Ten Things I Hate About Karachi

Originally conceived for, and published in, Dawn, this was supposed to be a top ten. As such things do, things spiralled rapidly out of control and one or two brainstorming sessions later became a top 20 as there were too many things to talk about. After much haranguing from my editor, it was reduced back down to ten. Then, the bane of all rambling-on-and-on writers everywhere, the dreaded Word Count Limit came into force, resulting in a further truncation and bringing the final list in published form down to five. Perhaps, in time, the remaining 15 shall also see the light of day…

There is a city that often will convince you that you are living in a Faustian nightmare of souls stained and damned. Its residents take a near-perverse pleasure in recounting the latest horrible incident to befall them or a close relative on the streets of this town. Urban legends mix in with true tales of horrible goings-on, and each take on mythological proportions. Its beaches are littered with the detritus of a million shattered dreams, their sands stained black by a million broken ideals.

A little to the West of this city, lies Karachi. Like a younger sibling eager to please Big Brother B, this city too has its share of carefully cultivated irritants designed to make life interesting for its residents at every juncture. After a meticulously developed and executed research program that involved a total of two phone calls, I have compiled the following top five list.

5:         The Red Light Carousel. That is the official name of the continuously changing fairground ride that stopping at a traffic signal earns you in the City of (KESC-willing) Lights. The varieties of human, animal and mineral wealth that are on display at the average intersection are too many to list, but the irritant-in-chief for me is a double act. The first phase is an invasion from the Planet of the Apes. A handler will deposit his pet monkey upon your windscreen, trained to place its bum in a manner carefully calculated to ensure maximum smearage, and then ask you for money in order to take the creature away.

In the second phase, a street urchin (Urchin: n. A prickly creature that is difficult to shake off once it latches onto you) falls upon your windscreen with all the glee of a wedding guest when faced with the last gulab jamun, insisting on cleaning your windscreen with his/her handy squeegee, laced with a liquid on whose origin it is best not to speculate. The incremental cleaning affect of this treatment is debatable, but at least, in the manner of the socialist programs of the old USSR, it redistributes the bum smearage from the monkey in a more equitable manner.

4:         Mobile malls. What the hell is that? A mall that moves around to a new neighbourhood every so often like a carnival?

3:         Graffiti glorifying dubious ‘gangs’ of youths who are affluent enough to afford spray paint, and mobile enough to place their strange tags on walls in the most exclusive parts of town, private security guards notwithstanding. These MTV-watching, wannabe-brother-from-the-hood types and their antics are abhorrent to me purely because their antics exhibit a distinct excess of money and lack of respect for other peoples’ property combined. Not to mention a proliferation of swearwords that often accompanies their inkings, which further underlines their lack of maturity and complete absence of creativity of any sort. These self-styled streetwise creatives have probably never even heard of Banksy.

It's sad that a style of personal expression that is synonymous with urban decay in the Western world has turned into a bourgeoisie indulgence closer to home; the real ghetto youth can't afford cans of spray paint. 

This is not to be confused with a city quirk that is common to this region and always provides a welcome diversion, especially in inner city traffic jams: advertising graffiti in the Urinating Dog style – so called because it was made famous by wall chalkings proclaiming all passers by to look at the dog that was urinating on said wall - often there would be no dog, but a dozen or so people doing their business against the message.

The graffiti most often advertises cures for “secret illnesses”; raising the question: if the illness is secret, than how can it be known, let alone cured? Also common are advertisements for aphrodisiacs and other ‘performance enhancing drugs’, clinics specialising in a narrow range of (embarrassingly well-described) male illnesses, and specialists of reversing the effects of black magic, begging the question: where do specialists of bringing into being the effects of black magic advertise?

2:         The Persistent Panhandler. This is a specie that is different from the regular alms-seeker, in that they are equipped physically and emotionally for the long haul. If your window is turned up, the better to protect you from the heat and our ‘TT’ wielding friends whose need for your mobile phone is greater than your own, the Persistent Panhandler will start with a rousing spiel in an exotic dialect, exhorting you to loosen your purse strings for the sake of their ailing/starving/both family.

The volume level is carefully modulated to penetrate the windscreen of your vehicle as well as cut across the inane ramblings of the dubious-accented “arejay” on the city’s 89^th FM station (does the man realise that a counter revolution is an effort in support of the status quo, or did he pick the name for his show because it sounded cool? The latter, I assume). If the exhortations fail to move you, he/she is equipped with a fistful of rings with which to rap on your screen in a manner aimed to make you worry for the continued existence of your windowpanes.

The only saving grace in the panoply of persistent panhandlers is the subspecies Hejarah Chechodamus, commonly referred to as the Witty Eunuch. These creatures normally sashay up to you in some style, and their opening salvo is normally a flirtatious comment aimed at your appearance. Seeing a friend turn increasingly brighter shades of pink upon being referred to as ‘the one with intoxicating eyes’, ‘Frenchie’ or likened to a Bollywood hero is worth the price of admission, although having their attentions turned onto you can sometimes be less than enjoyable (especially is your friends sing songs at you about intoxicating eyes for the rest of the evening).

1:         The fact that, when all is said and done, this city is unique, and insidious to boot. You may moan and groan all you like about all the things that you are irritated by on a daily basis, but when you come right down to it, there is no other place like it. I for one know that I could never call any other place, ‘home’.