KARACHI has been getting a lot of unnecessary flak these days. First it was Time magazine staff writer Tim McGirk who wrote an extremely negative piece on the city — as if it were the worst place in the world to live.

He painted a picture of a metropolis where hitmen could be hired for as low as Rs 50,000 by anyone who wanted a person murdered. In fact, Mr McGirk had included in his story an interview of just such a mercenary. The city was said to be awash with weapons and gang warfare and all kinds of mafiosi dominated its local politics. It was ridden with sectarian organizations and all kinds of fundamentalists were to be found here, and in ready abundance.

Juxtaposed with this reality were the protected lives of the people who live on the other side of the ‘bridge’, the Defence and Clifton people. They couldn’t care less about what happened to the rest of the city, indeed the country, as long as nothing happened to the shell that defined the limits of their existence. They had their corporate/yuppie lifestyles, their parties and charity balls, their home entertainment centres on which they could watch the favourite TV shows on DVD, and their indulgence in all kinds of designer drugs.

There were many problems with the Time magazine story and some need to be pointed out for the sake of clearing the record. First, in general, any story by publications such as Time or Newsweek (or the recent one in The New York Times Magazine by Barry Baerak titled “Pakistan is...”) are bound to be unflattering and negative for the simple reason that editors at these publications are not really interested in what is positive about Pakistan. One could argue that you cannot entirely blame an outsider, a foreigner, for holding a negative view about a city which frequently throws up wanted Al Qaeda terrorists, but the fact remains that certain cities and countries lend themselves to positive image projection and unfortunately, Karachi or Pakistan, do not fall in that category — well, at least not yet.

So, editors at these overseas publications normally want only a particular kind of angle because that fits in very well with their overall coverage of the so-called US-led war against terror. The Time article’s assertion that mercenaries are available for hire in Karachi could easily be countered by the fact that this is even for cities like New York, Los Angeles, Moscow or even Hong Kong. Yes, Karachi is awash with guns but so is probably the seat of the US government, Washington, DC, which also holds the dubious record of being America’s murder capital.

As for the impression that many of Karachi’s rich and affluent couldn’t care less about the rest of the country, (a) that is not entirely correct and (b) even, for the sake of argument, if it were, then the same could be said for the elite in New York or Boston or Paris. Besides, Mr McGirk’s piece called the stylist Tariq Amin a “social commentator” which is giving too much credit. Surely, the editors of Time would not have allowed their New York correspondent to call that city’s best hair stylist as a social commentator.

Last week, Barry Baerak wrote a 7,700 word piece in The New York Times Sunday magazine. Karachi was mentioned twice. First, as a “one of the world’s biggest cities” known for its “sprawling squatter settlements that far outstrip every electrical line, every sewer pipe, every water tap”. However, the fact that Karachi also is home to one of the world’s largest kutchi abadis which built its own sanitation and water supply system without any government help was not mentioned. The second reference was to the recent oil spill and the damage that it caused to the city and its fishing community. Mr Baerak said that “quite frankly, Pakistan made him afraid”. He writes that it is full of contradictions and that some of these are so glaring that they might tear it apart.

While one would not argue with this assessment, since in any case the writer is entitled to his opinion, one wonders whether an equally critical assessment of American society would ever appear on the pages of the Times. Gore Vidal, perhaps the sharpest critic in America of his country’s foreign policies and an acclaimed author, does not get onto the pages of these venerable broadsheets nor does for that matter the criticism of Michael Moore (whose new book “Dude, where’s my country?”) is already a best-seller in Europe.

Now, forward to the second week of December. Karachi has played host to some 260-odd prominent Indian intellectuals, editors of newspapers, activists, film-makers, actors, writers and academics who were here to take part in a major peace conference. The city is also playing host to what promises to be an exciting film festival through which movie buffs will be able to watch over 80 films from all over the world. The festival includes movies by Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine — a must-see comment on violence in America) and award-winning Indian film-maker Anand Patwardhan (Aman aur Jang). Mahesh Bhatt and daughter Pooja also arrived the other day to attend the festival, which will also include a seminar to be attended by Pakistani and Indian film-makers.

So things aren’t really all that bad in Karachi, notwithstanding what Messers McGirk and Baerak would have us think. The city is also about set to enter its annual winter season of charity balls and fund-raisers. It hosted a fashion show right after Eid in which two Indian designers and a bevy of Indian models took part. And then of course there is the much awaited — at least for some — New Year’s eve celebrations with tickets at some events costing as much as Rs 14,000 per person. But Clifton Beach, which one can visit free and which can be quite a fascinating sight on the night of December 31, will hopefully be its usual inviting self, notwithstanding what happened to its waters and shore the past few months.