Many decades ago, Karachi was the go-to city when an American, Dutch or Italian wanted to spend four months on an incredible beach with friends
- Forget foreigners, most Pakistanis would like to avoid living in this city, if they could. So, an American citizen visiting Karachi can get a lot of things wrong about the place, too!
Nazarul Islam
Many decades ago, Karachi was the go-to city when you wanted to spend four months on an incredible beach with your friends, renting a hut for four months on dirt-cheap prices, and get the best quality ‘hasheesh’ or marijuana, again for dirt-cheap prices and no police really hounding you.
Just as New Yorkers love and hate New York, or the Chicagoans hate their city in the morning and love it at night, Karachiites love and hate their city, depending on the moment.
Today’s traffic is bizzare! I don’t just mean in the sense of many first world cities. Bumper to bumper, heavy and heavier traffic tolls on endlessly. It’s chaotic. Motorcycles, rickshaws, cars, even friggin’ trucks will come out of nowhere on the wrong side of the road and continue on.
It’s obnoxious and violent. I have seen fist fights and bloody accidents, even fatal ones. It’s soul crashing too. You see a mother clutching a newborn sitting behind a man on a motorcycle and you realize how people with frugal means get about their day-to-day, by putting their lives on the line, or as we put it in Urdu “jan hatheli pay ley aaey ray”.
Not to mention dangerous, you see trailer with loaded containers with no locks. One may simply glimpse a large trucks speeding, or with no lights in the back or the front. Next you may witness these, stopping dead in their tracks.
To give you an idea, the common myth is the 50% of Pakistan’s vehicles are located in Karachi. I don’t know how true that statement really is, but I won’t be surprised if it’s not too far from truth.
I am told that until quite recently, the Karachiites used to have power cuts quite frequently day and night, for load shedding of the electrical grid, but that has improved significantly, apart from a few areas. It’s a pity that water shortage is still a problem in quite a large portion of the city. But life goes on. People get water tankers to take their fill, and it becomes the norm for them.
Driving to the narrow streets of North Karachi, a suburban middle class neighborhood, completely undrivable. Encroachments had narrowed down the width. It was literally a walk across moon craters. Cars had to be parked far away on the edges of wider lanes.
The local gas company had mercilessly dug at the center, laid down pipelines and then filled it back with dirt, exposing open potholes. Not drivable, not even walkable streets! The local grapevine was that a World Bank interim loan to the Province, had initiated the reconstruction and development project. Some money was funneled for digging and laying new pipes. Rest was suctioned out by contractors and the mafia Godfathers. We have learned to live in this city of scans.
Crime is an issue in more areas than can be imagined. Although it’s not as bad as it used to be, you still need to be careful. Living here, you become quite paranoid, always looking over your shoulder and keeping a guard up, at least when it comes to violent crimes like mugging or home invasion/burglary etc. Karachiites have endured so much that they don’t sweat the small stuff. Someone hoodwinks you or pickpockets you, and you don’t sweat it.
They tell me that more than 40% of the population lives or survives in the megacity, struggling with acute depression, lung disease, kidney failures, diabetes and cardiac arrests
Many decades ago, Karachi was the go-to city when an American, Dutch or Italian wanted to spend four months on an incredible beach with friends, renting a hut for four months on dirt-cheap prices, and get the best quality marijuana, again for dirt-cheap prices and no police really hounding you.
That was Karachi in the 1960s. A lot has gone wrong since then, and the city almost became a second Beirut, with car bombings, violent gangs, kidnappings, and extortion rackets.
Forget foreigners, most Pakistanis would like to avoid living in this city, if they could. So, an American citizen visiting Karachi can get a lot of things wrong about the place, too!
It would be unfair to say Karachi is not deprived of fun. Actually, it is dotted with some official bars and hundreds and maybe thousands of unofficial ones. Ask your hosts. The official ones are open to any non-Muslim visitor. Theater groups, study circles, art galleries. All available, but you need to ask. Pakistanis are still not good with simple publicity to make things easier for visitors.
Not to forget, Karachi is dirty and polluted too. As soon as you enter the airspace, you can see a brown cloud engulfing the city. One is exposed to viral infections and other diseases popping up from time to time. The city is really unclean, loaded with mountains of garbage topped by filthy plastic bags.
Karachi is a wealthy city but divided into affluent and non-affluent neighborhoods. But remember: non-affluent means both poor and people with money but living modestly. It’s a cultural thing.
But… I would not trade it for any other city in Pakistan. I don’t want to live in Lahore, I can’t stand Islamabad, or any other place for that matter. Don’t get me wrong, having lived in other cities I love them too. But my love for Karachi is boundless, unwavering.
And to top it off, I really can’t explain why. You can yell all you want about Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach or Chicago syndrome, if you know what I mean. I have lived here in the past, therefore I will defend my former city, anywhere, internet being one of those places, to my last breath, and I don’t know why. Maybe, for the only reason that it is MY city, and if I don’t love it, who else would?
Frankly, the usual reasons you do hear from Karachiites about why their city is great, you know, the food, the night life, the people and their diversity, the sea, they are all superfluous and ordinary, in the sense that almost every other inhabitant of any other city in the world may cite any one of them and they won’t be wrong. At most times, they would have it better.
Karachi is truly, a wealthy city but divided into affluent and non-affluent neighborhoods. It extends southwards from affluent Clifton and Defence Area Residences, narrowing down to poor, downtrodden northern city neighborhoods. But remember: non-affluent means both poor and people with money but living modestly. It’s a cultural thing.
Karachi can be much more and much better if it can get capable politicians, which are obviously a rare breed in Pakistan.
In the end, all I can really say is, Karachi is like an old, loving mother. It may be ugly. Perhaps, it has seen its heydays, which, for all intents, may not have been that great in the grand scheme of things.
It may not be that great or that lively, or responsive. But when the world chews you up and spits you out, when you have nowhere else to go, and you have nothing, this city, will still embrace you like its own, it will feed you with whatever it can find with its feeble and grubby hands, give you a place to sleep, a small place where it lays its creaking bones itself, and protect you as best as it can. If you give it just an inch, it will give you a mile.
The wonderful megacity of Karachi with its multiracial, multicultural dynamics has dwellers, who hate and love the place at the same time. Their ownership can be mundane, even much more and much better if it can get capable politicians, a rare breed in Pakistan.
Wherever you’re from, many local politicians are worse than you can imagine, trust me.
Read: Woes of Pakistan’s paralysis
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The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his articles.
