No matter how many beautification projects it undertook, for me the city remained an eyesore owing to the flags and banners everywhere. Areas and towns all over the city were owned by political or religious parties by putting up their multi colored flags.

Below are but a few examples:

But according to the CDGK website:

City District Government Karachi has said to citizens especially religious and social organizations to remove the banners and flags installed in the city as they no more fulfill the purpose for which they had been installed or fixed by the concerned organization.

The announcement of City District Government Karachi said that banners and flags fixed in different areas of the city by various political, religious and social organizations and NGOs have now due to the dust and smoke changed into blackish cloths.

It is also mentioned in the announcement that if these banners and flags are not removed by the concerned organization than City Government would itself initiate action for their removal.

Maybe the CDGK can provide impetus to this initiative by removing the ruling party flags and banners first. I cant wait to see how clean and undivided Karachi would look after that.

But as Pakistan’s cricket team surrounded itself in controversy, the youth of Karachi discovered a new passion. Soccer! The rocks now mark the goal. Football fever has taken Karachi by surprise. What started as a cult like following of European clubs, has now actually pervaded all stratas of society. Universitites may or may not have a cricket team anymore but all universities now have a football team, and regular inter mural competitions continue to keep these teams competitive.

These days, however, footballers and fans alike are all focussing on only one tournament. The Primiership battle that rages on in Europe. Yet the fans’ excitement in the season has been marred by power outages in the most intense moment of the match. Very few lucky people are able to watch the entire match in a go.

KESC has left no stone unturned even in the sports arena.Don’t forget to catch the highlights on youtube the next morning!

A movie has multi-fold purposes. Some movies entertain, andsome movies educate. Still others make you think. Slumdog Millionaire, a movie shot in the slums of Mumbai, did a little of all of that. As the movie unreeled, telling the story of a street urchin who goes on to become a millionaire, I could’t help but place the boy in Karachi and wonder if his destiny would have been written any differently.

Finding parallels was easy. The begging bowl that replaces a boy’s eyes can be seen on every street corner. Little boys selling toys take the form of glass-cleaners in Karachi. The criminals-cum-godfathers, too are found here in abundance. The inescapable destiny of a gamine to become a prostitute has countless local examples too.  The unashamed indifference displayed by the police during the riots is not uncommon in Karachi either.

But there was one stark difference. The probability of a slumdog in Karachi rising to become a millionaire would be lower in Karachi because slums in Karachi don’t have schools that impart the quality of education that aquaint a child with the likes of Alexander Dumas. However, I also doubt if slum schools in India include ‘The Three Musketeers’ in their school curriculum.

As the movie is primarily made for foreign audiences, that little detail doesn’t matter. What matters is the bitter truth about the sorry state of affairs in the slums of Mumbai (that could easily be replaced by slums in Karachi) that the movie lade bare.

Watch the movie. By the end of it, you may think that it didn’t deserve the Golden Globe, but you will look at street kids around you differently.

Karachi is the trade hub of the country, and as any economist will tell you, when an urban centre is developed without enough attention to rural or even semi urban areas, rural-urban migration is only natural. Karachi thus attracts a number of migrants from not only the N.W.F.P, but all over the country. This migrant population then assimilates into the workforce and over the years has become an integral economic force in the city.

The Pakhtuns too have become an indispensable part of Karachi. Not only do they control most of the public transportation system, but a majority of cobblers, tea hotel owners, construction labourers happen to be Pakhtuns.

No matter what political reasons are given for any conflict, the underlying reason is always economic. Talibanisation, thus, is only an excuse. The faultline for the current conflict are all Pakhtun majority areas specially the adjoining areas to the Pahar Ganj. The land has appreciated in value, but remains the stronghold of Pakhtuns, a thorn in the side of the land mafia that controls the rest of the city- or that is what the unbiased residents of North Nazimabad, Block A, C and Q claim who find themselves in the middle of the bloodshed. They claim that violence erupted in the area last night when the Pakhtun flag on the hill was replaced by a ‘Muhajir’ flag.

The residents of the area fear that over the next few days, the violence will escalate, unless the power struggle between the two ethnic parties is resolved.

For 3 days at the Arts Council, Karachi was treated to the most riveting performances by Ajoka, a theater group headed by Madeeha Gauhar. The series of three plays, called ‘Theater in the times of Jihad’, was a theatrical experience that gripped its audience from beginning to end. I was unfortunate to have missed the first two performances- Burqavaganza and Bulla; but Hotel MoenjoDaro, the last play of the series, left no room for regrets.

The musical satire was an adaptation of Ghulam Abbas’s short story in Urdu called Dhanak. While the topic was pretty cliched for the modern day but what made it awe-inspiring was the fact that the story written more than 40 years ago, and yet, seemed to ring just as true for today as it may have then.

The play, which lasted for a little over an hour, turned out to be an emotional roller coaster. Sitting in the audience, one expected a serious play touching upon terrorism and suicide bombers, yet the play took off with a truly inspiring note where a Pakistani had just landed on the moon. From then on, the play quickly shifted its gear into light-hearted comedy, something that the play retained even at the most intense moments. As the play progressed the audience was exposed to theatrical excellence in large doses.

While the actors and dancers gave a memorable performance, the true magic was created by those off the stage. The narration, the lighting, the set designing, the choreography and the sound that set the mood of the play, and allowed the audience to witness the colorful chaos that Ghulam Sahab had envisaged in his book almost half a century ago.

Karachi, a city deprived of such cultural activities, is hoping Ajoka will revisit the city again soon to stage the other plays in its portfolio.

Image Credits: Jamal Ashiqain and Raheel Lakhani

Interestingly, he pointed out that Pakistan’s current financial crisis needs to be isolated from the global crisis, as Pakistan’s plight has to do with the mismanaged transition from the previous government to the next one. In his address to the students, he also stressed on the importance of China as the next most economic superpower rather than the United States or European Nations. He believed a Chinese language course would equip the students with the necessary skills to be prepared for the paradigm shift in powers.

IBA itself has suffered from uninspired leadership during the term of the previous director. With the induction of Ishrat Hussain, a visionary leader and an inspiring orator, the students are looking forward to the welcome changes that he’s bringing about.

As seen on August 1.

Image Courtesy: Daily Times

May Allah have mercy on us!! Amen

Updates: Another one reported in Pak Colony. One man killed.

In April 2008, we had a post on Eight Bazaars of Faisalabad, and we presented it as one of the best examples of town planning in Pakistan. We would like to develop this topic into a whole new series about the best planned localities of Pakistan. Among many examples of fine town planning in Pakistan are North Nazimabad Karachi, Model Town Lahore, Faisalabad’s 8 bazaars, Federal-B-Area Karachi, Islamabad Master Plan, Wah Cantonment, and many more in other cities. In today’s post we will cover North Nazimabad, Karachi.

The satellite image below shows North Nazimabad’s 20 residential blocks bound in red polygon. East of NN is Federal-B-Area where as North of NN is North Karachi and Buffer Zone.

Whenever the aesthetics of Civil Engineering and Town Planning Projects is considered; it is an accpetable fact that curves and gradiants are considered more natural than squares or rectangles. Cities planned in rectangular grids, though easy to navigate, don’t have same aesthtics as brought out by circular roads and curves. If you look at North Nazimabad’s map above you can clearly see how aesthetically the curved roads and plots have been designed within mostly rectanguar grids. Atleast to me this is the town planning of highest aesthetic order.

To further make my point on the elegance of diagonals and curved roads as compared to boring rectangular blocks, I want to present the maps of Blocks C, D and E of North Nazimabad, shown in the photo to the left. Somewhere in the course of basic town planning and Architecture, it is said that

‘Nature never uses straight line in its designs, therefore curves always appear more natural’

Note the little green oval to the bottom left of the map. This is Asghar Ali Shah Cricket Ground in Block C

Brief History of North Nazimabad

The photo to the right shows North Nazimabad’s location in a larger settled area view of Karachi city.

Uptil late 1950s, Karachi’s northern most settlement used to be Nazimabad. Being the Capital of Pakistan, and as the population of the city grew, need arose to house federal employees in better planned neighborhoods. Localities of Federal-B-Area and North Nazimabad were thus planned to house Federal employees. As far as aesthetics, ameneties, and grandeur was concerned, no other locality in Pakistan could match the town planning of North Nazimabad. In 1962, the Capital was shifted from Karachi to Islamabad and the planned neighborhood of North Nazimabad became available to general public instead of originally planned employees of Federal Government onlyThe Matrix:

North Nazimabad consists of 20 residential blocks identified with alphabets from A to T. The plot sizes across all North Nazimabad are divided into 6 categories viz. A, B, C, D, E and F. Plots of A category have an area of 240 square yards, B = 400 Square Yards, C=600 square yards, D=1000 square yards and F=2000 square yards . Therefore a sample house address in North Nazimabad of A36/T means House number 36 with an area of 240 square yards located in Block T.

The photo to the left is satellite image of Block A of North Nazimabad.

North Nazimabad is also famous for its main mass transit arterial called the ‘Sher Shah Suri Road’ being a 440 ft wide thoroughfare. There are several 220 ft wide boulevards with rain drains dividing the two lanes.

The Eucalyptus Town:

In the period 1983-87, during the mayorship of (late)Abdus Sattar Afghani, whole North Nazimabad locality was planted with hundreds and thousands of Eucalyptus saplings. As fast as Eucalyptus grows, within few years whole Nazimabad town turned into a green paradise of tall Eucalyptus trees.

However, lately these eucalyptus trees have been mostly cut down for reason better known to the subsquent city governments. One reason that I have heard is that Eucalyptus is a water thirsty tree and so many of the eucalptuses in North Nazimabad were causing the ground water level to go down.

Also Called Taimuria

During the same era, in order to localize the neighborhood names, North Nazimabad was renamed as ‘Taimuria’ and Federal-B-Area was renamed as ‘Mansura’. With the demse of Government of that time, the new names also met their natural death and never caught a mass acceptation. Today the only remnants of the name Taimuria in North Nazimabad are the ‘Taimuria Police Station’ and a ‘Taimuria library’.

Today:

The photo to the right is Block B of North Nazimabad .

North Nazimabad of today has lost much of its past glory. Just like many localities of big cities, businesses from city center slowly creep into residential areas and people of these area start moving further outward to suburbs. Same has happened to North Nazimabad. The once peaceful residential locality of Karachi is now fast turning into a commercial market.

On my last visit to Karachi, I was surprized to see almost 80% ‘F’ size plots of block F were converted into some private school or private University. The once small eating shops in block H and block A had collectively turned into full fledge food streets. barkaat-e-Hyderi market is now one of the largest shopping centers of the city. All multinational fast food chains have opened their branches in

The photo below shows Block F of North Nazimabad. Many of the plots in Block F were of area 2000 sq feet. They have mostly been converted to something commercial e.g. Private Schools and Universities.

Infrastructure:

North Nazimabad of today boasts of atleast four First-Class Cricket Grounds, several hospitals, A Medical and Dental University, Several HSC Colleges, Taimuria library, several parks and sustained commercial activity which makes it a complete city inside the city.

In 2001, North Nazimabad was declared as one of the 18 towns of Karachi. were added to North Nazimabbad proper.

Mass Transit Plans for North Nazimabad

North Nazimabad is included in the Karachi Mass Transit Plan (KMTP) of 1970s. The Orangi-Cantt Station mass transit corridor touches Block A and B of North Nazimabad.

North Nazimabad also has a Railway Station on Karachi Circular Railway Route. So whenever the KCR is fully revived on its loop, North Nazimabad will benefit.

Population:

According to 1998 Census the population of 20 blocks of North Nazimabad town was approximately 250000 where as population of North Nazimabad town which also included the localities of Buffer Zone I and II, Shadman, and Paposh Nagar was 496000

Trivia About North Nazimabad:

1. The Four First-Class Cricket grounds of North Nazimabad: Bakhtiari Youth Center A Ground (Block S), KDA Stadium (Block S), Syed Asghar Ali Shah Stadium (Block C), which also held a 3-day International between Pakistan and Zimbabwe and KCCA Stadium (Block N).

2. In 1960, North Nazimabad was connected by Karachi Circular Railway Service with its Railway Station in Block B called ‘North Nazimabad’. The station remained operation until 1999. KCR service got suspended in 1999.

3. Postal Code of North Nazimabad is 74700.
References:

1. North Nazimabad in Transition by Sabeen Jamil
2. North Nazimabad Town Government
3. City District Government of Karachi (CDGK)
4. Google Earth for all the Satellite Maps

Ready For Your Geography Quiz?

So in the satellite image below, can you try to find out where is North Nazimabad located? Answer is given above in the first map of this post.

North Nazimabad also boasts of being the most religiously diversified area of Karachi.  Block C has a Bohra Jamat Khana, and an Ismaili Jamat Khana. The two communities live peacefully with the Sunnis and any communal tension has been unheard of. The town also has the highest literacy rate and the lowest crime rate in the city.

The 42-year-old woman claimed she was the victim of a vicious syndicate that promised her a trip to Singapore but had in the end ferried her to Pakistan, locked her up for two weeks and made her a drug mule.

Jaafar Noor, her husband was blamed by his in-laws that he had sold his wife to a drug trafficking syndicate, an allegation he denies. Kijang Care, a welfare organization, started a fund to mobilize a team of lawyers to save Siti. According to them, there are currently 5 Malaysian women in Karachi Jail, all for drug-related offenses.

Source: Malay Mail