THOSE of us who travel by auto-rickshaws (like yours truly) would be unaware of the concept of a fare meter. These days rickshaw drivers tell you before you hop onto the vehicle that how much they will charge to travel a certain distance. Regretfully, you can’t do anything about it. In 1964 Karachi’s rickshaws had fare meters on them. And yet they didn’t work the way they should have. DIG Mian Bashir had enough of the wrongdoing. So on March 24, 1964 he announced that a campaign would be launched against defective fare meters. Did he do that?

Yes, the campaign was launched and on March 27, about 80 rickshaws with faulty meters were detected. The rest, I’m afraid, is not history. The same day an anti-beggary drive was also in full swing in which 196 beggars were rounded up in the city. The rest, again, is not history.

What was historic though was an exhibition of works by Italian masters that opened at the Arts Council on March 25. More than 200 original drawings and prints by classics like Leonard da Vinci, Lotto, Mantegna, Piazatta and Reni were on display, including da Vinci’s six profiles (3 to 8).

Here’s something about another type of classics. On March 26, German pianists Anni Alt and Gerald H. Stofsky entertained music lovers, playing compositions by great musical geniuses Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert at the Pak-German Cultural Centre. The two played the piano simultaneously, impressing the audience with their speed and mellifluousness.

Speed was also weighing on the mind of the city’s transport authorities at the time. They announced on March 26 that a fast train between Rohri and Karachi would start running on April 1.

A number of other development programmes were sanctioned by the district council at its meeting on the same day, one of which was to do with a forest scheme for Karachi.

Many of us believe that Hill Park is an old facility. It’s not that old. It was reported in the newspapers on March 28 that a survey had begun for the establishment a hill park in the Pakistan Employees Cooperative Housing Society. Oh, so that what PECHS stands for.

Renowned Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz was in the city that week, attending different events. On March 28 the Anjuman Kitab Ghar issued a press release according to which Faiz would sign or autograph his works on April 2 to help sell books at the Guild Anjuman Kitab Ghar in Saddar’s Cooperative Market.

So what was Faiz doing on March 29? Well, he was among the literati at Urdu College, where Safdar Husain’s collection of poems Raqs-i-Taoos was launched. Josh Malihabadi, Niaz Fatehupri and Mahirul Qadri also attended the launch.

March 29, 1964 was also the day when PIA called ‘satisfactory’ its test flight to Kabul. The Boeing 720-B was tested to see whether Kabul could be used as a transit point on the national airline’s proposed Karachi-Moscow-London routes. Ah, the good old days!