has no job. He has no family. He doesn’t know any skills, but is willing to work. He eats whatever he gets from those who come to the shrine to offer their respects and distribute charity food among many of his likes. He is not an addict and he doesn’t beg either.
But Sheikh Babu once had his house. Of course, his plot No 212-213/C in Mairajun Nabi Colony, Sector 10 of Orangi Town, was illegal, but he had made payment for that before he raised the structure from whatever money a rickshaw driver can save.
His eyes tearful, Shaikh Babu had come to the office of the Karachi Nazim to seek remedy against the demolition of his and over 1,000 other such houses. A father of four, Shaikh Babu asks what kind of celebrations his family could look for when they didn’t have a roof over their heads.
A walk through any of the city’s roundabouts, main roads, and under the bridges shows that there are a lot of people who don’t have any shelter. All of them are not addicts.
Ghulam Sarwar, Baba Manzoor Hussain, Shah Malang Baba and many others interviewed by this correspondent said their economic conditions were not very good a few years back but they were certainly better than what they were today.
To them all, Eid is no special day. Rather, as some of them put it, such an occasion only comes to add insult to injury. They feel sorry for their miserable lives and their helplessness when they find themselves lagging far behind in the race being led by the moneyed countrymen.
