Fire brigade in a shambles

THE municipal fire brigade is in a shambles, with three of its seven lorries reduced to scrap and dump. The serviceable lorries are stationed at congested places and can hardly move quickly to respond to an emergency.

This is not all. The city has only two fire-brigade stations — one in the congested Nian Chowk and the other near the Jinnah Stadium. These two stations are poorly equipped so much so there is even no garage in them what to speak of a rest-room, lavatory, etc. for fire fighters. Practically these stations have no building constructed at the site.

The neglect of the fire brigade is obvious. Out of the total sanctioned strength of 200 fire-fighters, drivers and menials, only 60 workmen are on its rolls and no new recruitment has been made during the last few decades. Fire-fighting kits comprising boots, helmets and uniforms are worn out and have not been replaced for the last five years.

Since the situation on the borders is tense, the citizens feel greatly alarmed that civil defence on the fire-fighting side would be very poor in case of war. Not only new lorries should be inducted but staff strength should also be increased. New fire stations should be set up and the necessary equipment provided.

THE Gujranwala Electric Power Company claim to have achieved four per cent excess target besides a record reduction of line losses and tripping during the year 2001.

This was stated by Gepco chief executive Brig Mushtaq Ahmad Chaudhry while briefing a 29-member delegation of senior officers who came here the other day to attend a management course.

He said Gepco recovered Rs15.659 billion outstanding dues from 107 million defaulters and issued detection bills to power thieves in 13,953 cases.

The Gepco chief executive said he was directly contacting consumers by telephone to resolve their problems and reviewing the performance of the staff daily. He said about 100 officials were being punished every month on an average, while three senior officers of executive engineer rank had been sacked on the charge of inefficiency.

PUBLIC vehicle owners and the Transport Society Gujranwala has protested against the Wazirabad tehsil council and the Ghakkhar union council for the levy of toll tax of Rs10 per vehicle per trip and demanded that it should be withdrawn, otherwise they will go on strike.

At a meeting held here the other day, they accused the district council of supporting and patronizing the contractors for extortion. They demanded that the toll tax of Rs10 per vehicle should be fixed for a day, instead of per trip.

They said the Cantonment Board was also collecting a toll tax of Rs5 per vehicle per trip on the GT Road which was unjustified as they were not using any road of Cantonment.

When contacted, the Wazirabad tehsil council and the Ghakkhar union council said these contracts of toll tax were meant to raise funds of councils.

Back to the future: missing passages

IN Iqbal Akhund’s article, ‘Back to the future’, published in Wednesday’s issue of Dawn,, some passages got lost in transmission and are reproduced below (missing parts in parenthesis):

Partly, it was a heritage of the communalist politics of pre-partition India [in which Islamist chauvinism and Hindu revivalism fed upon and nurtured each other. The highly conservative nature of South Asian Muslim society also has something to do with it, for it sees religion in terms mainly of ritual and conformity and fears change and modernization as a threat to traditional values. But, in the main, theocratization of Pakistan has been the result of political expediency and opportunism on the part of successive leaders, whether democratic or military. The process, began in small steps, cosmetic at first, offered as a sop to the religious lobby, such as Liaquat’s Objectives Resolution or the declaration of Islam as the state religion in Bhutto’s Constitution. The turning-point, perhaps, came with Bhutto’s decision concerning the religious status of the Ahmadi sect.] The process gathered momentum under Ziaul Haq who, needing a justification for his usurpation, found it in a self-appointed divine mission to ‘Islamize’ Pakistan.

THE external and internal components of Gen Musharraf’s programme of redressal are organically interlinked [but of the two, the latter is the more fundamental and far-reaching. Pakistan is a country full of tensions: ethnic, sectarian, provincial, etc: and these have been compounded by the economic stagnation of recent years and the widening rich-poor divide. The lifting of sanctions, rescheduling of debts, the resumption of aid have removed some of the external handicaps but only our own efforts — competent management, hard work and dynamic, growth-oriented policies — can get the economy moving again. We must, above all, undo and reverse the fifty-year neglect of education which has turned the rich-poor gap into a civilizational divide. Our rich and poor don’t speak the same language, don’t inhabit the same worlds. We have, at one end, high-cost schools that produce brain-drain material and, at the other, a semi-literate multitude or fodder for extremism of one kind or another.] The very welcome reform of the madressahs must, therefore, take place as part of an overhaul of the educational system as a whole.

AT PRESENT , a great deal of diplomacy, ours and that of the major powers, is being deployed simply to persuade India [to resume bilateral talks with Pakistan and it is likely that sooner or later, probably after the Uttar Pradesh elections, talks may resume. In Islamabad, Secretary Powell offered to assist the parties once talks get started and if the parties so wished. India insists that Kashmir is a purely bilateral issue that must be negotiated between the two countries without any third party intervention.

Tony Blair also commended the bilateral approach but he was not entirely correct in citing the Irish settlement as an example; the Irish settlement was brought about by much outside prodding and finally, on the basis of proposals made by US Senator Mitchell. Bilateral negotiations could make headway on Kashmir provided India modifies its basic position which is that there is nothing to negotiate. India will be disappointed if it expects that it can seize the present conjuncture to settle the issue in its favour once and for all.] The bottom line in Kashmir is not that India does not want to give it up but that the Kashmiris have not given up the struggle to decide their own future. The end of Jihad will show that the Kashmiri movement has its own momentum.

Roguish verses of a gentleman

HARRIS KHALIQUE who writes English and Urdu verses with equal felicity is not someone you would describe as a promising poet, a greeting generally used for neophytes. He is already far gone into this utterly useless activity to make a profitable retreat. Nor can he be named among those whom indulgent critics categorize as this or the last century’s new voice. A rising star? No. A messenger from the deep, a rhymer of hymns, composer of national ditties or revolutionary ballads? Hardly. But a poet — that indeed he is; one who knows his way about town; has his shadow with him, intact; his identity secure in his name, his references and his loves all alive, dated, and with proper mailing addresses. But if no great ideals, no transcendent thought, no social, political, cultural or literary mission inspire his verse, what then is he a poet of?

I would surmise, and I am not being brash or cheeky, Harris is very much a poet of what remains, not just the remains of the day, but the remains of life proper, the humdrum existence, the tedium and the ordinariness of things, and the joy that is there in being commonplace, even banal — stuff few amongst his contemporaries would consider worthy of the Muse.

People and places for example. Malik Mastoor Marjan and his hermit of a daughter who would chatter the world away making an omelette and then say not a word till next morning; Mohammad Mohtashim Rangoonwala and his shady brood of friends who were good hearted and thought dishonesty required much vastness, variety and creativity; or Saadat Khan Baloch, rickshaw driver of Old Golimar who had six mirrors in the vehicle to watch adolescent lads twirling the down of their moustaches; and Razia Sultana of Korangi K area who became aware of her passions all by herself, got an ordinary job in the Uni Center and recieved proposals only from widowers. There is Ali Mohsin MBA of Khalid bin Waleed Road who didn’t like religious people but his father was a pious man who had chronic pruritis. Sabeen Ahsan Akhtar of Defence Phase-II, a divorcee who hated the neorich, detested her cousins and one, Shahid, who smelled of garlic. But she had an eye on the fairish youth in the office, but he was poor and too much of a virgin, a brother of plain looking sisters. Her only friend was an editor who bad mouthed her subjects but had such sweet lips. Sabeen believed in reincarnation, her own specially.

It wouldn’t be a fair sampling of his world of men and matters if this gaudy chintz that amuses the eye is not lifted off the small agonies that lie hidden underneath. Harris does that without ceremony. He is a discreet barer of shame. By eschewing the maudlin from his verse and rejecting sentimentality of any kind he is able to give you a spectacle of life as it is, that in its comic hides its true tragic aspect like the two street loafers who had made life difficult for the decent people of the neighbourhood but when they are killed in police firing the city is devastated as if they were its life. Harris’ distinction is that he has things to say, he has a point he will not make and ,lets say, he has an attitude, which may not be such a good thing altogether but it is better than being naove anyway. At least he is not presuming to be searching for himself. If he must lose something it could be his purse not his soul which is tightly zipped under his skin and when he looks in the mirror he only sees himself, no stranger. There’s an advantage in that. One doesn’t talk out of his hat about collecting splinters of the shattered self in a cracked mirror — a favorite clichi in our poetry.

Harris is incorrigibly romantic. The strain runs through his verse and he makes no bones about it. There is nothing extraordinary that he expects from his women except love that he regards as very much to be his due. The wine and women that he talks so much about are real stuff. Ethyl hydroxide and grabable flesh. There’s no escaping them: tere dhyan mein, jab sair ko nikalta houn, puranae ishq mere saath saath chalte hein. ‘For a long association to cultivate you need acres of land,’ that’s how he words his earthy approach to human relationship. His passion is not oppressive or obsessional. It is either a crush or a fleeting fancy but he promises never to forget his involvements. Is that not enough? He seems to ask. Some fidelity that is, some commitment.

Harris Khalique’s English Divan is a pretty book of short poems that like peepholes afford you limited views of selected places, trimmed situations and edited recollections. It is as if the poet is doing a strip tease of his subject. The Japanese haiko manages to snap and hold the moment as does the ghazal couplet but brevity in verse libre tends to lose focus; in fact verse libre has been invented to allow for elaboration and extension of themes and imagery that fixed formats inhibit. Harris is able to utilize brevity without becoming trivial as in Hope that paints the poignant image of a peasant family asking passing vehicles for a ride or in Panorama, a five line impression of Islamabad where trees always look fresh like fortunate young women. His prayer for his beloved I find to be important, as it is a cunning list of wishes that in sum shapes the modern person. Yet after all such pleasing novelties it is no little let down to find him lose his image (in Nemesis) to look for which he walks into the mirror. UnHarrisian, I would say!

Harris has so far published two small books of his English and two of Urdu verse. They have the freshness of intelligent discourse. (Brings to mind Ogden Nash) One might say he is being smart. But that would be only half the truth as he is clever too, in his careful avoidance of the cant and the subline alike. Plain speaking frees him from the need to talk in symbols and create illusions of profundity.

He is in Islamabad these days working with an NGO. He misses people he has never met.

The insular government

LAST week it was reported in the press that the governor of Sindh, Mohammedmian Soomro, was going to inaugurate a clinic at T&T colony near Defence, Phase IV. The good doctor had however reportedly violated not one but many codes of building bylaws, including conversion of originally planned basement parking into shops and offices. Officers at the Karachi Building Control Authority also alleged that even though the land control of the area lay firmly under the city government jurisdiction, yet no building plans had been approved by them.

Rumours were also rife that the approval had been accorded to remove the nursery and the triangular greenbelt park for widening of the street connecting Gizri Boulevard with Sunset Blvd and construction of a parking-lot for the benefit of the clinic. With little public access over government offices the concerned citizens tried to convey their reservations but failed to contact the governor.

There may be a completely logical explanation about the whole affair. Unfortunately the common man’s access to people in higher places and participation in matters affecting his or her future remains limited today, scandals such as above only lends strength to a general sense of alienation prevailing in our society.

The case for construction of the proposed Lyari Expressway that all three tiers of our government appear to be serious about is not much different. The proposed Expressway over the banks of Lyari Naadi — a perennial river that has time and again demonstrated a capacity for flashfloods and inflicting devastation upon encroachers living not only on its bed and banks but also the residents of adjoining settlements along its 16- kilometre length from Sohrab Goth to Hawksbay — undoubtedly remains one of the most important projects for Karachi.

The president has reportedly entrusted the task of construction of this expressway to the National Highway Authority, leaving limited role for the Karachi city government or the provincial administration, raising many concerns. The NHA may be well suited to supervise the job but there remains so many issues that the local government in Karachi with all its limitation may only be able to address.

No one can blame the NHA for treating Lyari Expressway as merely a road project. However for the Karachi city government or its predecessor Karachi Metropolitan Corporation the project had to be much