First of all the owners of house that is being constructed decided to illegally extend not just a sunshade (like even that is legally allowed) but the whole upper story of the house beyond the land area allotted to them.

Secondly during the construction this road remained closed for the whole two days, causing difficulties for the area residents and passers by. This closure of the road could have easily been avoided if the owner would have had the slights sense of responsibility and consideration for others.

Few months back, one of KMB’s author, Khurram Farooq, posted about Wildlife Aquarium and asked question from KMB readers if they had ever visited it. The reply was, as expected, muted.

While coming from office on Thursday I faced a massive traffic jam near old sabzi mandi due to weekly Ijtemah of Dawat-e-Islami at Faizan-e-Madina. Luckily I had a camera with me so I decided to visit Wildlife Aquarium and experience some Wildlife in Karachi.

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On M. T. Khan road, there is a new building under-construction with a very modern and innovative design. It borrows classical elements in its architecture, and combines it very well with modernist steel and glass trends. Best part about this building is its innovative energy efficient design:  a glass facade is used in order to provide the interior with the maximum amount of natural light, and giant tensile fabric awnings are suspended in front of the facade to shield the entire building from the intense heat of the sun. Seems to work very well. This building is breaking new grounds in terms of architecture in Pakistan. 

But who does it belong to??

Unidentified new building on M.T. Khan Road

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Yesterday I received an email from a friend about the most awaited food street of Karachi which is still under construction. If i recall correctly the place has been under construction since quite a few years under the Nati Jetty bridge. With this the curious I thought of investigating. I took the only clues that i had to further investigate (the email from a friend). On further investigation I found that Port grand a US based company is working on this project and it was expected to get completed in 2006 but for unknown reasons they are almost 3 years behind the project deadline.
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It’s independence time once again and we wish to congratulate all of you and ourselves on this auspicious occasion.

Now, some history lessons.

I wish to have here listed pre-partition Parsi buildings in Karachi. We know lot of Parsis lived in this city and they did some wonderful construction work. Now, sadly around 2000 odd-Parsis are left and we morn their departure. But we can recall our city’s glorious past and its wonderful builders below. My takes:

1) Mama Parsi school, Saddar.
2) Nusserwanjee Mehta Parsi Maternity Home. Foundation stone was laid on 20th December 1917.

This beautiful yet little known colonial building is situated at Zaib-un-Nisa street, Karachi. It now stands locked up by its owners who live just behind it. In the complex there is the grave of its founder, Khan Bhadur Nusserwanji R. Mehta. He was born on 8th June, 1853 and died on 8th December, 1931.

More buildings to be noted below as comments.

British left too many structures in our city. The main reason is that they loved Karachi for its wide sea and no-nonsense attitude towards life. Already, they’d converted it into a large shipping base for their goods to arrive. Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to preserve
lot of those wonderful buildings. And to top it all, corrupt politicians and land mafia has been very busy these days chopping good old buildings.

It is very clear that a nation which needs to understand its past needs to preserve the artifacts and structures from that past. If those are not preserved, there is no way of educating young people about the shared heritage. As a result, today lot of Karachi wallas are simply unaware of their rich heritage. They, at best, know something about KMC head office or maybe Quaid’s house at Kharadar.

Discuss below the ways in which common citizens may help preserve these beautiful and enduring heritage.

Photography Credit: Jawad Ahmed

This entry could be about any of our localities, where we spend our days and nights. The same path we trudge regularly to get home after long hours in school/university/office.

In Karachi especially, when we build/buy our houses, there’s always that personal touch, some extravagance on our part done to be different from the rest of the houses around the area. It is when we like to extend our lawns a bit more by encroaching outwards; make stretched parking slopes taking main footpath’s space. In such fervor some forget that they are building on the land which is not really theirs.

Then KDA comes in and during their drive of amnesiac building/re-building of roads and you see nothing but rubble when you wake up one fine morning. I found a live example in North Karachi, Sector 8 to 10. I investigated to discover that the concerned authority had issued prior warnings and were instructed to shift their electric & gas meters but nobody paid heed to the notice and on 31st May at 6 o’clock sharp, bulldozers came and did what they are made for.

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