Karachi’s Anatomy

1. Karachi, the nocturnal city with unblinking, wide-open eyes, glittering under the moonlight.

2. Karachi jolts with its bumpy roads, jerking vehicles into potholes and bouncing over bulges; jammed cars from bumper to bumper, honking and smoldering engines seething with gasoline.

3. Karachi clutters with brightly painted, rickety rickshaws, their cacophonous, ear-splitting engines amusing passersby. Urdu poetry printed on the back reads: “Maalik Ki Gaadi Driver Ka Paseena – Chalti Hai Road Par Ban Kar Haseena.” (“Owner’s car, driver’s sweat, riding along the road like a gorgeous female.”)

4. Karachi cheers with bubbly, honking, bustling buses, bearing ecstatic names like Khan Coach, Super Hassan Zai, and Safari, rushing to their destinations like colorfully bejeweled eastern brides eager to meet their grooms.

5. Karachi becomes a loving mother on Thursday nights, feeding the hungry at Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s tomb.

6. Karachi could have been beautiful if the Arabian Sea weren’t chocolate brown with industrial waste. It could have attracted tourists if the seashore didn’t reek of buzzing flies feeding on the trash.

7. Karachi twists and turns along its haphazard roads without signs. The Numaish signal becomes the intersection of crossroads, leading to Saddar in the north, Nazimabad in the south, Garden in the east, and Gulshan-e-Iqbal in the west.

8. Karachi, the season of endless weddings, pauses briefly before Muharram arrives.

9. Karachi speeds halfway down the highway leading to Hyderabad in the evening, racing at 160 km/h, the lavender blue sky above, stereos blaring remixed Bollywood songs. It stops over for Karahi chicken and hot kulcha at the Habib Truck Stop, a shabby inn originally made for truck drivers and Pathans, but evolved into a family place. Sitting on wooden platforms and charpais with circular, oblong pillows, people feast while watching Bollywood movies projected onto a screen in the open field.

10. Karachi is the wedding tent adorned with golden lights, vivacious music, hoots, claps, and laughter echoing through the empty streets before the morning azaan.

Hawkers fry potato and meat samosas and pakoras, all while busy shooing away flies that settle on the displayed food.

11. Karachi dazzles with laughter and jingles with glass bangles as people eagerly await the clouds to reveal the moon, relieving them from fasting one more day.

12. Karachi is the green, red, yellow, and brown sherbet on a snowy gola ganda—a rainbowed syrupy snowball on a wooden stick, melting as it’s licked and sucked.

13. Karachi is the food stalls lining footpaths and streets during Ramzan. Hawkers fry potato and meat samosas and pakoras, all while busy shooing away flies that settle on the displayed food.

14. Karachi is about admitting its street food is questionable yet still relishing in the pleasure of gol gappay.

15. Karachi is the sound of rain with children laughing, hopping, and splashing; the early morning symphony of tinkling glass bangles and clattering steel dishes as the masi does the household chores; the painfully sweet melody of a flute drifting in from afar after midnight.

16. Karachi is everything, but also what it could have been.

 

Photo credit by Pixabay.