| 20 February 2005 | Sunday | 10 Muharram 1426 |
Intense pleasures of life
Where there's a will, there's a way
Fascism can't really be a joke
An old old boy
Cell phone: bane or boon
The ancient city of Lahore has always been about people first and foremost. Over time the actions of these unique people take their place in our collective psyche. Today's story is about one such very unique person, a person with the unique art of listening, and of making sure that every word, or musical note, listened to was in its correct place and time.
Our story begins in the square opposite the beautiful Wazir Khan's mosque inside Delhi Gate. This is the place where, over the centuries, the trade caravans used to come and camp.
At night over camp fires stories from all over the world were told and recorded. The mosque of Wazir Khan, undoubtedly the finest in Lahore, is where, some time in 1925, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan was reciting the Holy Quran.
He moved from verse to verse, as if his tone and tenor was designed for this celestial task. In one corner a little boy of four sat listening to the maestro. He lived just round the corner inside Delhi Gate, and every time the 'ustad' would come to recite the Holy Quran, he would find the little lad in rasp attention.
This is where the musical life of Hayat Ahmad Khan started. His long 83 year old journey of life ended last week. His is a story that must be told, little that he wished it to be.
The experience of listening to Bade Ghulam Ali Khan must have been a unique one for the boy to come every day, for all he did was listen. It was, as if, the musical words of the Almighty entered the very soul and spirit of the man the musicians of Pakistan learned to call 'Khan Sahib'.
The elders of Hayat Ahmad Khan belonged to an Afghan family that had fled the royal infightings of the Kabul court. They settled, initially, in the Soan Valley near Khushab at a village called Chak Kazian, named probably because they belonged to a family of 'kazis'.
Education, administration and business ran in the family, and as was the wont of such people, they happened to be very modern and religious in disposition. It might seem a dichotomy to many today, but till recently the mix went very well.
In the square opposite the mosque are a number of old buildings. One of them was owned by the grandfather of Hayat Ahmad Khan. Here sat the calligraphists, who recorded the stories of old and far away.
The hand-written pages were decorated with golden floral outlines, and after leather-binding the books would be sold as unique pieces of art. A few lie today in the best museums of the world.
Hayat Ahmad Khan grew up in the streets around the mosque of Wazir Khan inside the old walled city of Lahore. In his school and college days he was a good sportsman, being a champion in 100 metres swimming.
It was in those heady days, just before the making of Pakistan, that he met his wonderful wife Syeda Khanum, who happened to live just a few houses away. It was a match made "in heaven", for their love affair never ceased. She backed him in his enterprises and he loved her more for doing so.
When she died a few years ago, Hayat Ahmad Khan was never the same. "Had it not been her desire that we save our music for the future children of our country, I would have loved to go with her. But I meet her every night that I sleep, and I always assure her that I will come soon," he mentioned recently to a friend. The mystic in him was emerging slowly. It was only the mention of Syeda Khanum that ever saw his eyes moist up and he would be a wee bit lost. To the world, however, he was a strict disciplinarian and a man with a mission.
From Delhi Gate the family moved to Davis Road. The family business was known as the Abdul Rahim Khan, the famous auctioneers and furniture mart on McLeod Road. It was, in its days, one of the city's major business house. The family tradition of education and business was very much intact.
Like his father, Hayat Ahmad Khan was also a businessman, and till very recently he maintained his office on McLeod Road, though most of his time was spent meeting musicians from all over the country.
He was among the very first to recognize that the future business opportunities lay in Japan and Germany. I once asked him how he had opted to do business with the defeated Japanese and Germans after the Second World War. "Oh, very simple.
Culturally great nations cannot be killed by atom bombs. They have a habit of standing tall again. In that process business is always good." His reply stunned me. Here was a man who knew how to look beyond the horizon and through time.
The Japanese honoured this unique Lahori on his death like they have seldom honoured a foreign person. He had understood their psyche well, and more importantly, respected them like few in those days did. After one of his scores of visits to Japan, he set up the Japan Karate Association.
He had sown the seed and that was enough. He introduced an annual Japanese calender exhibition, showing the world that simple lines mean so much to those with an eye.
His daughter Lala Rukh, now a teacher in the National College of Arts, is also very frugal with her lines. Few understand her lines yet, but a time will surely come when the beauty and responsibility of the artist's line will be appreciated.
I remember as a young schoolboy going to the Pakistan Music conference with my father, where we listened all night to Roshan Ara Begum. On the way back I got a lesson on why listening was the most important human trait.
"People have stopped listening to one another, which is why they are no longer communicating with one another." He spoke in general terms always. Many years later I recalled this conversation to Hayat Ahmad Khan while having dinner with him in an Islamabad hotel.
He got up and ordered me to hug him. Who was I to disobey?I mentioned Roshan Ara Begum as it was because of her that the All-Pakistan Music Conference (APMC) came about. The great classical music queen of the sub-continent had announced that she was giving up singing as people were no longer interested.
Hayat Ahmad Khan's time had come. He then had the foresight to see that the 'red light' had to be shown to the emerging forces of obscurantism, a force that was likely to rob us of one of our greatest traditions, the tradition of sub-continental classical music.
For the first time in 1959, over 45 years ago, the APMC started, and Hayat Ahmad Khan set the rules straight and simple. "We will start on time, and every performer, no matter how famous or great, or young or even a novice, will begin and end his performance on time".
The rules were simple and in 45 years he saw to it that the rules were never violated. To enforce these rules, he had a small red light installed in front of the performer.
He operated the red light himself, and if anyone refused to see it, he would make sure that he was shown the red light. "The art of performing means discipline, and the APMC makes sure its proceedings are disciplined", he would inform everyone.
Over the years the greatest of our musicians, classical and semi-classical, have been through the routine set by the quiet man that Hayat Sahib was. He had learnt his music at the Ghandharav Mahahvidala Academy in India.
He lived a full life in every respect. His interests were diverse. He was an avid hiker and mountaineer. He was among the very first to climb the K-36, also known as Siachin Glacier, not to speak of even higher peaks like Nangaparbat, Trichmir and other similar peaks.
Recently, as his daughter Gul Rukh mentioned, a little child started crying during a classical music recital in the APMC. Everyone was irked. Hayat Sahib rushed to the distressed woman's help, saw her to the gate and instructed her strictly: "Comfort the little angel, and once he is quiet you must bring him back.
Let him start his life listening to pure sounds". The woman did return and the child sat through the performance in rapt attention, just like the little child listening to Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali in the mosque of Wazir Khan almost 80 years ago.
His unique role in our lives was that he saved sub-continental classical music from being forgotten. His work has been done, and done well. His red light worked. That is reward enough for a life well lived.
Intense pleasures of life
At eight, in class three, I first became aware of one of the smaller, but intense and undeniable pleasures of life: Rubbing my hand on the stubble of a freshly shaved head.
The occasion was the return of one of my class fellows from Haj. It was, I suspect, a mixed blessing for him. He was too young to have enjoyed the spiritual dimension of Haj, nor did he have any chance to wash away youthful excesses.
Instead, the entire class took turns sitting behind him in class and every time the teacher turned to write something on the blackboard, little grubby hands would wander onto his scalp followed by gasps of delight and satisfaction.
I was reminded of this scene because one of Pakistan's foremost composers Arshad Mehmood, has just returned from Haj, and I returned home recently to find him on his knees in front of Shoaib Hashmi who was rubbing his scalp and issuing the same gasps of delight. This proves, as I have always suspected, that it is not possible to outgrow Lahore.
I further appreciated this scene because as one grows older a lot of one's pleasures become borrowed or derived. One does or enjoys things because one has heard that they are good or enjoyable or suitable for one's age or position, to the point where one loses track of fun.
Call me a skeptic, but I insist that no more of 20 per cent of people who play golf can actually enjoy it. One of the reasons that Marketing has a bad reputation is that it is thought that it consists merely of fooling people of what they should be doing without any concern for their real pleasures. In other words, it consists of 'bullshit'.
I recently had the pleasure of reading a philosophical essay on this very topic, which as I discovered, also goes by the names of humbug, balderdash and hokum or tommyrot.
The article stated that both the truth teller and the liar are similar in that they have some knowledge of truth. The bullshit artist, on the other hand, uses a different standard i.e., whether something is or isn't convincing. As this standard becomes more widespread, fewer and fewer things retain any meaning and society 'melts into thin air'.
Since I am convinced that rubbing a shaved head is a universal pleasure and test of the genuine, let me propose a new standard of consumer judgment: The scalp test. The next time someone tells you Coke is better than Pepsi, or that one washing soap is better than the other.
Immediately rub you hand on your own head, and also the head of a recently returned Haji. Note the difference in sensations. If the two articles you are comparing cause no such change in pleasure, they have failed the bullshit test.
I am confident that as long as Lahoris have a freshly shaved scalp handy, out city will never turn into a huge pile of humbug. However, for this plan to succeed, we will have to be especially wary of those who have had hair transplants.
Incidentally, confusing bullshit and marketing is a mistake because very few people are insensitive enough to buy what they are indifferent to for any length of time. I, for example, own only one pair of 'close fitting' jeans.
Good marketing is tempting people into trying a new genuine pleasure. And the danger of marketing is that people become entirely dependent on pleasures that are purchased. Homo sapiens becomes homo consumerati.
To return to my class fellow in school. After enduring several hours of grubby head fondling, and after he noticed that people were coming back for second helpings, he complained to the teacher.
At which point his scalp was immediately declared off limits and the most recent fondlers got smacked with a foot ruler. To ensure compliance with the fondling ban, the teacher also moved the most polite and well behaved citizens of the class to the chairs behind the young Haji. This included me. Unfortunately, as I said at the beginning, at the age of eight, in class three I first became aware of one of the smaller, but intense and undeniable pleasures of life.
Where there's a will, there's a way
Dr Sheikh Muhammad Iqbal is an unusually brave man. Having lost his sight as a child, he went on to carve a place for himself in the field of education. Passing the matriculation examination as a private student, he secured a first division.
He graduated, again in the first division, and won a scholarship. But that is not all; he soon became the first blind person to get a master's degree in English literature.
Still not content, he got another master's in Urdu plus an M.Phil in Iqbaliyat from the Open University of Islamabad. In addition, he secured a doctorate through a thesis on the impact of British poets on Allama Iqbal. In 1968, he became the first blind person to be appointed a lecturer of English at the Government College, Sargodha.
Being a poet and a writer of both Urdu and English, Dr Iqbal has been publishing a literary monthly from Sargodha. In 1984, he set up a literary organization there, the Bazm-i-Fikr-o-Khayal. Its sittings were held regularly for 20 years.
Having retired from service, Dr Iqbal shifted to Lahore and set up a school for the education of the blind. He has also revived the Bazm and last week arranged a mushaira under its auspices. Presided over by Niaz Ahmad Soofi, many leading poets of the city took part in it.
******
The chairperson of the literary organization, Adab Serai, Shahnaz Muzammil, has recently returned after performing Haj. I specially went this time to attend the second-Monday-of-the-month sitting at her residence so that I could congratulate her on performing the sacred duty. In the bargain, I got a cupful of the Aab-i-Zam-Zam.
It was nice to meet some long lost friends at the function. Najma Yasmin Yusuf had been ill for quite some time but now has fully recovered and recited some delightful verses that evening.
So did Sardar Soz with his tantalizing tarannum. The salam he recited in deference to the month of Muharram was simply superb. The refrain, Ya Ali Ya Ali, had a scintillating effect.
******
Amir Riaz is in the publishing business. He has quite a few best sellers to his credit. Recently, he has launched a monthly magazine. He calls it the Awami Jamhoori Forum.
That prompted me to a remark. "Since when have you become a communist?" I asked. Prompt came the reply: "I am trying to convert communists into democrats." Indeed, he was correct. I noticed a full page ad as I turned the pages of the issue he had brought for me. It said: Be a democrat, and invited the reader to visit a website for the purpose.
In one of the previous issues of this magazine, an interview with the late Ahmed Bashir had been carried. It had been conducted with him when he was in the Services Hospital. The interview is so composite that I have got the magazine hardbound to make it a prize addition to my personal library.
But in the present issue, an interview with the Sindhi firebrand, Rasul Baksh Palejo, has put me off. It is so depressing to note that people exist in the country who are out to shake the foundations of the edifice which is affording them protection.
They just cannot see what is being done for their own good. In reply to any pertinent or rational question he brushes it aside by saying: "This is no question", well knowing that his reply would only go to expose his biased mentality and bigoted thinking.
When asked whether Karachi was with the Sindhis on the question of distribution of water for agricultural purposes, he side tracks and instead condemned the public representatives of the city and calls them goonda and badmash. I cannot quote any further as that would only go to create bad blood between provinces.
Fascism can't really be a joke
On first thoughts, it should seem like a lot of fun that two of the most notorious satraps of Hindutva fascism are exuding farcically opposite views on cricket ties with Pakistan.
Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, who would even today never tire of blaming "Mian Musharraf" for anything going wrong in his state, is insisting there will be no match anywhere in India if one is not also played in his home city of Ahmedabad.
The Pakistani cricket authorities on their part had expressed reservations about the city where anti-Muslim pogroms had raged with state connivance in February-March 2002.
Even as the Pakistan board appeared to subsequently relax its reservations on Gujarat after a meeting of the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, it offered, quite possibly impishly, to play a match in Mumbai, hub of Shiv Sena's Hindutva hoodlums.
Bal Thackeray, the Sena leader, has always thundered against any truck with Pakistan, be it a cricket match or any other peace overture. By offering to play a match in the heartland of Shiv Sena, the Pakistan board was probably reminding the Indian government of its impotence and double standards whereby it sought a match for Ahmedabad but avoided one in Mumbai.
On the other hand it is a small but perhaps significant reflection of the crisis within India's fascist movement that its two main mascots, Narendra Modi and Bal Thackeray, were forced to take opposite views on sporting ties with their common foe, Pakistan.
There is more confusion in their ranks. The extremely successful strategy of using Hindu sadhus, or spiritual men, as the spearhead of religious revivalism has got mired in unseemly controversy.
The most sacred institution of the Shankarcharya, projected as an icon of the VHP, which itself is a militant arm of Hindutva, has been badly bruised by allegations in a court case over the mysterious murder of a dissident priest.
Since last week, there has been a spate of damaging exposes, involving lurid CDs of sadhus shown in sex acts with devotees in respected shrines in Gujarat and elsewhere.
The VHP says in self-defence that similar scandals are known to involve some Muslim preachers and Christian missionaries too. That may be so but it provides little justification for the audio visual exploits of men who were hitherto regarded by gullible folks as embodiment of spiritualism that galvanized Hindutva.
If the so-called extremist arm of Hindu storm-troopers has hit rough weather, the spuriously liberal face of the fascist doctrine has not been spared either. Television channels have been showing excerpts from a CD over the week in which former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is seen exhorting kar sewaks, or young Hindu volunteers, who were to tear down the Babri mosque in Ayodhya on Decr 6, 1992, not to leave any messy rubble behind.
This is claimed to be an excerpt from a speech Mr Vajpayee evidently gave on Dec 5, the day before the event. The CD thus overturns the commonly held view that Mr Vajpayee, though a Hindutva leader, was always opposed to the demolition of the mosque.
It was hitherto believed by many that Mr Vajpayee was in fact so grieved by the mosque's subsequent destruction that he actually shed copious tears for days after the incident.
Reference to the existence of the CD had been doing the rounds in the intelligence circuit for years. Now for some inexplicable reason it has surfaced. Although its effect on Hindutva fascism is hard to predict, it cannot be good for Mr Vajpayee's carefully cultivated image of a liberal.
Finally, there used to be an implicit support system for Hindutva from American state machinery, which could be turning against it. In May 2003, the US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca had virtually given a clean chit to the Modi establishment in Gujarat, telling the US Congress that the BJP government there was seriously pursuing legal cases against the culprits.
It was ironical that the Indian Supreme Court just around then was so frustrated with the Gujarat government that it decreed a trial of the accused Hindutva men by a court in neighbouring Mumbai.
But now, according to an Indian newspaper report from Washington on Feb 10, President Bush's pledge last month to "bring democracy to oppressed peoples throughout the world" will soon reach Muslims in Gujarat if the US state department under its new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has its way.
"The department's bureau of democracy, human rights and labour (has) announced its support for projects in Gujarat aimed at bringing legal redress to Muslims," The Kolkota-based Telegraph reported.
Describing Indian Muslims as "marginalized", the bureau announced support for building civil society for the minority community nationwide and for programmes aimed at promoting their inclusiveness.
It is not as though there is any great reason to believe that the United States has changed its way of thinking overnight. The change in the stance towards Gujarat's Muslims is possibly prompted by the changed political reality in India where the federal government is a secular one, one not terribly enamoured of Hindutva.
It is in this context that we recall that Rahul Gandhi, scion of the ruling Congress party, had once called the BJP a joke. Given the comical sloppiness of some of the Hindutva leaders and their apparent difficulty in coping with adverse political circumstances, Mr Rahul's claim may have a grain of truth.
But experience has shown that BJP is not a party to be trifled with. Fascism after all is no funny joke, even if its detractors seem to be having a bit of fun for the moment.
* * * *
Basant festivities in Lahore have been attracting Indians, particularly people from the divided Punjab, in hordes. I remember BJP leader Sushma Swaraj breaking into an impromptu bhangra on a crowded Lahore terrace during the festivities a few days before the Vajpayee-Nawaz summit of Feb 1999.
This year, the Pakistan High Commission issued a generous number of visas to Indian visitors to Lahore and we are told all the flights during the run-up to the day were packed.
Among those seeking nostalgia were two aged Sikh women, Vicky Zarangez Raikhy and Raji Bains. Ms Raikhy was born in 1921 and studied at FC College in Lahore while Ms Bains, born in 1924, studied at Kinnaird College, where her father, Tajinder Singh, was principal.
He was killed in the partition riots. "It was like homecoming to both of us," said Ms Bains. After 57 years, celebrating Basant with long lost friends in "our homeland" was an emotional experience for both.
An old old boy
It was a great experience to converse with the 101-year old boy of Aligarh who could recall one-to-one meetings with the Quaid-i-Azam and did not mince his words when he was asked to compare present-day Pakistan with the early days when the country had come into existence.
"We are in deep trouble because we have deviated from the principles of the Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah both in personal and political life. It is not the society Mr Jinnah had envisioned," said the old boy, Nawab Mushtaq Ahmad Khan, who was Hyderabad state's Agent-General in Pakistan after the princely state had opted to remain independent and had provided a huge sum to help this country in setting up its State Bank.
Nawab Mushtaq lives in Lahore, and was in Karachi for a short visit to attend a reception in his honour by the Aligarh Muslim University Old Boys' Association. Nawab Mushtaq had joined the MAO College in 1919 and graduated from there in 1922. As a student he was among the pioneers who saw the Aligarh University being born. He then went to Cambridge and did his Bar before returning to India.
Although now a bit hard of hearing, Nawab Mushtaq is quick in responding to questions. He is not only the senior-most Aligarh "old boy", he has lots of stories to tell about partition of the subcontinent.
Born in Jullandar, Nawab Mushtaq was 43 years old when Pakistan was established. "The Quaid-i-Azam's struggle for Pakistan was aimed at setting up a state in which everyone would have justice and there would be rule of law. But let me tell you all this is not visible today. I don't think this is what the Quaid-i-Azam had struggled for," the Aligarian claimed.
In an apt commentary on the state of affairs in the country, he said: "When there is no meeting of minds between the rulers and the ruled, society crumbles." Nawab Mushtaq was surrounded by many "old boys" as he talked of the old days. He recalled recalled the contribution of Ali Brothers in the struggle.
He said former governor-general Ghulam Mohammad had declined to honour a receipt of deposits made by him (Nawab Mushtaq on behalf of Hyderabad state)in the State Bank of Pakistan. Ghulam Mohammad questioned the genuineness of the receipt, lost his temper and sent Nawab Mushtaq to live in Lahore.
The old boy believes that Ghulam Mohammad was responsible for the country's major problems. Nawab Mushtaq said that in the formative phases, his services were used by the Quaid to persuade the Nawab of Bahawalpur to accede to Pakistan. The later had responded positively and promptly. He had also visited Kalat on a similar mission. But he could not recall the details of these meetings.
The Aligarh old boy stressed the need for setting up institutions of high standard and rekindling the spirit of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan for bringing quality education within the reach of everyone. He regretted that Pakistanis were not focusing on research, without which the country could not progress.
Cell phone: bane or boon
While Islamabad merrily announces periodically the increase in the number of cell phones in the country, and how it symbolizes "progress", there is also another aspect of the cellphone culture that is disturbing, to say the least.
Put straight and brief, it is the snatching at gunpoint of mobile phones that is now emerging as yet another form of urban crime. Whether mobile phone snatching is a common occurrence in the rural or backward areas of the country is something I wouldn't know.
But what one does know is that it is becoming increasingly common to hear of how cell phones are being snatched, (stolen too) at gunpoint and people are also getting hurt. Not everyone is reporting it to the police, which is quite understandable; I guess most people who lose their mobiles just go and get another one, second-hand perhaps.
I have also heard from people that they are very careful about displaying their cell phones in public or such places where they feel they may attract attention of potential phone snatchers, who are there in crowded places, like pickpockets, who are there in the crowd, and how they operate in funeral processions and graveyards.
It is somewhat ironic that for all the cheer and buoyancy that cell phone advertising seeks to convey (in vain many times) there is totally inadequate attention being paid to cell phone snatching, and this I find particularly worrying.
A person who has lost three phones finds it baffling that cell phone operators have not come up with measures that would render stolen phones unusable. These companies keep promoting their sales, but they are doing little to protect consumer interest, and official agencies like the Pakistan Telecom Authority have evidently been unmoved by this growing crime.
I must mention here what I was told informally when I went to pay my cell phone bill during the week. The cashier advised me not to buy expensive cell phones, as phone snatching was growing, and easy.
It is best to have an inexpensive set, he added and referred to the fact that in his cell phone centre there were about 100 people coming daily for new sims, complaining that their mobile phones had been snatched or stolen. "If you want a good expensive set, keep it at home," he smiled. I was grim.
Having phones snatched is something that seems to evoke small interest from most listeners, at most times. There are bigger crimes happening it seems, as well as other forms of street crimes.
A resident of Landhi told me a rather scary story of how he lost his phone in Ramazan in 2004. He was travelling home in a coach, when three persons confronted him within, near Qayyumabad. Within seconds, he realized that two of them had placed their small concealed weapons against his body and one of them standing in front did most of the plain talking.
They said to him that he resembled someone whom they were looking for to settle down their scores with (to eliminate really) and when he showed them his office card, they realized the mistake. But even in that hurry, they demanded his cell phone (placed visibly in his shirt pocket) and his wallet.
One of them refused the wallet, but his impatient colleague insisted that the wallet be taken away too. Finally, from his Rs1,300, they took away Rs1,000, returning the wallet and the balance. They remarked that he was a lucky man, as they had not harmed him in a hurry, and he should go home and give "sadqa".
This Landhi resident had not lost his presence of mind and "humour" when he said that he had already done that (sadqa) by being robbed of his cell phone and Rs1,000. Of course, no police report was lodged, and life went on. But a report was lodged with the area police (Jauharabad) when, in another instance, a shop in the Arshi shopping centre, Federal B Area, selling mobile phones and accessories was robbed of all that it had by dacoits at gunpoint on Wednesday night at around 10pm.
There came three young men on a two wheeler and took away phones, sims, and other gadgets worth Rs52,000 (approximately) within 10-15 minutes, from a fearful shocked 19-year-old Obaid, while his brother, Junaid, 24, was away.
Like in many similar cases, people around watched while the crime was being committed. That is another face of the Pakistani society, 'to look the other way in the face of crime being committed'.
The two brothers, middle-class background, instead of battling unemployment, directly opted to do small business to get on with life. This was a year ago. Now, a year later, they have suffered a loss and lost the small profit they had made. They tried their best through the police, and other contacts, but have so far met with no success.
One does wonder about the heartbreak and the disappointment that such young men (boys really) undergo - victims of crime and how it shapes their attitude to society. One also wonders about another form of crime that does not get much profile either in the media or even in our conversation. I only hope we are not accepting it as routine.
This is about instances where a bus full of passengers is looted by armed young men at gunpoint, somewhere along its route. The passengers lose all their precious belongings when two or three armed men get on board and do the needful, while two men guard the exit points and/or the driver.
A friend of mine living in the United States and visiting his parents in North Nazimabad told me on Friday that one of his relatives lost his cell phone and wallet when their bus, 2K, was targeted by armed men. And this is what happened to all the passengers.
I am told that a politician being interviewed on a private TV channel had mentioned this looting of bus passengers as an instance of growing urban crime. It is a depressing disturbing picture of urban society that emerges as I write. Insecurity not just indoors, but also on the streets. But let me briefly mention a tragic encounter with dacoits in a Landhi home where a young man lost his life while his father struggled for life in the Jinnah Hospital.
In the first week of this month, there was attempted dacoity in the Landhi home of Mr Naim Ali Hashmi at about 4am. There were 10 inmates. Mr Hashmi resisted the dacoits, as did his sons, and somewhere in that grapple and tussle, one of them (the inmates) fell on the electricity switches, which reportedly plunged the room into darkness.
In panic, the criminals fired their weapons to flee. They killed one inmate, and seriously injured another. The dacoits fled. A report was lodged with the area police, and the matter is under investigation.
What happens to the family, its psychology, its vision of this society? I am reminded of a person I knew who was visiting his relatives in Landhi, several years ago, and died when dacoits struck that very house opening fire as they escaped.
I began with cell phone snatching, and the fearful insecurity that this otherwise very modern necessary device has brought to its users and that has deeply disturbed individuals I know. It reflects in some measure crime in this city at this point in time.
But let me end with a crime story that appeared in one of the local dailies, during the week, the headline of which read 'child kidnapped for black magic ritual recovered'.
In this case, a three-year-old boy was kidnapped from outside his home by a 'woman who used to practice black magic'. She kidnapped the child to use him in her rituals. This happened in the Jacob Lines in Karachi. The many faces of crime in Karachi; crime, a subject that is so unexplored, even as society is opening out here.