How many zoological gardens does Karachi have? Not sure. Do the authorities concerned entertain the thought that the city of more than 20 million people needs zoological gardens for recreational purposes and for the happy pursuit of wildlife lovers? They might not. But in the 1960s they did. (For the uninitiated, this column traces what happened in the ongoing week date-wise exactly 50 years back in Karachi).

On April 10, 1964 the commissioner of Karachi, Roedad Khan, proposed that a spacious park along with zoo spread over 300 acres in the Manghopir locality be built. The spot that he marked for the facility was a sewerage farm in that particular area. Alas, it proved to be yet another pipe dream!

But the commissioner was an active man, or so it seems. Hardly a day would pass by when he wouldn’t give one statement or another while visiting different parts of the city. A day earlier, on April 9, he was in PIB Colony. There the issue of unavailability of basic amenities had lately raised its head. Mr Khan surveyed the entire zone and stated that a magistrate should be appointed to probe the issues that the colony was faced with. Mind you, to date PIB Colony doesn’t have all the basic amenities, at least on a regular basis.

The week had a healthy beginning though. On April 7, it started with a grand event held to mark the WHO’s 16th anniversary. Its theme: no truce for tuberculosis. A meeting in that regard was held at the Metropole Hotel and the programme was advertised through handbills, posters and pamphlets.

The police too were thinking of distributing handbills that day. Reason? According to the new DIG Asif Majeed handbills would be dropped in unlocked cars carrying the caption ‘you are giving too much temptation to car-lifters’.

Those days the National Press Trust was a pretty busy institution. Akhtar Husain was its chairman-designate. He was also the president of the Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu. On April 8 he was at a renowned book centre. He called upon writers and publishers to produce inexpensive and attractive books for children and to improve the standard of illustration. Not a bad idea. We can still pay heed to it.

On April 10, Akhtar Husain was on a slightly different path. He inaugurated an exhibition of paintings by the known Swedish artist Ernst Akerbladh at the Arts Council. The artworks on display made by the Swede included watercolour paintings.These days one hears a lot of hullabaloo about textbooks and how history is taught in Pakistan. This was always an issue and things were done in an airy-fairy manner. On April 11, a committee was set up to formulate an outline of the programme for organising a short Pakistan Studies course at all universities in both wings of the country. It would be interesting to know how that plan materialised. Or why it didn’t.

The next morning another group was set up but not for academic reasons. It was an art promotion body established by prominent educationists and leading businessmen of the city. Ismail Haji Mohammad was its president and Sultan of Sultan Cotton Mills was its vice-president. You don’t know for how long that body lasted. What you do know that in the present day (tarred by bigotry and narrow-mindedness) Karachi’s high and mighty need to come up with as many of such groups as possible.