Of normal people who help peace

On the way to Singapore recently, I struck up a conversation with a bright Indian student who had secured a scholarship to study electrical engineering at Singapore University. He was full of good humour in an impish kind of way. He was a Hindu boy, if it matters at all, and was having a great time with Pakistani students because he said he found Indians boring.

Not true, I protested. So he clarified that he was actually alluding to Indians from South India. Intrigued by the sweeping generalization, I probed further, only to discover that the target of the young man's ridicule were mostly Tamil students, known to be earnest, highly focussed but often very sermonizing.

"With Pakistanis I can have a lot of fun on the beach on an off day," my young friend confided. "But Indians, particularly the girls among us, would say don't drink, don't say bad things," the student said wryly, sipping his third free beer on the plane. "Pakistanis are like me, bright but easy going, relaxed. They have a sense of fun."

The young man went away but he left me wondering if I had gained a new insight on an issue I consider dear to me. For I have known Punjabi-speaking Indians and Pakistanis become quite outrageously parochial when they collapse into their native language in the middle of a room full of other people. Their cross-border, jhappi, embraces could sometimes annoy even the most patiently indulgent peace promoter. But their spontaneity and instant warmth is so disarming that they know they can take advantage of it, and on most occasions do.

But the young student we are discussing was neither a merry Punjabi nor had he betrayed a great interest in the emerging thaw between India and Pakistan. In fact he was a Hindi-speaking person from Uttar Pradesh who found politics uninteresting. So this was not a stereotype Indian demanding instant peace with the neighbour one day because that was flavour of the day or hurling invectives if the wind was blowing the other way. Nor did he seem to be self-conscious or even aware of his potentially controversial preference for Pakistani friends vis-a-vis his own countrymen.

To me this Indian student is the touchstone of a "normal" citizen of the world who has little time for the nationalist mumbo jumbo that characterizes so many of us today, be they peace activists or misanthropes. He is someone who is upright, and says it as it is.

After landing in Singapore I lost no time in calling Ghazala Anwar in New Zealand, a Pakistani teacher based there. She had applied for an Indian visa for the World Social Forum meeting. I have never met Ghazala and know her only by recent email exchanges pertaining to her visa difficulties.

All the Indian officials I spoke to on her behalf promised help and even asserted that the papers had gone for clearance by the home ministry. A former interior minister also made a few concerned phone calls to his former office. But nothing so far has helped Ghazala get her visa, and now it seems it is too late.

Why was Ghazala denied the right to attend the World Social Forum meeting? After all I met Pakistani danseuse Sheema Kirmani at the forum in Mumbai. She has come with an interesting troupe from the Tehreek-e-Niswan women's group.

They staged a street play in which the mullahs and the military were the villains, and women the winners. The play was roundly applauded. I also met others who told me that nearly a thousand Pakistanis had got visas to travel to India. But there were many more who were denied that right. Ghazala seems to have belonged to the less fortunate lot, but why?

From what I could make out from an article she sent me, Ghazala is a women's rights activist apart from being a teacher. If anything she was planning to present a highly thought provoking paper on gender inequality at the Mumbai forum, from the perspective of world's many religions, including her own. If anything she is a normal liberal Pakistani who defies stereotypes. Why were Sheema and Beena and countless others, including interestingly enough, some Pakhtoonistan activists, given visas and many more, including Ghazala, denied the right? I recall that something similar had happened at the Pugwash anti- nuclear conference in Goa when it was cancelled because Pakistani participants were denied visas.

The moral of the story is that when we in India and Pakistan talk about normalizing relations, the normal people are usually missing from the frame.

It is almost impossible to do a fair analysis of the World Social Forum meeting in Mumbai. My first assessment of it though remains still valid despite the many more questions that have since arisen in my confused mind. Is it a jamboree of myriad peace seekers? Is it a Woodstock of liberal intellectuals?

One newspaper described it as a mela, another called it the summit of the marginalized. Fair enough. But the gathering of a hundred thousand plus people is not only unique for India because of the sheer variety of foreigners assembled on one platform, but also because India's own mind boggling mosaic is on display.

If Indian communists have curiously become the leading supporters of the summit, it was the Dalai Lama's Tibetan monks, their veritable ideological foes, who made a greater impression by their simple chants in a candle-light march.

One moment a group of sex workers from Mumbai's notorious brothels are putting up a riveting play on a stage named after the late communist theatre activist Safdar Hashmi.

The play is about women's exploitation. But the very next moment it was the turn of the tribes-people from Gujarat to put up a vibrant dance display. Everyone has a small space at the WSF. But not everyone is noticed.

While writer Arundhati Roy declared a global people's war on America on Friday amid the loudest applause of the day, the very next day a group of survivors from Hiroshima found few listeners to heed their warnings against nuclear war.

A group of flashily decorated eunuchs got more notice, but so did their campaign for sympathy with AIDS victims. "Judge Not," their placards read. You could say the same for the entire gathering, an amazing mix of people, rich and poor, celebrated and the marginalized. Each making sense individually. But seen as a whole, they confuse me.

Fight corruption thru theory and practice

A workshop was held at Allama Iqbal Open University last week to formulate anti-corruption themes for the curriculum of schools and colleges. Increasing the awareness about corruption through education is part of the government's effort to fight the menace under the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS), a policy prepared by NAB in 2002.

The NACS, like many other policies ranging from anti-smoking to nuclear non-proliferation, has its origins in the United Nations. A UN Convention Against Corruption is what appears to be egging Pakistan and dozens of other countries on to implement national anti-corruption strategies being fashioned by the respective state institutions, NGOs and international finance institutions. The main focus of the UN Convention, which Pakistan signed in Merida, Mexico, last month, relates to the fight against transnational corruption, particularly the recovery of assets.

Other countries which are in the process of implementing NACS include Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, Georgia, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Lithuania, Bosnia, Kazakhstan, Tanzania, Ghana, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Ethiopia, Honduras, Panama, Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Coming back to NACS in Pakistan, last week's workshop in Islamabad focused on education as the long term, soft strategy in combating corruption. The role of teachers as models for students in the inculcation of moral, non-corrupt values was inevitably highlighted.

The question is: given the incidence of malpractices within the education system itself, where teachers, administrators and even students are known to play a role, can mere alterations in the curriculum be enough to deter corruption? Consider the following examples.

A bright boy studying in eighth class in a government college in Islamabad, who usually gets first or second position, was awarded fourth position in his class in the examinations last December. When his parents checked his papers and marking, it was discovered that he had been given 18 marks less in one subject. Recalculation of the total marks led to their son getting second instead of fourth position, and the boy who was originally placed first was relegated to third position.

The parents were flabbergasted to find out that the father of the boy who was originally awarded first position, held a position in the government service that enabled him to facilitate the contract extension of the old and aged subject teacher who recorded 18 marks less in their son's paper.

A classic case of an illegal favour for an illegal favour! The practical lesson of the above incident will surely have a larger imprint on the minds of the boys in the class than all the theoretical lessons on moral values.

Then it was reported in the press last week that some 70 students belonging to a single department in a well-known public university in the country got their degrees despite failing in their final examinations. A few of them had not even appeared in the examinations. Their results were apparently changed by overwriting or by alterations in the final award sheet - for which the students had apparently paid large sums of money.

A classic case of bribery! The practical lesson for all students is: it pays to pay bribes! Other cases of malpractices have also come to light in the universities. A faculty member favoured a student by giving her much more marks than she deserved on a question, thus enabling her to pass the M.Phil admission test. An inquiry was initiated into the incident - a classic case of favouritism. But the administration also favoured the student (and the teacher), and the former is well on her way to getting her M.Phil degree.

Another student was found to have copied word for word significant paragraphs from the research work of a foreign author in his dissertation. Despite concrete proof of plagiarism by the student, the administration has not taken any action, and the student is even aiming to win the gold medal with his copied work.

Faculty members are also known to indulge in plagiarism. One case involved three co-authors in a research paper, two were faculty members from different universities and the third was their PhD student. The student was made the scapegoat and expelled, one faculty member resigned while the other, a senior faculty member, escaped unscathed.

A letter-to-the-editor in Dawn last Saturday had also complained about favouritism in the appointment of faculty members in Islamabad's postgraduate university.

Even if theoretical moral values teach students that favouritism and plagiarism are wrong, the practical examples above will prove all theoretical lessons wrong. Unless a hard strategy against corruption is also adopted in the education sector, and corrupt practices are checked and punished before the very eyes of students, how effective can anti-corruption themes in their books prove to be in teaching them not to indulge in corruption in their working life, particularly when moral values in religion have already failed to be a deterrent?

Looking at NACS and NAB's operations, it would appear that the government's main concern is in eradicating "big time" corruption. But in the end, it is the "small time" corruption like the incidents above in the education sector, and in other areas of society, which breed the "big time" corruption.

A clash of barbarians

As the US rose to superpower status in the late 1940s, George Kennan, chief of President Truman's policy planning staff, urged his fellow mandarins to cease any silly talk concerning "unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."

For once a senior diplomat uttered refreshingly, if brutally, frank advice, which was, of course, spurned. The trouble is that the elites know they can't do without insincere rhetoric because if voters realized what they were really up to, they would be dumped.

Another problem with Kennan's candour is that 'straight power concepts' look very crooked indeed once you begin to examine them closely. The employment of power by statesmen almost always is entwined with sleazy schemes for payoffs for cronies. Kennel was, if anything, a bit naive.

Just look at President George W. Bush and the stark lies, bullying behaviours, and money-grabbing ploys in which his administration habitually indulges. The Al Qaeda attacks on 9/11 were truly traumatic for the Americans but for the haughty multimillionaires running the Bush administration the assaults bestowed a delightful licence to do what they pleased: wreck vital treaties, rub out constitutional freedoms, and enrich the already rich at the cost of everyone else. It is a breathtakingly shameless enterprise.

American soldiers are lavished with sentimental praise so long as they carry out their occupation duties and keep their mouths shut but once they return home they find Bush's stingy crew busy cutting benefits and trying to fling them on scrap heaps.

Halliburton, of which vice president Dick Cheney was chief executive, was caught price gouging the troops in Iraq. Yet Bush is virtually immune to a public outcry because the corporate media go merrily along with White House-written scripts.

When Saddam Hussein was captured the imaginary links between the most secular (and loathsome) leader in the Middle East and the rabid religious fanatics of Al Qaeda were played up so that Yanks believing in the Saddam-Osama connection jumped from 48 per cent to 58 per cent. Beholding the self-congratulatory fuss, one would have thought Saddam had been nabbed not in a desolate 'spider hole' but in a sophisticated control centre where he polished up home-made nukes while enraptured by tape recordings of Osama bin Laden's wit and wisdom.

Yet the weapons of mass destruction that Bush and Tony Blair insisted were strewn across Iraq remain mythical. Mythical, except that no weapon of mass destruction killed more victims than did the US-driven UN sanctions on Iraq, racking up a body count of up to half a million children. But squeamish westerners will not read those disturbing figures in their newspapers or hear a peep about it from well-groomed TV newscasters.

Media propaganda is dismayingly effective. Nevertheless, Americans worry about the costly occupation and, according to a polling centre at the University of Maryland, over 70 per cent genuinely believes that democracy under UN auspices ought to be established before troops leave, even if an unfriendly government arises as a result.

Of course, this is not the outcome that Bush zealots desire. Yet twice as many American soldiers were killed in the last four months as in the previous four months and no serious authority believes Saddam's capture will hamper, let alone halt, the guerrilla conflict.

The White House, behind the scenes, is anxious too. As a last ditch measure to crush Iraqi resistance the US is unleashing a Vietnam-style Phoenix assassination programme comprising US special force units in league with Iraqi exiles and former members of Saddam's secret police and intelligence services.

This lawless state terror project didn't work in Vietnam and it won't work in Iraq, most certainly not before the US election in November. All that hardcore reactionaries ever have to offer ordinary Americans is demonized foes.

The year the Berlin wall toppled, Sam Huntington's book "The Clash of Civilizations" (1990), in the nick of time, nominated a new enemy for forlorn conservatives to manipulate: Islamic civilization. Noam Chomsky dryly retorted that civilized people don't clash; for that matter, one might recall Gandhi's comment, when asked by a reporter, that western civilization 'would be a good idea.'

Hordes of commentators - some shaking their heads, some gleefully rubbing their hands - foresaw a hideous new era of high-tech crusades. A few critics came nearer the truth when noticing that US neo-conservatives craved control of vast energy reserves in the Middle East and in the Caspian Sea area, and looked for any excuse for a power grab.

What transpired is even loonier still, but makes perfect sense if you run a superpower. As the British and French empires collapsed, an unholy alliance formed between western government agencies and Muslim fundamentalists to undermine any regime that threatened the former's interests. So sleek western statesmen bankrolled the most primitive fanatics and crazy dictators (even when better deals with saner partners were available).

Jihadis were imported from all over the Muslim world to fight Soviets in Afghanistan, including fresh converts from the West of exactly the sort who fill their shoe heels with explosives. They were honed in western-subsidized Afghan camps. Saudis and Gulf rulers also pitched in. In those bygone days Osama bin Laden was nothing less than a freedom-fighting darling of the West.

In a memoir 'Jihad 'Tom Carew, a former SAS officer who trained Mujahideen recruits, recalled both fierce no-quarter combat with Soviet forces as well as abundant aid pouring in from British intelligence and the Pentagon. His training camp, ironically, crafted flesh and blood 'weapons of destruction' in the form of zealots willing to fly aeroplanes into buildings. As Americans clasped hands with Jihadis in Afghanistan, they also backed the Iraqi regime in order to contain the Iranian Islamic revolution, whose leaders held the American hostages just long enough to help Ronald Reagan get elected.

American conservatives, if you think about it, never had better friends than the Islamic fundamentalists. Who else would fight so ferociously against local groups motivated to improve ordinary peoples' daily lives? Atrocities were a defining feature of the ugly warfare the jihadis learned. American ally Gulbuddin Hikmatyar's forces tore apart Kabul. After the Russians left, the victors - illiterate, dogmatic and idle - turned on their partners, who after all had abandoned them.

This vicious dynamic spurred the infamous bombings in Nairobi, Tanzania and America. These fundamentalists are guilty of defaming Islam even as American and British leaders, in response, are guilty of making a mockery of democracy and international law.

Thousands of innocents - children, women, and the aged - died. Can the authorities responsible for this self-righteous retaliation be called civilized? Long before America installed the monstrosity of the Guantanomo camp, though, Pakistan's Bhutto regime created the disgraceful Dalai camp where many politicians were detained just outside the jurisdiction of Pakistan's Supreme Court.

This 'war on terrorism' degenerated into a war between barbarians. Compare the obscene way in which Afghan pro-Soviet leader Najibullah was hanged and his mutilated body exhibited in a manner as Saddam's nasty sons were killed and their bullet-riddled corpses displayed. Neither act was conceivable had the perpetrators been civilized.

Both foes deny any hint of humanity to anyone even vaguely associated with the other side. The Bali bombing and the Istanbul synagogue attack certainly were not civilized acts, but neither were the killings of Afghan and Iraqi civilians by 'precision' air raids.

Afghanistan is again a bustling centre of the drug trade, with a helping hand from the CIA, just as the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s were funded through cocaine. Were these repulsive activities, which ruined many lives wherever the narcotics spread, civilized?

Bush's cronies, meanwhile, are raking it in. Private corporations gobble up Iraq's national assets at bargain prices. Although fronted by Pentagon retirees, their mission is purely mercenary. The bloody occupation is being privatized.

What does civilization have to do with utterly uninhibited greed? Didn't civilization begin - at least in legend - in Iraq where Hamurabi was the first law giver? The most infamous act in Islamic history took place on Iraqi soil where the prophet's grandson, with his family, were murdered not by 'infidels' but by rival Muslims.

In the Middle Ages Halagu ravaged the region but now it is the prey of western powers that propped up Saddam for decades and later inflicted their own massive military assault. Halagu, at least, fought in the front line of his soldiers while Bush, who dodged combat service in Vietnam because of his Dad's high-level connections, only paid a 'stealth visit' to US armed forces in hours of darkness.

Unlike career diplomats, who can afford to be cynical, most human beings care about 'unreal objectives' such as civil liberties, better living conditions and democracy. Millions of demonstrators in Europe and America mobilized and are working through many avenues to end the occupation.

The Pope, and the head of the Anglican Church, opposed these reckless wars. Last week an English Bishop accused the bellicose Bush of practising a "very strange distortion of Christianity.' If there is a sparkling symbol of civilization, it is not Bush or Blair but young Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza last March, while defending the rights of the Palestinians. Yet it is only as citizens realized that their leaders only tell the truth when convenient that the public can begin to hold them to higher standards. It's a long-term struggle. 'The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly,' G.K. Chesterton observed. 'The rich have always objected to being governed at all.'

A life fully lived

Images keep crowding in on me. It is impossible for me to describe a life as fully lived as that by Syed Abid Ali, a life which ended on a cold January night in Islamabad barely a week ago.

I once asked Faiz how old Ustad Daman was. "Such lives are not measured by the month or the year," Faiz had replied. The same can be said of Syed Abid Ali. It does not matter whether he was sixty, seventy or more. "Every life diminishes me," the poet had said. But there are men whose death does not diminish you. It demolishes you. I know the cause which took Syed Abid Ali away from me. It was many years ago that he received an early warning. He thought nothing of the matter and continued to live and to make people around him happy and secure. We thought he was immortal. But he was not.

Here I must make a small digression. When my father died many years ago, mother received a one-line letter from a friend of the family. It was addressed to her by name and read; "Ahmed-i-mursal na rahey, kaun rahey ga." that is one way of looking at things. But is it?

What does Mrs Abid Ali, Nazi Apa to seniors and juniors alike, think of the matter? How do Shah Sahib's three sons, Sarmad, Aizad and Syed Ali look at it? I know they have a long way to go before they can stand up and be recognized and respected as the sons of their father. It is a difficult task I know, but well worth a try. I know also they will not let their father down.

Syed Abid Ali was the director-general, public relations, Punjab. In this capacity, he turned public relations into a magnificent private enterprise. There never was and there never shall be another DGPR like him again.

It was another great friend who introduced me to Syed Abid Ali a quarter of a century ago. Years later, Shah Sahib and I were to work for The Muslim for sometime. I spent some of the happiest days of my life with him at the offices of The Muslim in the Falletti's Hotel, Lahore. I was seldom alone with Shah Sahib except during the lunch hour. He would often share a kebab with me.

The meal would invariably consist of a cup of soup, a kebab and half a naan each. In the evenings he would take me to an appropriate watering hole to forget the worries of the day. Innumerable people, including Munnoo Bhai, Sadequain, Sheikh Adnan and Jamil Shah Sahib and many many more would keep us company during those happy hours.

Tomorrow was always another day and Shah Sahib would take it as it came. It would take me hundreds of pages to chronicle the memorable time I had in his company and in the company of his wife, Nazi Apa who has been like my own sister all these years. She was meant for him and he for her. This wonderful partnership has now been broken but even as Syed Abid Ali was returning to the pavilion, I am sure, she must have said, "well played, Abid." So did I.

The fondest memory I have of Syed Abid Ali is of a beautiful November morning in Lahore way back in 1984. Shah Sahib came to my place in Model Town and asked me to accompany him to Faiz Sahib's house in H-Block. It was Friday, November 2.

Mrs. Indira Gandhi had been killed by her own guards only a couple of days earlier, October 31 to be precise. Faiz was naturally worried and talked at length on the situation in India. Worried as he was, Faiz played the perfect host to Syed Abid Ali and me. We talked of everything under the sun until morning turned into late afternoon. We then took our leave and went our ways.

I will return to Syed Abid Ali again and again but for that I will have to put my memory back in order. For the time being let me share with you the last column Shah Sahib wrote for the Daily Times Lahore. It appeared on Monday, January 12, barely a few hours after he had died. Titled, 'Islambad, the beautiful,' it began:

Calling the capital 'Islamabad, the beautiful' is a cliche done to death. The term first came up when it was inscribed on a slab of stone installed near Zero Point, facing the incoming traffic.

Brainchild of a former CDA chairman who was singularly devoid of good taste, it has attracted wide-spread criticism over time. A columnist for an English paper uses the phrase sarcastically, day in and day out. He and, for that matter, all of us should thank our lucky stars that another hair-brained proposal of the same chairman did not see light of day.

Some of us would recall that there used to be a singularly unattractive statute of Queen Victoria at Lahore's Charing Cross. This was fortunately removed and placed in an innocuous museum corner in the 1970s. Our friend, the former chairman, wanted to put up a replica of the canopy and pedestal of this statute in the middle of Zero Point. There was stiff resistance from the press and public and fortunately for Islamabad the chap was suspended for corruption before he could inflict this atrocity on the city.

All said and done, the fact remains that Islamabad, set in a valley of colours and flowers, nestled against the Margalla range and over-looked by the foothills of the Himalayas ('Hindu Kush' would hardly be appropriate in the prevailing spirit of bonhomie!), is one of the most scenic cities to have come up during the last century. Perhaps that is the reason why, despite one's good sense, the cliche seems to grow on one with the passage of time, especially during the heady spring days.

But perhaps for the first time Islamabad looked really beautiful even in the drab winters for the recently concluded Saarc Summit. This was largely the handiwork of the newly appointed CDA Chairman, Kamran Lashari, who has earlier contributed significantly to the beautification of Lahore.

I do not have the privilege of knowing Lashari personally but would like to extend my gratification to him for the new look that he has imparted to Islamabad in a short while since taking over his new assignment.

The colourful flags, the banners, with meaningful inscriptions, the neatly trimmed terraces and the well-laid out flower beds along the main boulevard, as well as the tasteful and eye-catching lighting arrangements, bear witness to his aesthetic sense and organising ability. All this has set me thinking about the history of Islamabad's evolution to which I was a witness, both at the beginning as well as sporadically during the last four decades.

The decision to shift the capital from Karachi was taken by Ayub Khan soon after he took over as CMLA-president. A Capital Commission headed by General Yahya Khan was set up, mandated to select a suitable location for the new capital.

After visiting various parts of northern Punjab and the Hazara district and taking into account factors such as the availability of water and proximity to developed areas, the commission recommended the present site.

The cabinet decision to name it 'Islamabad' was announced by Federal Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. It is also widely believed that Ayub Khan's preference was for a site not too far away from Rawalpindi so that he could keep an eye on GHQ.

Once the site was selected, Ayub Khan decided to shift the capital temporarily to Rawalpindi, pending the development of Islamabad. The process of shifting started in October 1959. What a sight it was to see our Bengali and Karachite colleagues alight at the railway station, clad in heavy woollen clothes including cotton jackets called 'bundles' or simply wrapped in woollen blankets!

Kurrachee revisited

Dawn's "Lifestyles Exhibition" revived nostalgic memories of the serene city that "Kurrachee" was in the colonial era. Daybreak would see the city's roads being washed while well-maintained oil lamps at roundabouts would greet the night.

The Lyari River was a gushing stream of unpolluted water that would often overflow its banks in the rainy season. Vegetables and fruit were grown in the suburbs that began from Teen Hatti, named after three shops located there, and the farms on the riverbanks. Guavas and papayas in particular were supplied from Malir.

City bus stops had sheds for the waiting people and streets had sabeels at every corner. The municipal authorities cared for the needs and rights of even the animals - there was a sizeable population of them - as horses, donkeys and camels were a vital part of the city transport system.

The authorities constructed water ponds at main roads and kept a check on cruelty to animals. The philanthropists played their role in the development of the city by establishing educational institutions like the NED College of Engineering, the DJ Science College and the Abdullah Haroon Arts College.

The city had a vibrant cultural life with plays being regularly staged at the Katrak Hall in Saddar and other places, and a colourful night-life with a host of night-clubs and bars. A people's bar at Lea Market offered taari, a drink extracted from the date tree. Cinema was very popular among the citizens and wedding ceremonies were thought to be incomplete without a musical concert.

The names of the older parts of the city reveal its history as well as the changes it has gone through after turning into a teeming urban sprawl following the partition of the subcontinent. Aram Bagh was called Ram Bagh and Guru Mandar used to house a temple near which Sabil Masjid stands today. Incidentally, a small park at the roundabout is still named Hasa Singh Park in government records. Numaish had an exhibition centre the shifting of which led the roundabout to be called Purani Numaish. Soldier Bazaar was the market place for the "gora" military men.

Golimar was named after a shooting ground for the soldiers in the area. Gutter Baghicha, a part of which is now called the Trans Lyari Park, was the place where sewage was treated and then used for agricultural purposes. Laloo Khait consisted of farms cultivated by Baloch growers. Lasbela borrowed its name from Lasbela House, the Karachi residence of the rulers of the neighbouring Lasbela state. Sohrab Goth, which looks like a part of Afghanistan today, was then populated by the Gabols, whose chief provided land for the airport and later for the mausoleum of the Quaid-i-Azam.

Even then Karachi was a cosmopolitan city as its population comprised a number of Muslim, Hindu, Parsi and Christian communities. The annual festivals of Holi, Deewali, Dassehra and Christmas also saw Muslim participation. Karachi had a distinct culture that it gradually lost as it grew into a maddening city of millions.

It would be a nice idea to build a model of the old city on a miniature scale to add to a few recreational spots the city has. Or some monuments to pay tribute to the city's past. What about discovering the grave of Mai Kolachi, the lady from whom Karachi derives its name? According to a folk-tale, it lies in a small graveyard in the Boulton Market area.

Catch them when they are young

Well-known educationist Begum Majeed Malik's daughter, the late Nageen Malik, who was principal of the reputable PECHS School for Girls, was a far-sighted woman. She introduced the concept of conservation - well before it became a buzz-word both at home and abroad - in schools at all levels. Projects on conservation and the environment were undertaken and then displayed every year by children of all age groups. No press or TV coverage was sought by her, for she strongly believed that publicity is a two-edged sword.

However, dignitaries visiting Pakistan were requested to take time out to see these projects. The Duke of Edinburgh came once and spoke highly of the quality of the presentations. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was the chief guest on another occasion. He loved the short speech given by a girl not yet in her teens and expressed his appreciation by giving her a peck on the cheek. She came home excitedly and told her parents, "The prince kissed me."

"But then the prince is an old man and you are merely 10 years old," said her father teasingly.

"So what? A prince is a prince and a girl is a girl," she chirped. The parents-teachers meetings at the PECHS school would often see many parents admit that they had learnt the importance of keeping the city clean from their children. "I used to throw rubbish out of my car until my daughter told me it was a bad habit. Now I am reformed," said a father.

It's a good idea to catch them when they are young. Unfortunately, not all schools teach the importance of keeping the environment clean. One of our colleagues living in Block 24 of the Seaview Township complains that the DHA Junior Model School's students in the locality refrain from throwing biscuit and toffee wrappers and bags of chips inside the school premises but that once they walk out of the gate, they throw garbage without the least hesitation. Thanks to the strong wind that has gripped Karachi these days, the garbage is spread all over the locality.

This is typical of our people. Homes and workplaces are kept clean, but no one bothers about the streets. It is time the educational authorities made conservation a part of the school curriculum. Teachers and principals should also be given lectures on the importance of keeping the environment clean.

No Champs-Elysees

"This is no Champs-Elysees that you can set up makeshift cafes on the sidewalks, but do the police care?" says a frustrated Dr Zain K. Natalwala and then answers himself, "why should they when they get something out of letting the poor set up their businesses?" Well he may be from Natal, a place in South Africa, but his heart is here in Karachi - that too right in the hub of the city. To be more precise, on Mansfield Street where he established his small clinic some 42 years ago.

The infirmities of old age have not robbed Dr Natalwala of his scintillating sense of humour. He still has a lively wit - quite an achievement for somebody who spends most of his waking hours in the mad, mad world of Saddar. "They serve ghee-laden parathas and eggs for breakfast. And do you know these eggs need no pepper as the soot-belching buses give it a nice coating?

As if this wasn't enough, they set up the kitchen on the pavement and the table and chair on the road for any fast-moving vehicle to nudge you to the next world." He has recently seen a similar cafe come up across the road from his clinic "which has a very dangerous-looking gas stove." Dr Natalwala fears that there will be a lot of causalities if, God forbid, the stove bursts. "But does anybody care?" he muses.

Apparently, he is a lone crusader. For almost four decades, he has been regularly writing countless letters, and making phone calls worth hundreds of rupees, to the authorities to "put things right". However, if the authorities had heeded his complaints, they would have succeeded in conserving the serenity of Mansfield Street.

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