After the suicide attack at central procession of Youm-e-Ashur on Monday in which 43 persons were martyred, the miscreants’ set thousands shops on fire from Light House to Bolton Market. The arson attacks inflicted billions of rupees losses and left thousands jobless.

I didn’t get chance to visit MA Jinnah road but I hope these old buildings which are heritage of Karachi still survived in aftermath of riot.

Supreme Court of Pakistan has canceled sub-leasing of 4.958-acre prime land in Karachi, meant for a playground, to the Makro Habib Store for commercial activity by the Army Welfare Trust (AWT). The court directed Makro Habib to remove its structures and installations from the playground within three-months, restore it to the same condition as existed on the date of the sub-lease and hand over its vacant possession to the City District Government, Karachi (CDGK).

The court held that the CDGK being the elected local government, representing the people, will develop and maintain the land as a playground or will allow its use for such other purposes permissible under the law. The court had taken suo moto notice against the establishment of Makro Habib Store on the playground. Later, a citizen-Mehfoozun Nabi of the affected area had also been impleaded as party in the matter. [Jang/News]

[image: sheddy73.files.wordpress.com]

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.