MOHTARMA Fatima Jinnah, the Quaid’s sister, never lost sight of what was happening in the country that her brother so lovingly made even when she was holding no office. On July 5, 1964, she inaugurated the All Pakistan Meena Bazaar at the Old Exhibition Ground. There she delivered a little speech, the gist of which was: “If you err in judgement, the future will be disastrous … Eradicate bribery and other forms of corruption … This is imperative if your homeland is to make headway.”

We’re sorry Ms Jinnah, we haven’t made any headway. In fact, a lot of us are now looking back in time.

June 30, as it usually happens, was a pretty quiet day, not July 1 though, for that day Karachi hosted the annual Trained Nurses of Pakistan Association conference. A certain Brig M S Haque was the director-general health. He attended the moot and divulged a worrying piece of information. He said the number of nurses in the country was awfully short, ‘even to staff our hospitals properly’. Today, while the number of nurses has improved, the number of patients is constantly on the rise.

Another annual event that took place a few days earlier but was reported on July 2 was the Karachi Press Club elections. The following is the list of its 1964 office-bearers: Safdar Ali Qureshi (president), Haleem Ahmed (vice-president), Asghar Husain Rizvi (secretary), Shaukat Kamal (joint secretary) and Izharul Hasan Burney (treasurer). Isn’t it a stellar, honest line-up of journalists?

But then in those days honesty was not a precious commodity; it was a given that those dealing with the public had it. The KMC, for example, was always on the go to fix things in the city. On July 2 the print media flashed the news that the health officer had ordered the health inspectorate to seize and destroy all rotten fruits within municipal limits. You wonder: was the health officer using the phrase ‘rotten fruits’ as a euphemism for something else.

Mind you, it had been more than 16 years since Pakistan’s inception. And yet, the issue of refugees and their settlement hadn’t been fully resolved. That is why on July 3 Central Minister for Agriculture and Works Rana Abdul Hamid held a meeting with the commissioner of Karachi, Roedad Khan, and senior KDA officials. The items on their agenda were the problems of refugee colonies and clearance of slum areas. You don’t know about the things that were implemented after the meeting, however, in a related news item it was said that the KDA had come up with a new scheme whereby it would acquire new pieces of land to tackle the issue of burgeoning demographics.

And yet, the spirit of the culturally vibrant Karachi has never been an issue. On July 4, to mark the 45th birthday of the late Bulbul Chowdhury (the trailblazing Bengali dancer) a show of dance and music was held at the Arts Council. The artists performed in front of the special cabinet committee because the show was to be taken to the New York Trade Fair in August. Speaking on the occasion, the External Affairs Minister Z A Bhutto said Bulbul Chowdhury’s name had become synonymous with the contemporary cultural movement in Pakistan. How sad and ironic, no one knows Mr Chowdhury in (west) Pakistan anymore.

Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2014