LAST week it was mentioned in this column that on Sept 20, 1966 a hog deer died and a gazelle got hurt in the stomach at the Karachi zoo because of the hullabaloo caused by a film crew. Well, a few days later the gazelle succumbed to the injuries and died. For some strange reason, the details given in a news item on Sept 27, 1966 about its death had nothing to do with whether doctors tried to save the poor animal’s life. Rather, what was told was that deer meat had proved to be ‘windfall’ for the pair of Iranian lions born in Tehran five years back and given to the Karachi zoo in exchange for a pair of Bengal tigers. The lions that usually fed on beef and mutton, reportedly, relished venison.

If the account of the gazelle’s death sounds strange, then it pales in comparison to another story that became the talk of the town on Sept 28. Here it is: doctors at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) cut off a three-inch tail protruding from the spinal cord of a 10-year-old child (yes, it took them a decade to do that). Talking to newsmen, one of the doctors who carried out the operation in the children’s surgical unit said the child was born with the protrusion which had all the features of an animal’s tail — its length increased as the child grew, it had muscles, nerves and blood supply; and the child could practically ‘wag’ it at will. Experts were of the view that the case had made medical history in Pakistan and was of great anthropological importance connected with the Darwin’s theory of evolution.

While Darwin’s theory is confined to the mutating human beings, living beings’ ability to alter non-living things is limitless. They usually do that to suit their (vested) interests. On Sept 30, the city’s traffic police were on a routine campaign to check the auto-rickshaw meters. Doing that, they found the meter in one rickshaw a bit dodgy due to which they asked the Regional Transport Authority (RTA) to cancel the vehicle’s permit. When the RTA looked into the three-wheeler’s files, it turned out that its registration number was that of a tractor’s, not of a rickshaw’s. The RTA immediately began a probe into the matter.

The other probe-worthy issue that week was of the historic Khalikdina Hall Library. For the previous few years a tussle between the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) and the library administration was going on for the building’s possession. On Oct 1, the administration council of the library asked the KMC to ‘vacate its control’ over the library and hall premises. A spokesman for the council said the library and its premises were the ‘sole and undisputed property of the members’ and the KMC had nothing to with the building. He accused the corporation of hatching a conspiracy for dismantling the old structure and constructing a new one on which the KMC could put its own stamp of ownership.

Thank God they didn’t dismantle it, because the building is an integral part of the city’s historic landscape, and one of the reasons for its undying importance is that it was once used by the British as a court to try the revolutionary brothers Maulana Mohammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali.

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2016