FOR those who eagerly wait for the winter season to enjoy a bit of nip in the air, Karachi is perhaps not the most ideal city in the world. Here, winter announces its arrival late… very late. The year 1968, as we have already established, was no different. The whole month of October remained sultry. Not entirely different was the first week of November.

But on morning of Nov 10, 1968 citizens witnessed the first sign of winter when the city was enveloped in thick fog. Weather experts said that while the fog was initially caused by an upward trend in temperature, it might bring cold air in its wake. The fog, they said, was precipitated by a “western disturbance travelling in the north” which raised the rate of humidity and therefore there was more of sea breeze in the afternoon. As for the Meteorological Department, well, it had already begun bracing itself for the cool weather since the start of the month and was forecasting only night temperatures. The night temperature on Nov 10 was 64 degrees Fahrenheit.

Fog or no fog, Karachi’s public transport seldom gets disturbed by such happenings. Readers of this column might recall that in February 1968 a little more than 100 Swedish buses came to the city from Stockholm as the Swedish government’s gift to the citizens of Karachi. On Nov 8, a second consignment of 230 Swedish buses reached the Sindh capital. They were to be delivered to the Karachi Omnibus Service. A total of 442 out of 660 buses gifted by the Swedish government had now landed in Karachi. They had a seating capacity for 34 to 80 passengers. While all of this was unfolding, the West Pakistan Road Transport Corporation divided the Karachi Omnibus Service into two zones — first, for the Swedish vehicles and, the second, for Fiat and other vehicles because about 252 Fiat buses were already on the roads.

From one Scandinavian country to another with reference to Karachi: on 7, four Danish students were convicted and sentenced by an additional city magistrate for possessing marijuana. Steen Thomas, 19, Kore Meldal, 20, Soen Goren Kristensen, 22, and Jack Burtgkart, 20, were awarded one week’s hard labour in jail with a fine of Rs500. All the accused were arrested by the local excise police on Nov 1 when they raided their rooms in a Saddar hotel and seized “contraband charas” in a big quantity from them. The Danes pleaded guilty before court.

Use of contraband items was one aspect of public health that the authorities in those days did not compromise on. There was another: on Nov 5, the health department of the Karachi Municipal Corporation claimed that it had killed more than 2,000 stray dogs in an early morning dog hunt. It brought the total number of dogs killed during the biggest-ever anti-pye dog campaigns over the previous 101 days to 25,000.

Now from weather and dog hunt to the incomparable world of art! In a striking display of endurance, artist par excellence Sadequain maintained his promised schedule of one show a month on Nov 5 as his fourth exhibition of the series opened at the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs. Critics were of the view that this time Sadequain had struck a different note. He had chosen to paraphrase Ghalib, the most compelling of all Urdu poets — and it was gratifying to see that Sadequain’s paintings went well with Ghalib’s verses. The exhibition was arranged as a tribute to the great poet whose centenary celebrations had been planned for early next year.

Published in Dawn, November 5th, 2018