We left our car in the parking lot of what was once a vocational training centre in Lyari’s Khadda Market area. It was around 10:30am and the neighbourhood looked like it had been awake for hours.

Men were knitting their fishing nets while women were busy doing groceries.

Our eyes kept looking for a mural, the photograph of which had been doing rounds on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – a woman with deep set eyes staring into the unknown and wisdom lighting her eyes.

In Khoja Street’s gali number 12 – we spotted her and a crowd, it looked like she was talking to the 50 children around her and telling them about “Zindagi Ke Khel”.

This mural and three others on a house which residents claim was the 19th plot allotted in the city is part of a movement started by Indian artist Shilo Shiv Suleman – the Fearless Collective.

Shilo’s brainchild came into being after the Nirbhaya incident (Delhi rape case) 2012 when she was in New Delhi.

She started off by making a poster which expressed and represented what was going on, ‘I never asked for it’.

It went viral and she asked people to make and send some of their own posters. She ended up receiving more than a hundred from people across the globe.

The campaign came to Paksitan via Nida Mushtaq, who Shilo knew from a long time – they started with running workshops in Rawalpindi with the Khwaja-Sira community, then went on to Lahore and came to Karachi in the end. Their trip has been documented by Haya Fatima Iqbal, a filmmaker and journalist.

According to Rabea Arif who teaches art and design at Karachi University and has been working with the fearless collective for last couple of days, they made their way to Lyari last week and conducted a short workshop with the residents.

They sat with children, women and men to come up with a theme for the murals.

During their conversations and interactions with residents, the artists picked up on the word Khel (play) and used it in the murals by using cards and dice.

All the photos used in this piece were provided by the author.