Karachi: The Jewel in the Crown
A fabulous exhibition that’s being held currently at the Mohatta Palace, the most beautiful landmark in Karachi. They’ve done an excellent job of getting artifacts, photos, and archived records of Karachi in the days of the Raj. I think a few photos of my family members are up there – a great grandfather or two, a grandfather. If you haven’t seen this already you must go, although now that the weather’s turned humid, take along plenty of bottled water and a portable fan too because the upper area of the museum gets very hot and stuffy.
Here is a side view of the Mohatta Palace:
And here’s a picture of Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s Rolls Royce:
great pics
Let me narrate a story about the Mohatta Palace.
Until about 10 years ago it was in the possession of a trust created by Fatima Jinnah off which my family was entrusted to be responsible for, once in a while we would get requests from the Govt of Pakistan to allow a state guest to visit the premises, many distinguished guests came and went, including Pierre Cardin (whom I met at Mohatta Palace).
The story is about a Rolls Royce (I dont think its the same one in the picture). On a surprise visit we happened to catch two 17 yr old teenagers tucked behind a parked Rolls in a grarage trying their best to unscrew the wheels off the car, on questioning they were ofcourse shocked to have been caught red-handed but later confessed that they assumed the wheels could be used on their Suzuki FX parked outside the gate for racing (don’t know who put them up to it but I know it wasnt for burning rubber in drag racing back then). The kids were given a sound scolding by the elders and were sent of running hoping that they had learnt their lesson. Lo’Behold three days later the tires were missing…. The Palace was under so-called strict police protection under orders of the Govt of Pakistan and it seems the ‘polciya’ allowed them to steal the wheels for Rs 300 charge the clever polciya charged them twice once for the unsucessful bid and later for the final theft (seems he took no assurance for a money back garuntee).
We as the trustees could not do much as Police authorites used this place to allow theft of precious artifacts and would not allow us to post a private guard at all. We were aware of this major disaster in the making but were unable to do much until finally the Govt got serious and has restored the Mohatta Palace to its fully glory. I am now so happy to see an amazing restoration, makes me proud to have such a majestic building here in Karachi, another place to show tourists instead of the Mazar.
please take a look
I think that the review which has been written about Jinnah hislife story is very good. The way they have written it and explained everything in a simple and un-confsing way.