Karachi
City of Dreams
Durriya Kazi
ADA Dialogue II Do you know your city?
Frere
Hall Karachi May 4 2018
Karachi has been
a bit like sand dunes that are constantly shifting and altering yet retaining
their essence. It is difficult to define it visually by its built structures.
There is no concept of the inner city spreading out to the suburbs in an
orderly fashion. There is no map book of
Karachi, no history of the city for visitors, no calendar of events for its
residents. It’s a city that is spread by word of mouth, a city to be
experienced rather than viewed.
This may be what
makes Karachi feel like home. Home for those whose ancestors lived here, for
those who were born here, for those who escaped the violence of partition, for
those who come here for work, this city envelops and accepts all. As a Pathan
labourer said we can only work in Karachi because no one asks where you are
from, only what you can do.
Architects and
urban planners generally view a city as a built environment. Its layout, its
planning of buildings, urban spaces, heritage sites, or new developments. But
for me the buildings and streets are emblems of those who lived here once and
those who live here today. The names of streets like Pedro D Silva Rd, Diyaram Gidumal
Rd, Moses Ibn Ezra Street , Nusserwanji Rd, Chagatai Rd coexisting with Ali Budha St, Yasir
Short Way, Noorani Masjid Rd and Mir Mohammad Baloch St. suggest
past lives of the city whose only reality is the typed address on a utility
bill.
Today’s Karachiwalas,
having no resonance with street names, ignores them preferring instead personal navigational maps based on landmarks
like Disco Bakery, Nasir Jump, Aisha Manzil, mochi mor, 4 mint ki chowrangi and
Mukha chowk.
Karachi becomes a
collection of personal narratives, private aspirations, a city as big or as
small as the routes taken by its residents. When accounts are published in
sporadic newspaper columns by Anwar Mooraj or Nadeem Paracha or some old newspaper clippings circulated on
facebook or whatsapp, we feel the delight of sharing experiences that we believed were only
our own.
It has sent many
of us in search of the collective history of our city - Farooq Soomro better
known as Karachiwala, Rumana Hussain , Ajmal Kamal’s compilation of Karachi narratives, or the
more academic studies by Arif Hasan, Usman Damohi or Gul Hasan Kalmati. However this collective history eludes us as
Karachi becomes a contested city claimed by different political and ethnic
groups or classes.
J Forrest Brunton , the Chief Engineer of the
Municipality of Karachi famously said in 1914, that “Karachi has practically no
past other than what the British contributed
when they occupied in 1839 a small mud built town of 12-14000 inhabitants.”
He refers to the
Karachi settlement mentioned in Seth Naomal Hotchand 19C account of the origins
of Karachi. Hotchand suggests there was no Karachi until Kharak Bandar got
silted up and merchants in search of a
new harbor came upon a small settlement of 25 huts called Darboo near a spring
called Kolachi jo kun thus creating the city of Karachi in 1729.
However, as Arif
Hasan has pointed out, the presence of the 1500 year old Shri Panchmukhi
Hanuman Mandir, and the 8th century shrine of Abdullah Ghazi
suggests an older history lost to time as a pilgrimage site. The Mahadev Temple
in Kothari Parade is said to be mentioned in the 9th BC Mahabarata
as Lord Shiva’s very first home and where Guru Nanak the founder of Sikhism
meditated.
It seems that
each settler saw it as a terra nullius, a Latin expression meaning
"nobody's land". Perhaps it would be better termed as terra omni or “land
of all”.
In 1914, Brunton described
Karachi as a cosmopolitan town: “ almost
every eastern nationality and caste is represented in its bazaar” “here may be
seen Brahmins and Banyas from all parts of India; Hindu coolies from Cutch,
Rajputana, Bombay. Madras, Punjab and the North West Provinces; Muhammadan
coolies from Cutch, the Punjab, Sindh, and Baluchistan; Mohammedan traders of
all kinds including Khojas Borah, Arabs, Persians and Afghans, and last but not
least, the Parsee and the Amil of Sindh. In few towns can a more varied
population be found”
Today the
demographics of Karachi are if anything, even more varied not unlike that other
City of Dreams, New York, of which historian Tyler Anbinder writes” At the
southern tip of Manhattan, Dutch fur traders, English merchants’ sons, random
fortune seekers from Spain or Norway, Welsh tavern keepers, Gaelic blacksmiths,
religious dissidents and a smattering of Jews and freed slaves somehow managed
to conduct business even while speaking 18 different languages.” Khudabux Abro designed a T-shirt for Karachi which had
“Karachi my city” written in all the languages spoken in Karachi – enough to
cover the whole front panel.
Some dwellers of
Karachi live in mixed localities, but many gravitate towards ethnically defined
neighbourhoods: Marwaris live in Ranchore lines, Goanese in Cincinatus Town,
Parsis in Parsi Colony, Memons in
Dhoraji. However they all work together, where their ethnic origins become
irrelevant. For years I have been going to a metal caster in Liaqatabad who
speaks exactly like a Liaqatabadi but, as I discovered, is actually Punjabi.
Once you settle in Karachi, you become defined by this city.
Equally the city is
made by its residents. At Partition, an economy in shambles as its Hindu
dominated business community migrated, quickly picked up with new businessmen
and philanthropists, who dared to establish the economy, the industry, the
educational institutions, the hospitals. There were artists, poets musicians
who established what is now the Pakistani culture. There were cricketers and
film producers, journalists, architects and scientists. Government was formed, and armies and police forces established.
The municipality made a seamless transition.
Historians with a
mission will continue to mine the past, but in the mean time we can allow
ourselves to imagine a Karachi where the superintendent of Police was E H
Ingle, Civil Hospital was headed by Lt Gen R J Baker, and the Railway luggage
inspector was W. Booth. Where Pir Muhammad Rashdi would put on his Sunday best
in the hope that the lady in a red sari would notice him standing against a
borrowed car as she took her daily constitutional on Lady Lloyd Pier. Directories
were divided into European, Parsi, Hindu and Muslim sections. One could book a
berth on an Ellerman ship to Liverpool stopping at Port Said and Marseilles.
One could buy a Steinway piano from The Haydn
Co on Elphinstone Street, anything from cakes to arms and ammunition
from Hajee Doosal & Sons, bid for furniture at the auction House of J G Misquita, jump onto an East India tram, hobnob with the
British Military Elite at Mrs Woods’ Kilarney hotel, and buy Oysters and wine from Nusserwanjee and Co. I
can imagine my mother and her friend going to the first floor Abbas School of
Dancing on Elphinstone Street to learn the waltz.
I can imagine
Tamancha Jan crooning from Radio Pakistan, immortalized in the Ahmed Rushdi’s song
Bandar Road say Kemari, and the newly migrated Bundu Khan living on the edge of
Bundar Road along with so many when evacuee property ran out.
I can imagine the
Turkish Captain Sidi Ali Capudan in 1558 trying to avoid the treacherous Jakad
whirlpools, deciding whether to turn into the port of Kurashi ( Karachi) or head
down the Makran coast to Kawadar as advised by the Turkish Mohit navigational guide;
and Admiral Nearchus sent by Alexander the Great in 326 BC turningwith relief into
the harbor of Korakala
I imagine a fierce Ameer of far away
Kabul accepting, in 1756, the gift of
Karachi by the Mughal court in return for peace and the subsequent
consternation of the British, beleaguered by losses in Afghanistan, instigating
the final capture of Karachi in 1838, the troops alighting the HMS Wellesley to
wade through marshes to set up camp in Karachi.
I can imagine the
stories told by camel caravans from Khorasan, encamped where today the Sindh
Madrasatul Islam stands.
Did the Sidis or
Sheedis of Bantu descent who came as soldiers or slaves with the Arabs and
Turks, settle on the coast because it brought them closest to their lost homeland?
The Mayors of
Karachi since 1911 were in turn Muslim, Parsi, Hindu and Christian. Each gifted the city with beautiful public
buildings, educational institutions, commerce, and high standards of living.
Karachi was a city built with love and imagination. It was a city that was
always intended to be modern and forward looking. It’s now bloodied streets
were traversed by peaceful traders of many religions and many ethnicities.
One can only hope
that like the waves crashing on the beach constantly smooth its sands, renewing
the edges of this city, Karachi will heal and become peaceful once again.
When the traders
of Karak Bandar chose the port of Karachi, when the British called it the Star
of the East, when 40 Jews migrated to Karachi from Bombay in 1881, when half a million
refugees from the violence of Partition
chose Karachi as a shelter, when Jinnah chose it as the new country’s capital,
when the traders of Bombay moved their
assets to Karachi, when in present Pakistan, 45,000 migrant workers come to the
city every month from different parts of the country, when today politicians wrangle
to gain control of Karachi, they all believed and continue to believe, this is
a city that will change their fortunes, a city where they can realize their
dreams.
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