Lets step aside for a moment and take a look at our city Karachi.

I think of sharing my views with you guys, actually I have just been on a trip to Islamabad and Muree, although I went there primarily for some personal business and not on a vacation to enjoy. I did try take that opportunity and visited the well-known tourist points in Islamabad and Muree. Undoubtedly the places in Muree such as Neelam Point, Bhurband - Pearl Continental, Kashmir Point, the chair lifts and cable cars in Patriata are superbly beautiful. The cleanliness and strict laws of Islamabad and a few worth visiting places are simply awesome. Most importantly the road-trip from Islamabad to Muree is the most enjoyable because of the stunning natural beauty and the curvy dangerous narrow two-way roads cut between the green mountains. Multiple routes connecting Islamabad and Muree are simply unexplainable. Some of you might have been there, but for those who haven’t, let me tell you - I enjoyed the places in the off season, you can imagine what it would be like in the “on” seasons. You have got to be there, take a break from our busy and fast lives and give yourself some good time.

You can see the photos here. I tried to write about the trip while I was there and I did make some posts on my blog, but I lost track in all the traveling and stuff. I was seriously thinking of extending my visit and and spending some more time in Muree, but I had to cut short my tour and get back, my leave was expiring and I didn’t have much cash in hand.

The point in making this post is not to just share my trip details with you, but to actually share what I learned / realized from the trip besides everything. It was a four-day trip from Wednesday till Sunday, on Saturday night I was in the hotel room in Islamabad, I was on the flight to Karachi the next morning.

On Saturday night something came up and I thought I should go out and buy what I need. My hotel was near Aabpara Market (its a busy market). Its 10:30 in the night and what I see amazed me. Every shop was closed, there were just a few people on the street, SATURDAY NIGHT and no cars! I found only a bakery, a medical store and few other shops left open. It was like a day of strike in Karachi! Anyway, I kept walking until I reached the medical store, I just had my dinner so I thought of trying out a meetha pan of Islamabad, and guess what! They don’t have khokas! On the whole road, I walked about 20 minutes, there was no sign of a khoka or any shop from where I could find a pan. May be there was such a shop but got closed as it was “too late”. I don’t mean to portray Islamabad as the “city that always sleeps”, but for me (being a karachitte) it was unusual.

As for the food, the well-known food-street (a.k.a food-court) in Islamabad, for crying out loud! I can’t find a single place where I could get Chicken Biryani. I ate every thing from Pulao to stuff like yellow rice with boiled chicken in the name of my dear Chicken Biryani! The spicy chicken ginger! oh so sweet! and the mini buns by the names zinger burger. I couldn’t find KFC, McDonals, Pizza Huts so common as they are in Karachi, in fact, I never saw one in my whole trip! I realized it when I reached Karachi Airport and saw a big yellow ‘M’ just in front of it along the parking area! :)

All night I was just thinking and comparing the three cities. Besides the natural beauty in Muree and it being an official tourist place, I was just left comparing Islamabad with Karachi.

I came to realize that Islamabad is as good as nothing in terms of Implementation of Law and cleanliness in Pakistan, the underpasses seems to be just a regular natural inclining and declining road due to the mountainous area -unlike Karachi’s underpasses when you bounce off 3 feet in the air while entering one and the drainage cover moves and sounds like its broken into 5 pieces and you just made the 5 pieces 8 with your car, they sometimes also fills up with water too :) .

There is no signal violation, no car on or ahead the zebra crossing on the signal, even the police or government cars being fined for breaking the signal or any road law. There are no coaches or mini buses, “khaan-taiyaara” or “sarko ki malka” -type vehicles on the roads, only 14-seater vans for public transportation. Very few bikes, very very wide roads, proper road signs, minimum chaos on the roads. In short everything is so damn perfect as compared to Karachi and its core and most talked-about problems.

I took my expensive phone with me and I was literally roaming around and showing off :) in the streets in ISB and muree taking pictures and messaging never fearing that a 125 bike will be coming from behind and I’ll be greeted with a shining metal of a gun as a reward to my showoff. Its a lot better in terms of street crimes.

But there is nothing like the life in Karachi! I always thought of myself as a boring person, but I realized that I’m much more fun being in Karachi than anywhere around the country (as far as I have been). You can never have a life that you have in Karachi anywhere else.

Keeping aside the crimes, traffic problems, political uncertainty and every small and major issue, I can bet that once you get a break from Karachi you will realize that we curse the city way too much and how much we are dependent on the life of Karachi. Its not like “aankh aujhal Pahar Aujghal” its like once you get on a “pahar” you will have a much better, clear and true realization of what you have been into and what you have been missing all the way.

I hope that every Karachitte feels and realize what the city Karachi really is and how we are connected to it in every aspect of our lives. Being bloggers, writers readers or any one from Karachi who thinks about Karachi, needs to get a different perspective every once in a while to change our thoughts and views, and probably alter our attitude towards our City.

Its us that is Karachi and its Karachi that is us, a codependent association that needs a little tough outside the box.

You don’t expect to find such a sign in an eatery place but I did and found it interesting.

Guess the place?

* It is not Gunsmoke.

Thanks to our (all) governments whose incompetency in providing basic necessities of life one of which is clean water we have seen tremendous growth of companies selling mineral water and they are using the indifference of the gov. for their profiteering. As one of KMB author said “if our gov. doesn’t do anything NOW there would be a DAY when WE WOULD BE BREATHING OXYGEN by paying to companies”. His comments seem like a joke for now but so did the mineral water issue 100 years back that was considered free along with oxygen ever since we heard it.
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Since the last two years, authors at Karachi Meroblog have sporadically announced a number of coffee shop openings in the city. Most of these coffee shops are concentrated in Zamzama, but some like Roasters and Kahva are expanding into areas like Tariq Road too.

At the pace the gourmet coffee houses are springing up, one is forced to wonder what market the premium priced coffee providers are catering to, and if the market isn’t already saturated. A quick survey around Zamzama, however, brings a unique insight into the coffee house industry in Karachi.

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We all love these sweet Jalaibies specially with our daily dose of evening tea. Some like the thinner crispier ones while the others like the fat and juicer ones. A shopkeeper here in bahadurabad got a bit creative and decided to give the fat jalabies a totally different name. He now proudly calls them Jalaiba.

Price hikes have gone thru a number of transformations - from shocking news, to hurting jokes and finally, now to cruel norms. Prices of essential commodities are shooting upwards but since they are indispensable, their consumption continues. However, this news sounds like a positive exception.

The crazy use of oil and Ghee in our domestic food chain has been at the center of a lot of disorders and health issues in our society. Think of a paratha at a Quetta hotel and you will get a mental image of a crisp red fried peta bread dripping with Ghee. Think of Nihari from a shop, and you would see an inch deep layer of reddened Ghee covering your dish. The lavish use of trans fats is somehow afforded by the labor class as they are generally involved in tough physical jobs but for the rest of us, it is a recipe of disaster in waiting.

As advanced cities move towards altogether banning trans fats, we can hope that this price hike brings down the usage of the bad trans fats.

It’s official now:

KARACHI, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities have detected an outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu at a poultry farm on the outskirts of its biggest city, Karachi, but officials said on Friday there was no likelihood of any human infection.

Several outbreaks of the H5N1 strain have been found in birds in Pakistan over the past year and the first human case was confirmed late last year.

With thousands of birds reportedly dying of the bird flu virus, the shops selling prepared chicken meat could no more be trusted. Also, as advised by the experts, well cooked chicken is safe to consume so it seems that we will have to stay away from chicken BBQ items for a while.

A friend was quoting a ‘pakwan house‘ owner who told him that he’s been receiving endless calls from people who’d earlier ordered chicken biryani and qorma and are now swapping their orders with ‘bachya‘ meat.

[Credit: N. Butt, A.Sami ]

This is a picture outside a house in Gulshan Iqbal that supplies a well marketed brand of bottled water. The white mini truck is used to transport the packed bottles to the market. Over a period of time, I have noted activities around the place that strongly suggest that the water tanker is the ‘natural source’ from which the pure stuff oozes out.

Next time when you are about to drink the bottled water that strikes Norway to your thoughts, just remember the bowser in this picture and hope your glass of water is still safe!

Instead of having occasional family eat outs as dinner or lunch, we decided to try out hi tea on a Sunday evening.

After considering a few options, Marcopolo at PC was decided. The Hi Tea buffet costs there at around Rs. 300 per person. The timings are from 4 PM to 7 PM.

The decision was not regretted, as there was something to suite every body’s taste. From finger fish, chicken wings, seekh kababs, to fruit chat, chana chat, dahi baray, pani puri, bhel puri, and sandwiches, and finally haleem, every family member found a favorite item to devour on. Desert included ice cream, gulab jaman, julebi, and all the traditional cakes and tarts. Juices, tea, and coffee were all included in the cost.

Since we skipped lunch (and breakfast as everyone woke up late on Sunday), everyone ate alot, as we knew no dinner will be served at night. So the idea of going out for hi tea worked perfectly as we enjoyed the pleasures of lunch and dinner in one meal, at half the price.

I am sure there are other options for hi tea that might be better than PC, and we will certainly try them out next time.