THERE was a time when Karachi’s zoo was the second of the city’s most visited spots for families (the other one being its beaches, which gradually overtook every other recreational place). This is the reason there were days when only women and children were allowed to visit the zoo. But there had been complaints about female pickpockets (pick-purses would be the right term) moving around the zoological garden on ‘Ladies’ Day’.

The problem was that for the previous five years ‘lady searchers’ had not been posted in the zoo and no policeman was allowed to enter the premises on Ladies’ Day. Finally, the inspector general of police assigned two women searchers to visit the zoo on a daily basis. July 14, 1967 was one such women’s-only day. The sneak thieves thought that they were going to face no trouble, but this time around the searchers were alert to the situation. As a result, they caught three pickpockets red-handed. The arrest was flashed in the media and the crime rate involving women (in the zoo) came down a notch.

Karachiites’ interest in animals has always been pretty high. At the same time, animals seem to, every now and then, surprise them in ways they haven’t even imagined. On July 10, this newspaper published an interesting report with the title ‘Village scene on city road’. It was the monsoon season, so the rains had caused puddles and little ponds to emerge around the city’s main thoroughfares. Obviously, they were not meant for taking a bath, but somehow a buffalo managed to make its way into a pond at the McLeod Road-Kutchery Road junction. It baffled people’s minds as to how the animal strayed on to McLeod Road (now I. I. Chundrigar Road). It needs to be mentioned that the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC) had banned the entry of cattle within city limits. And yet the buffalo, somehow, got into the muddy water. It took some time for the cowherds to get the big animal out of the hole.

Speaking of animals, Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah, who passed away on July 9, 1967 was fond of pets. She had a poodle. On July 10, when Begum Ispahani, a close associate of Ms Jinnah, saw that the poor animal needed to be cared for, she took the poodle in her possession. The other two pets — a goat and a white duck — were still roaming on the lawns of Qasr-i-Fatima (where Ms Jinnah lived). Unlike the poodle, they didn’t look perturbed.

But then, not all animals are harmless. In those days stray dogs were found in the streets of Karachi in a big number. There were reports of dog bite taking people’s lives in some areas. On July 13, hydrophobia, caused by dog bite, claimed its 17th victim of the year when an eight-year-old boy Amrez died at the Epidemic Disease Hospital. He had been brought to the hospital in a critical condition from Abyssinia Lines on July 12. A stray dog had bitten him six weeks before when he was on his way to school in PECHS. He developed the signs of hydrophobia despite getting preventive treatment at the JPMC within four days of the incident, taking 14 anti-rabies vaccines. Doctors said he was the 13th dog-bite victim who had developed the disease despite preventive treatment. It would be interesting to know that the KMC had claimed to have killed over 4,288 dogs that year. The city, according to the corporation, had about 10,000 pye-dogs.

The KMC was not just tough on such issues; it also did not spare its own staff of wrongdoings. On July 13, the corporation said it was conducting a survey to find out how many of its employees had rented out or sublet the KMC quarters provided to them to outsiders or other municipal employees. Earlier in the month, a circular was issued by the KMC asking all its workers to report cases where the quarters were not occupied by the allotted employees. The corporation’s chairman had ordered that the misused facilities would be “vacated and allotted to persons who first informed the Labour Welfare Officer about unauthorised occupations”. As a result, a number of offenders were brought to the notice of the KMC during the first 10 days of the campaign.

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2017