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.

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.

ASKARI park is a family park – and two males don’t make a family, nor do one make it – which clearly means that you need a female member to complete the equation. Unfortunately, I had none. Faced with this very common problem I approached security office at Askari park and after long session of Topian and Dramay Maj (R) Jamil allowed me in.

Askari park has a staff of around 170 people with standby generators and desalination water plant of their own. Security system is very good and most of the park is monitored by surveillance cameras. Security looks better than most places.

The entry fee for park is Rs.5 and for Wildlife Aquarium it is Rs.10. Aquarium is air-conditioned and I have never seen an aquarium in Karachi with such a large collection of fish with excellent maintenance. Overall park maintenance is also good and children run around at various points in the park; skating area is also present for the more adventurous. Askari Park also allows jogging track and fee for whole month is 30 Rs only. On their staff card I found web address http://www.askariparkview.com/ (this is presently not working).

While talking to the staff I came across one gentleman to whom I am not agreed. He told me, “You can not find any park in Karachi like Askari park’s maintainace and reason for that could be it is not under city government”.

But who does it belong to??

Unidentified new building on M.T. Khan Road

There is no signage on the gate or on the building which gives information about what organization it belongs to. If it were any company or any other commercial organization, they would have been advertizing it to the hilt. However, nothing near this building gives its identity away… 

Another thing worth noting is that whichever organization got it constructed apparently has no shortage of funds (even in these tough economic times). They have spent quite a fortune on this building’s decor and aesthetics (tazeen o araaish). Which leads me to speculate, is it a government entity? Only the government has an endless supply of money to throw away on such things… but then again, the government is not known for such ground-breaking architecture. So the puzzle remains unsolved….   Do you know who this building belongs to?

From the email and the investigation done, i guess it looks like we should expect an opening of Grand food street in the near future, or my gut feelings are incorrect and it is just another way of getting BATTHAs from poor mAAlishiyas.

Below is the link about project details

http://www.grandleisure.com/GrandLeisureCorporation/photos/photo8.html

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.

People look on as the bulldozers work

Locality people gauging and doing damage control

Sector 10 was the most severely damaged with gates totally torn down; exposing most of the houses to every outside element you can think of.

Irony of the situation is that the houses on the opposite lane (Baradari side) were notified as well. Except for a few, who tore down their encroaching parking lots, grills and shops; many simply waited with bated breath without learning anything from the damage caused.

Lone ranger, getting rid of the extra rubble after demolishing the illegal shop space. One of the few who did their own demolishing before the bulldozers came.

On 2nd June, all of it happened again, wrecking havoc:

What do you think, who is at fault here? People who are encroaching over civil land or the officials who avert their eyes when such building were being constructed for the extra ‘chai-pani’?