They say in Belfast, the capital city of Northern Ireland, one can identify not only a person`s earning power but also religion by knowing which side of the street he lives on.
This is exactly what inspired U2, the legendary rock band, to write the song, Where the streets have no name, an all-time classic number from their 1987 album, The Joshua Tree, which in Bono`s words talks about a utopian location `where the values of the city and the values of our society don`t hold you down`.
In Karachi too, one can divide different sections of the city according to income groups, for example, the elites and upper-middle class with high incomes can be found packed in Clifton and Defence; middle-class groups in Gulshan-i-Iqbal and Nazimabad; and the lower-middle class in Lyari, Korangi and Orangi. However, there`s no area specific to a religious community such as a Shia, Sunni, Hindu or Christian street, but there are places where particular groups of people with the same ethnicity can be found; for example Sohrab Goth and al-Asif Square are purely Pathan or Afghan refugee areas.
Before Partition, the name of a gali, the Urdu word for street, became associated with a variety of professions, because of a particular group of traders who opened up shops there. Places like Botal Gali (Bottle Street), Mochi Gali (Cobbler Street) and Sarafa Gali (Jewellery Street) are cases in point. Although Dupatta Gali on Tariq Road and Banaras Colony in Korangi Township came about later, it basically follows the same trend.
Later, with the influx of refugees in the city after Partition, settlements were formed that came to be known in line with the conditions and/or people of the area who started living there.
Machar Colony (Mosquito Colony) was named because there were mosquitoes all around the place when people settled there. Bhens Colony (Buffalo Colony), Pehlwan Goth (Village of wrestlers) and Geedar Colony (Vulture Colony) have a similar story.
Afterwards political considerations came into play and colonies named after famous personalities and rulers started to spring up in the city. Some encroachments also started to name themselves after influential persons in order to seek protection. Musa Colony was named after General Musa. Nusrat Bhutto colony, Junejo Colony, Kausar Niazi colony, Shireen Jinnah Colony and Rais Amrohi Colony are a few other examples.
Lately, the trend has shifted from purely an issue of settlement to that of real-estate encroachments where land grabbers are out in full force, occupying prime locations and even public parks. One popular tactic is that of setting up a goth, literal meaning village in Sindhi, on the outskirts of the city and settling families there from interior parts of the province. Former chief minister Sindh Arbab Rahim had a tiff with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement only recently when the Karachi-based political party started a campaign to drive out such encroachments.
Some streets of Karachi have the honour of giving their titles to local films. Filmmaker Sarmad Sehbai`s Fankaar Gali (Artist Street) in 1989 is perhaps the most well-known and critically acclaimed project in this connection, which explored the lives of performing artists who pronged to a lane behind Radio Pakistan in hopes of getting a show. The film had brought instant fame and recognition to actors Akbar Subhani and Hyderabad-born artiste Hafeez Fatima back then.
Today, no trace of the so-called Fankaar Gali exists. The street behind the old Radio Pakistan building on M A Jinnah Road looks deserted and is surrounded by tire shops and stray dogs. Ahmed Himesh, a librarian at the National Academy of Performing Arts, recalls that Fankaar Gali was set up by a group of like-minded and junior-level artists as a means of survival and finding work. No popular names of today were among the group.
He informs that most artists of the day had found the act of standing in a street looking for work as `undignified`, even though they understood the economic hardships of the performers. Other people when interviewed also agreed that there was nothing special or romantic about the street. The Gali remained functional only for a few months sometime during the `80s and later died out.
Although there are roads in Karachi, such as the Amir Khushro Road, dedicated to artists, there`s no official street or mohalla (neighbourhood) specifically for them. One reason for this could be that the state has never allotted houses or sanctioned plots for artists say like it did for journalists, who have a Sahafi Colony (Journalists` colony). However, there`s an area near Garden which is known as Qawaal Gali or Qawaal Mohalla, where families of different Qawaal households have lived over the years. Pakistan`s leading sitar player Nafees Ahmad points out to a unique advantage for the children living there, saying they don`t face stigmatisation in a society which traditionally looks down upon performers and their offspring.
A place called Bul Bul Hazaar Dastaan near Kharadar is also famous for having organised a number of `mehfils` or shows for some leading classical musicians. Some not-so-famous performers still reside there in a building today.
Shehzad Nawaz`s film Botal Gali (2006) had also used the name of a Karachi street, which is just ahead of Pakistan Chowk. Although the Gali had looked crisp and long in his film, in reality it is just a narrow lane with a deplorable road condition where empty bottles from all over the city are collected and sold. There you also find a variety of `non-alcoholic` perfume shops, mostly owned by Ismaili shopkeepers, alongside dealers of empty green-coloured wine bottles.
Some months back, efforts were launched for a food street in Karachi`s Burns Road area on the pattern of Lahore, but to date it hasn`t borne any fruit. Also, the provincial government had initiated the Kochae-Saqafat, a weekly activity where booksellers organised fairs and cultural shows were held in the street between the Arts Council and Hindu Gymkhana, but that too was discontinued after a year.
Many streets must have been renamed or destroyed or built during Karachi`s evolution as Alexander`s Krokala to Mohammad bin Qasim`s Debal to the present day metropolis of over 16 million people. The danger is not only that there aren`t enough books on the subject but also the fact that people in general here don`t seem to care or take interest in knowing more about the city they live in. There`s a dire need to record the history of our streets in finer detail before they too fade away with time.