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December 15, 2005
The road show
An educationist has recommended that art teachers in Karachi’s nursery schools teach the children knitting. She explains that the steady click click of the needles as they move the wool forward one stitch at a time, has a calming effect. More importantly, knitting helps to expand the children’s attention span, which schoolteachers are finding has shrunk alarmingly.
In the turbulent city we inhabit, children are bombarded with conflicting experiences and information every minute of their waking day, leaving them confused and disturbed. Adults also have to contend with the uncertainty and disorder, accidents and violence that constitute not the background noise of the city but the snarling sound up front. I don’t have the relevant statistics about mental problems, but I personally know more people with depression now than I did earlier.
A colleague mentioned that people who are addicted to reading seldom suffer from depression. I hope it’s true, although it won’t make much of a difference as reading is not a popular pastime with us.
Today more than ever, I am sure, many of us will agree with the poet’s cry: ‘A poor life this if full of care we have no time to stand and stare.’ Time many of us have aplenty here, what with the widespread joblessness, erratic bus schedules and other transport troubles, long queues in front of bank counters and the painful and often vain wait outside government offices where the concerned official is never on his seat. The problem is where do we stand to do a bit of staring at the birds and bushes when there are the sewage puddles and uncovered manholes that line our roads. The entire city of Karachi has for various reasons been dug up. You either stand knee deep in mud, or slide swiftly into the trenches excavated everywhere, never to be heard of again.
Every time I turn from the roaring rushing Sharea Faisal into my somewhat peaceful residential area, I heave a sigh of relief. I can loosen up and drive comfortably home. This is my turf and I know every inch of it. Or so I thought. Driving on the side of my road a few weeks ago, I had to break suddenly as my car’s front tyres were touching the edge of a large newly dug-up hole. When and why had this hole appeared was a question to which I haven’t found the answer. What I did find were many more large square holes at intervals of several yards along the length of this road.
The holes seem to have been dug with the obvious purpose of trapping forgetful and unwary drivers like me. Otherwise, whoever paid for these warrens or trenches to be gored out of the earth would by now have surely put them to whatever use he had in mind. Meanwhile, I have started avoiding this once favourite lane that leads to my house. If I had the money I would hire workers to fill up these gaping holes. Due to my car’s affinity to head straight for the nearest available cavity, I must confess I suffer nightmares about the day, or night, when I am going to end up inside one of them.
The new mayor of Karachi has been busy promising massive improvements in the city’s infrastructure. Never mind all the magical transformations he has up his sleeve, I would respectfully like to point out a few small inexpensive steps he could take to give Karachi an instant facelift. At least in those parts of the city that I frequent. In Korangi, the major dual-carriage road leading from the crossing towards Landhi is, after a long and painful process, finally complete. We can now whiz up and down this important artery smoothly. But look around you and you will see that both sides of this fine new road have been left untouched. They are totally unkempt, littered with stones, debris, piles of earth and an untidy tangle of weeds and wild growth.
A good tidying up along the margins of this highway is all that is needed to lift the spirits of people travelling on it. So Mr Mayor, while your grandiose schemes are gestating, could you please take a look at the Korangi Crossing road and help neaten up its surrounding margins. The whole profile of the area would go up if the sides of the road were made neat and clean.
Another road that desperately needs to be taken care of is the Stadium road on which two major hospitals are located. It was a pleasant road once, with plant nurseries stretching on one side and the big hospitals on the other. Again, while the road is more or less usable again, the adjacent spaces as well as the road divider are a horrible mess and the picture they present is one of gross neglect and ugliness. I won’t bore you with a list of the countless city roads the sides of which need careful attention.
The former Queens Road that leads from the PIDC building towards Keamari was also an attractive route once, taking people to interesting places. But for too long it has been a disaster area. Surely something should be done about these major arteries and not just to their surfacing and widening but, in particular, to their verges and borders.
Our littered, cluttered ugly, roadsides suggest that our city fathers and their advisors haven’t yet learned to pay attention to detail. Let me therefore emphasize the obvious: it is the detail that makes the difference. Like the children in the nursery schools, our city government officials also need to broaden their attention span.
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