WE have often heard, and in some cases read, about a play within a play or a film within a film! Fifty years back, something like that happened at the Karachi Zoo with the marked difference that half of it was related to real life and the rest of the half was to do with reel life.

On Sept 21, 1966 animal lovers got to know about something that deeply saddened them. Here’s the story: a film crew (whose details were withheld by the media) went to the city’s sprawling zoological gardens to shoot scenes for a feature film. Odd as it may sound, the zoo was not closed to the public, therefore a large number of people entered the park to witness the filming process and get up, close and personal with the artistes who were working in the movie. Since the number of people burgeoned by the minute, it unnerved some of the animals, even the ones who were encaged. Things (crowd, film equipment, hubbub etc) reached such a stage that a hog deer, which has extra sensitive ears, began to frantically run around for shelter. Scared stiff, the poor animal hit the bars of his cage so hard that it died.

There was also a gazelle that felt frightened and panicked like hell. It leapt in its enclosure rather awkwardly and fell on the stump of a tree, getting wounded in the belly.

The news was saddening not just because the animals were hurt, but also because in those days those who held the reins of the Karachi Zoo were a pretty competent lot. Only a couple of days before the above-mentioned tragic incident, the South American blue and red macaws in the zoo bred for a second time in two years. This was noteworthy because South American macaws are known for not breeding in captivity or exile. The macaws were brought to the Sindh capital in 1952 (at the time it was the country’s capital) and they did not breed for a decade. In 1962, the zoo keepers tried to bring in ecological changes to make conditions conducive to mating. What they did was that they changed the surroundings of the birds and their dietary patterns. A hollow space was created in a tree and their cage was placed in such proximity to the tree that the macaws could go in and out of the hollow space. Three years later, lo and behold, the ploy bore fruit. And in Sept 1966, the macaws had two more fledglings.

The birds, by the way, were not the only species whose demographic graph was on the rise. The city at the time was (well, it still is) brimming with beggars. As a result, the government held an anti-vagrancy week from Sept 19 during which the authorities picked up beggars from wherever they could and put them in the Poor House (yes, there used to be one in Karachi). Though the building could house only 150 people, by the evening of Sept 20, reportedly, it was overflowing with about 350 beggars (including the old inmates) 250 of whom were rounded up by the police in just two days. The next day (Sept 21), 68 more mendicants were caught in various parts of the city. Now the Poor House was crammed with more than 400 beggars. The number kept increasing, so much so that on Sept 24, when the anti-vagrancy week ended, 31 beggars found themselves in police lockup and over 500 stuffed in the Poor House where they had to serve a two-month term.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2016