KARACHI: There are different versions of Hazrat Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s arrival in Sindh. One of them suggests that the Umayyad rulers were annoyed by his activities and wanted to get rid of him. So he escaped and reached a coastal city now known as Karachi.

His shrine, which these days looks like a horizontally challenged mass of concrete, is one of the foremost landmarks of the capital of Sindh. And the saint’s devotees can be seen visiting his gravesite all year round, but the number increases exponentially during his annual three-day Urs (20, 21, 22 Zilhaj), beginning on Thursday (today).

The mazar was originally located on top of a hillock. It still is. But the kind of extensive and somewhat convoluted construction work that has been going on for the past few months around the mazar has obscured its visibility from afar. Also, it leaves the visitors slightly baffled where to enter the building from. Of course, and hopefully, once the construction is done and dusted, things will be easier to locate.

When you step onto the premises, that is, after going through a longish, roundabout route and a not-so-stringent security check, and hand your shoes over to the shoe-keeper (you are only allowed to climb the stairs barefoot), you will see a poster on the opposite wall of the new design of the holy place. It looks a decent piece of architecture with a proper dome and walls, let’s admit that. However, you can’t help feeling that it somehow doesn’t go with the infrastructural identity that gelled so well with the spiritual aura of the shrine. It’s a matter of opinion, though. By the way, the poster also mentions that Ghazi sahib was born in 98 Hijri and passed away in 151 Hijri.

Nathu Khan, who works at the Auqaf Department, is all praise for the new design. Talking to Dawn he said: “Now that the space has been expanded, it’s going to prove beneficial to the devotees. They’re going to climb up the stairs from the right side to reach the gravesite and climb down from the other side to exit the premises. One added advantage of the expansion is that now women will have more space than before to offer prayers.”

According to Mr Khan, construction will be complete in three months after which decoration on the building will commence.

Riaz, a septuagenarian who visits the mazar daily from Zilhaj 1 till the end of the Urs and is leading a retired life, holds a different opinion. “It’s not that the new look does not come across as worthwhile, the thing is that you used to see the top of the mazar from a fair distance. It won’t happen anymore. I mean, you will see it — it will be a different feeling.

“As for why I come here, well, it’s the Almighty who makes our wishes come true, but you still need a vaseela (medium) for that,” Riaz said.

You seriously hope that the giant heap of mess the entire area around Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s shrine has become in recent times because of the construction of a skyscraper and the subsequent stoppage of the project, followed by or simultaneous redesigning of the shrine gets over as quickly as possible. The mazar is not just a place where devotees gather every year and seek the saint’s blessings; it’s also a landmark Karachi structure signifying the aesthetic, spiritual and architectural plurality that the city was once known for.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2014