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OUR next visit was to a charity called Alamgir Welfare Trust International, on Alamgir Road at Bahadurabad. The charity provides the poor with food, pays for the treatment of the poor in private hospitals, runs ambulance services, sells sacrificial animals, arranges for weddings of poor and orphan girls, and provides deserving students with course books and low-income households with month ration. But for what seemed to be a communication gap, we could not go around the building or talk with the staff.
We had two things to do for the day — going to Clifton Beach and attending a dinner at the Karachi Press Club. From the welfare trust, we went to Dolmen Mall on the Clifton Marine Drive — to change dollars and to see for ourselves the big mall which has two other branches in the city. Probably being in the cantonment area, the place had a high security. Even when I snapped a photograph inside the mall, a guard came running after saying, politely, Yahan tasveer khinchna mana hai (Taking photograph is now allowed here). As I offered to delete the snap, in Urdu markedly different from theirs and typical of outsiders, he smiled and let it go.
After all our fellows had apparently finished shopping for the day, we were left with not enough time before our visit to the press club for a walk down the beach. We headed back to the hotel and then out to the press club, on Sarwar Shaheed Road, known as Ingle Road much earlier, a few blocks from our hotel. It was a majestic Victorian-style building where the press club was set up in 1958. The ground floor houses the main hall for press conferences and other programmes and the upper floor houses a well-stocked library, with even a shelf full of books on Bangladesh, a committee room and a TV lounge.
After the routine introduction and speeches, we had a question-answer session which soon became affairs of several small groups as we advanced into the dinner. As soon as we finished, the secretary to the club committee, who had collected our visiting cards, started reading out the names one after another, along with one from the committee members, at intervals when they presented us with block-printed shawls known by the name of ajrak, a symbol of Sindh culture and traditions, in a mark of hospitality.
After we had finished doing what we had to in the room, we got down into the lawn for tea and photocalls in a manner known as ‘firing squad’ in news rooms. The landings of the stairs were decorated with huge paintings of noted journalists, poets and others.
After a short peep into the library and the computer room, as we were about to set foot on the staircase, with a big portrait of Faiz Ahmed Faiz on the landing, I recited: Hum ke thehre ajnabi itni madaraton ke bad (We who became strangers after so much of easy intimacy), the opening line from Faiz’s poem, Dhaka Se Wapsi Par (On Return from Dhaka), written in 1974, when was last the poet visited Dhaka, Naseer Ahmed, a senior subeditor of the Daily Jang, recited the next line: phir banenge ashna kitni mulakaton ke bad (After how many meetings shall be friends again).
He took me into the library to show me issues of Sindhi newspaper Kawish, which had more than 70 news reports on the front page, with one column headline of the text size set in white on black and a column line of news with a request for turning over the page, after I had told him that his newspaper, Roznamah Jang, looked a bit crammed with huge, decorative headlines and all single-column text layout.
We met a senior journalist, Farooq Moin, known as a man of rectitude in the circle, at the dinner where many journalists said that they had learnt the trade with him. Farooq Moin, who had worked with the Pakistan Press International news agency for more than four decades, was the wittiest of the people I have met in Pakistan.
After another round of shopping in malls and markets in the neighbourhood, it was time for retiring to bed. Monday began with a routine visit, along with a briefing, to the Sindh press information office, typical of a provincial government office. We were then headed for Wackenhut Pakistan Ltd, housed in Kawish Crown Plaza at Shahrah-e-Faisal, a security company owned by Ikram Sehgal, who wears ‘two hats’ — of a columnist and the head of the company, which earns Rs 3.2 billion a month.
Apart from having the idea of how big security business could be in a country where security is at risk, we also had a sumptuous lunch and a copy each of Sehgal’s Escape from Oblivion, which according to an Express Tribune review of 2012 is ‘a gripping narrative about his experiences during a time of great tribulation that followed the Pakistan Army’s crackdown on the rebellious elements in East Pakistan on March 25, 1971…. But… the narrative suffers from contradictions and an inadequate explanation of events, especially those that took place after his arrival in Dhaka from West Pakistan up until his imprisonment.’
On our way back to the Boat Basin in Clifton for a visit to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, we passed by the University of Karachi, set up in 1953, thirty-two years after the University of Dhaka had been founded. In Karachi, they think highly of any Dhaka University alumni although Pakistanis who have been to and in Bangladesh think that the standards of education in Dhaka have fallen these days but not as low as they have in Karachi.
But we missed the PEMRA programme as our team leader, who somehow convinced the protocol officers accompanying us that he should meet an old friend of his he had not been in touch with for decades. We reached the house of his old-time friend, an engineer who owns a house and a flat in a posh area in Karachi and another house in Islamabad. We had to stay there for an hour. On our way back to the PEMRA office, passing through the town, we heard that the agency chairman had left his office for the day — good news for many of us as they could jump into shopping. We got back to hotel. After a couple of hours, as some of our fellows could not finish shopping on time, we headed for Clifton Beach. It was a long while past evening when we reached there. We walked down the wet sand, up to knee-high waves, and listened to and watched waves breaking down onto the shore.
Back to our hotel, five of us, after the dinner, started walking down the road looking for a roadside tea stall about midnight. A few blocks away, we found one, Quetta Dirar Hotel (as in Dhaka, the word hotel, in most cases, means a restaurant also in Karachi), owned by Haji Abdul Khaliq, with three people standing — two behind the counter making tea and one waiting on customers. It looked more like any Shab-e-Barat night in Old Town of Dhaka, with children exploding crackers and elders making preparations for prayers asking them not to. We ordered four cups of tea. When we asked about the price of a cup of tea. The youngest of the three, Nazir Ahmed from Quetta, to our surprise, said, ‘Teis rupaye.’
As we looked up, we noticed a rate list, mounted on the wall, saying that a cup of tea without milk costs Rs 17, a piece of paratha Rs 17, an egg omelette Rs 18 and a plate of milk skin (malai) Rs 40. Although the tea was good, the restaurant was not that big and clean and the prices were high by any standards if we think about such a restaurant in Dhaka. The notice also thanks customers for telling the counter people before having anything if they had notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500. The youngest of them said that they import tea; and milk is dear, at least in Karachi.
This boy has been living in Karachi for some days, working with the restaurant for Rs 7,000 a month, all of which he sends to his family — his parents, sisters and brothers — back in Quetta. He gets the bread, literally, from the restaurant and he stays with some people from his area in a room a few blocks away where 15 others like him for a monthly rent of Rs 5,000 share the space for sleep — seven who work at daytime sleep at night and others who work at night sleep during the day.
All these small-to-medium neighbourhood restaurants give away meals, usually roti (bread) and dal mas (lentil curry), to the poor who start lining up a while before the meal time. They said that there were some restaurants where people pay for extra meals which are later given to the poor.
The next (Tuesday) morning, we flew to Lahore.
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Akkas, Abu Jar M (2013 Oct. 8). Miles Apart, poles apart. New Age. 9
Rev.: vi·vi·mmxxiii