KARACHI: Short, prin­ted and well-fitted shirts with big collars; bright yellow, orange, red and green trousers with bell bottoms; big goggles, long straight hair with hippie headbands or the floppy straw hat, messy beehives, bouffant, petal shaped layers of the artichoke hairstyle or the round Afro with thick sideburns.

If the fashion trends didn’t take you back to the 1960s and ‘70s, the vintage music surely would. Ahmed Rushdi’s ‘Koko Korina’, Naheed Akhtar’s ‘Tu Turu Turu Tara Tara’, Alamgir’s ‘Dekha na tha kabhi hum nay ye sama’.

‘The Groovy Years: Karachi of the 1960s and ‘70s’, an exhibition organised by The Dawood Foundation (TDF), which opened at TDF Ghar here on Friday, promises to take visitors back into Karachi’s golden era when children were allowed to play outside for hours and women would go out alone to watch movies at any of the popular cinemas such as Rex, Rio, Bambino, Nishat, Prince, Capri or Kohinoor and dream about heroes with Brylcreem hair flips.

Then weekends were days for long walks or long drives on the wide open roads. The beaches were the places to hit for picnics in the day with the family and at night you could combine picnics with going to the movies at the drive-in cinemas.

The entertainment industry was thriving, the bazaars were sprawling. Everyone had a Volkswagen Beetle in their garage. If not that then they had to have a Vespa scooter. There was the local train, too, to take you far and to travel within Saddar, there were the trams.

Of course, the people who have lived through those days remember them fondly. A video played at TDF Ghar on the opening day of the exhibition evoked nostalgia.

The entire exhibition of photographs and posters from that era, old songs, street fashions, etc, all present a snapshot of Karachi’s cosmopolitan past to help the current generation understand this chapter of the city’s history, the mix of cultures that it presented and the kinds of lives that people lived more than half a century ago.

There are areas in the exhibition dedicated to different things from those days. “A life-size stage is set up, and music from this time plays in the background to transport visitors to the nightclubs of the bygone years,” explained TDF’s senior lead programmes Hiba Zubairi.

Another area is dedicated to cinema, artists, popular fashion and trends. The role of Pakistan as a popular tourist destination is highlighted through an interactive puzzle featuring an international jazz player and a timeline of dignitaries who visited Karachi back then.

It was also explained that during the 1960s, Karachi was seen as an economic role model around the developing world and there was much praise for the way its economy was progressing. At the time, the I.I. Chundrigar Road was referred to as ‘Pakistan’s Wall Street’ and many remember that Karachi had the potential of becoming Asia’s New York.

“Whether it be the construction of Quaid-i-Azam’s mausoleum, the arrival of the Beetles or the royal visit, the time witnessed various historic moments,” said TDF CEO Sabrina Dawood.

She added: “The exhibition allows all generations to come together, for grandparents to show the Karachi of the past to their grandchildren, to experience it together.”

The exhibition is open from 10am to 10pm on all days, including Sunday, except for Mondays when the place remains closed for public. A ticket costs Rs100 each.

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2022