It has been about five years since I graduated from the University of Karachi but the experience has been far too full to fade away that quickly from the mind. And although the act of learning to love “KU” was mostly complicated, it was certainly more educational than the scholastic pursuits that I had in mind when I enrolled at the Department of English. It is difficult to identify what was most memorable or what were some of the rather unpleasant experiences but in my mind KU now exists as a cluster of sounds and images that continue to shuffle amongst themselves. In any case, I cannot help but remember the institution fondly – and to put it sentimentally, even as a former home of sorts.

One really interesting feature of the institution is the social diversity that it familiarises the students with. A melting pot – the university absorbs students coming from the country’s most deprived regions as well as those living in its developed towns and cities. But in a mostly class-based society such as ours, the divisions remain clear: students from upper middle-class, if not clearly capitalist backgrounds, who somehow couldn’t secure admission in McGill, may be found to act somewhat condescendingly around their maila fellows who would be just as disapproving in many ways.

Apart from social classes, there are differences over political and religious systems with those advocating political Islam, atheism, communism and everything else coming out quite openly and in most cases without having to fear for their lives. It is this proximity between different backgrounds and points of view and their co-existence at the campus that has always given one the opportunity to understand them better by engaging in respectful, conducive debate.

During my time as a student there, the university was also riddled with student wings of various political groups who occasionally managed to turn the institution into a battleground of sorts. At that time the most active groups in this context were the All Pakistan Muttahida Students Organisation (APMSO) and the Islami Jamiat-i-Taliba (IJT) and clashes between the two even led to killings. The Rangers were also an ever-present detail, apparently with the mandate to control the situation, but for some reason, that wouldn’t help. And while this political friction and other circumstantial paraphernalia gave the students a flavour of politics in Karachi in general, it was also repugnant enough to make most of them recoil from the idea of politics and a possible political career altogether.

I also got a chance to acquaint some of the politically-active ones when on one occasion they began to beat a friend up who got caught in the act – of smoking. It took a while to convince them to let him go when he was hardly a match in front of the big, loud boys whose “sole intention was to rid him of the bad habit.” Then there would be teachers and students who would bemoan the influence some of the political boys trying to exert in academic matters, especially around examination time.

But parallel to the unpleasant political picture ran the institution’s vivid spirit that mostly manifested itself through its love for food, chai and a good game of cricket at the Valika Cricket Stadium. Majeed’s nihari and kachoris at the ‘Chemistry (department) ka dhaba’ and the ‘Pharmacy (department) ka dhaba’ used to be most popular, even cathartic, after an almost severe lecture on ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ So while T.S. Eliot turned in his grave with an over-analysis of his poem and his personality, we ate kachori.

Then there was the eternally most well-known prem gali, whose name is an absolute misnomer. You will hardly, if ever, find any prem in or even around that gali but there is surely going to be lots of dhabas and tea-shops with students lining up for a quick cup of tea before the 8:30 am class.

As for the academic experience, I found it to be rather varied and sometimes, tricky. One would come across professors with all sorts of personalities and persuasions, with some of them quite prone to turning their lectures into moralistic, even religious, deliberations. And when it came to students, one could be studying with a Dari-speaking ethnic Hazara girl with family in Afghanistan and one might as well come across Jordan-based Palestinians who still speak of Ramallah as their home. This diversity was, and still is, particularly striking in some of the paths that the institution’s alumni chose: While Attaur Rehman of the Department of Statistics created the Karachi-based Jundallah (Army of God) and was later accused of masterminding a series of terrorist attacks in the city, the university also produced legislators and political giants such as Raza Rabbani.

All in all, the four years at the university were rather enlightening and occasionally, memorable. But since graduation I have made only rare and ‘absolutely necessary’ kind of visits to the university. All the checkpoints turning the non-students away have made visiting the campus nearly impossible. So for now, and as memory fights forgetfulness, I really hope this changes, so I can go back and visit my alma mater without having to worry about it.

* The author is an alumnus of the University of Karachi