There is a serious dearth of places in Karachi that can engage or motivate children. And I’m not talking about places with balloons and clowns, but places where kids can learn. The only thing that comes to mind is the WWF’s turtle watch centre on Sand’s Pit beach. Aside from that, I have never seen a museum, exhibit, or cultural activity which is specifically for children. Until now, that is.
Recently, the Citizens Archive Pakistan, a body of volunteers working to record our past for future generations, launched an exhibit titled ‘The Birth of Pakistan’. I was delighted to attend the interactive display with my two kids at the Mohatta Palace.
On a lazy Sunday afternoon, we headed off to the exhibit and happily paid a grand total of Rs. 20 at the gate as an entry fee. That’s not a bad price to pay for access to the palace – so grand are its structure and interiors, that you can feel the ghosts of our past there.
The exhibition was on the first floor, divided into a photography and interactive section. The former was great, including pictures from across the country by Kohi Marri, Amean Jan and Shamyl Khurro. But what took the cake for me was the interactive section.
My children are the grand kids of people who migrated from India to this new country with just a dream. Thanks to CAP, my children not only got to see what the dream was all about, but experience it. They stepped into a Pakistan Railways carriage (part of the exhibit), saw a recreation of an immigration and registration desk for migrants, and received a ‘passport’ as a momento from a recreation of an original passport office from the time.
It was quite something to see the look on my children’s faces as they wrote little messages of hope for Pakistan and pinned them to the hope wall: they had pride in their eyes, pride for this country, and for the people who helped make it a reality, something which many of us have forgotten.
Why aren’t there more exhibits like this – on a rotating or permanent basis – in different cities across Pakistan? Who has determined that our children are not interested in our culture, traditions, or past? The fault is our own entirely, for we who are unwilling to teach are blaming young minds for not wanting to learn.
In the exhibition’s guest book, my daughter wrote: “Thank you, Mr. Jinnah for giving us a home to live in, I love Pakistan.” I was left wondering why, when a six-year-old can express this simplest of sentiments, we regularly fail to? For in spite of all the problems that Pakistan faces, it is our home.
(Photo by Eefa Khalid)
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