JOURNALISTS in Pakistan have seldom had a smooth sailing. They’ve found themselves trapped in one imbroglio or another. In June, 1964 some pen-pushers were in trouble. In the first week of the month the Karachi Union of Journalists (KUJ) passed a resolution against the arbitrary dismissal of working journalists in certain newspapers. On June 17, the Dawn unit of the KUJ held a meeting under its unit chief Ahmed Ali Khan and endorsed the resolution expressing resentment on the journalists’ plight. It also urged the government to intervene and look into the matter. Is this a 50-year-old story? Doesn’t sound so!

It was a bit of a troubled phase in the city. On June 16 the news about two young girls who drowned in the choppy waters of Paradise Point saddened Karachi. The tragedy happened a week earlier but was reported on June 16. The two girls, Shaista Naz (11) and Amber Nigar (7), were nieces of a former mayor of Karachi.

Speaking of the seaside, five years back (1961) a Clifton development scheme had been approved. But the plan was delayed because of what the authorities called the ‘receding of the area’. On June 16, 1964 the KDA was asked to implement the scheme for which Rs110 million was sanctioned. You wonder, did the plan include sky-kissing residential apartments and shopping malls.

That being said, no matter what, Karachi never lost, never loses rather, its glitzy edge. On June 17, a fashion show exhibiting Pakistani and western dresses titled ‘Pakistan Cotton Home and Abroad’ organised by APWA at the Metropole Hotel became the talk of the town. The event was arranged in connection with the visit of the year’s Maid of Cotton, Katy Sue Meredith. Katy Sue herself modelled with Pakistani cat-walkers and looked quite comfortable in Pakistani attire.

One doesn’t know if the maid of cotton visited old Karachi neighbourhoods because, as has been the case in recent times, traffic jams made you think twice before hitting the busy roads and streets. This was the reason that on June 18 a statement attributed to the DIG police, Asif Majid, about Empress Market caught everybody’s attention. He ordered his department to take immediate action against handcarts around the historic market which, according to him, were causing gridlocks. Did he succeed in his drive is anybody’s guess.

Handcart pushers weren’t the only ones giving a headache to the authorities. Trawlers too were in the thick of things at the time. For the past five days the prawn business in the city had been held up, annoying the life out of seafood lovers. The reason was a dispute between trawler owners and owners of freezing plants at the fish harbour following the government’s decision to reduce export bonus on fish and fish meal from 40 to 30 per cent.

Let’s get academic now. Karachi hosted a three-day Urdu Tadreesi Conference from June 19 to 21. On the last day, the conference stressed that the government introduce two national languages — Bengali and Urdu — as compulsory subjects from Class VI to VIII in all secondary schools of the country. Unfortunately, the honeyed Bengali language is no more part of our collective culture.

Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2014