THE weather was getting unbearable by the day. Although the first week of May was more humid than hot, it was on May 11, 1969 that Karachiites were forced to remain indoors for as long as they could because of the blazing sun beating down on them.

The maximum temperature shot up to 102 degrees Fahrenheit and the minimum was recorded at an uncomfortable 80 degrees F. The temperature was some eight degrees higher than the previous day’s and the minimum was also five degrees up. The mercury fluctuated between 80 and 102 degrees Fahrenheit, making both day and night terrible for the citizens. The respite was the occasional ‘gush’ from the sea that cooled the hot weather. The 15 per cent fall in humidity to 49pc, however, was hardly noticeable during the day.

The one segment of society that did not care much about the sweltering weather conditions was the artist community. After all, it was the year when the centenary of Urdu’s greatest poet Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib was being celebrated. On May 9, the message of the poet and his contributions to the world of literature was projected at a memorial meeting held at the Arts Council marking the week-long Ghalib centenary celebrations. The meeting was organised under the auspices of the Idara-i-Yadgar-i-Ghalib. Eminent scholar Maulana Ghulam Rasool Mehr presided. Prominent literary figures and poets, including Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ahmad Nadim Qasmi, Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum, Hajra Masroor and Husamuddin Rashdi attended the event. In his paper Mirza Ghalib ka maqam aur kalam (Mirza Ghalib’s position in literary canon and his poetry), Maulana Mehr spotlighted the characteristic features of the poet’s works. He praised Ghalib’s Persian poetry as well, quoting several verses from the poet’s Persian poems.

The next day, an exhibition of paintings by Sadequain opened at the Arts Council. All the 50 paintings on display depicted various verses of Mirza Ghalib on the canvas. Critics claimed that the great painter’s interpretation of the poetry was refreshingly eloquent. Some of the images were remarkable for their power and depth of understating of the poet. The show was followed by a mushaira in which renowned poets of the country took part.

Speaking of images, the anti-encroachment drive that the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) had started a couple of weeks back to give the Saddar area a clean, tidy image didn’t seem to be working (So, today’s town planners: it’s nothing new). On May 6, this newspaper in a very interestingly written report said that pushed off the side-walks the encroachers, with makeshift shops, had taken to roads less frequented by the authorities. A paan-peddler who once had a makeshift shop in Saddar took no time in settling down in the cool of an ageing dried-up water trough for animals on Mission Road near the main gate of the Civil Hospital. He put up a thatched roof over the dilapidated ledge and arranged his paan stand decoratively at one side. The stall drew a steady stream of customers in no time with all the hospital visitors and the many students going to-and-for from nearby schools and colleges.

Staying on the subject of students, on May 6, the Road Transport Corporation (RTC) said it was incurring a loss of about Rs3.6 million annually due to students’ concessions(on tickets) granted to them. Director of Operations Karachi Omni Bus Service pointed out that according to a rough survey carried out by the RTC nearly 60,000 students travelled daily by RTC buses all over the city. Apart from that, a number of aged persons — including grandmothers of the students — traveled by the same buses and demanded students’ concession by waving their grandchildren’s identity cards. The director claimed that about 300 such cards were seized by his staff.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2019