Geography follows wherever I go…
Number of posts in a row: 2
Number of posts total: 6
The standard now is to wake up around 10 or 11am and still feel like I need another 3 hours in bed. The heat and constant engagements in Karachi make sleep a blissful and treasured time. Today was no different. Luckily I woke up about 20 seconds prior to my dad entering the bedroom otherwise my awakening would have been much more problematic. The agenda today was loose and fluid in motion.
First a very emotional and heart-wrenching affair at the Kurbristan (grave), this ceremonial place holds my grandfather, as well as the recently passed author whom I spoke about yesterday. I understand that if you don’t have money in Pakistan, your social status can be considered as prestigious as an ‘untouchable’, and the need for money is grand but to beg for money in such a place like a graveyard seems mildly disrespectful to me. I came to the grave to pay my respects to my grandfather not to squabble with grave-washers over payment.
After a very solemn affair, we came home, quick change and off to the Sind Club we went for lunch. The Sind Club was a colonial base that dates back to the time of the Raj. It is steeped in so much history, you feel as if, that the members are never free from the grasp of its past. In Karachi the Sindh region is spelt with a ‘h’ on the end but the club is spelt Sind. Just a small, irrelevant feature I noticed. You’ll come to learn I notice and reminisce about inconspicuous and small things that others forget in a heartbeat. The dessert was the highlight. It brought back a flurry of memories. They call in crunch ice-cream, essentially vanilla ice-cream with chewy and crunchy bits inside. Absolute bliss. Cheat day, we’ll call it.
From there, an immediate dash to the Mohatta Palace. Inside this palace was an exhibit about maps. Now… being a geography student, I have been studying maps intently and with great interest, I must add, in one of my modules. The exhibition had a title along the line of ‘Drawing the Lines’. Of course I was in heaven. Rare maps of the Sindh region pre and post-colonialism were very interesting and confusing at the same time. My geographical knowledge of Pakistan and India before independence is extremely vague. So, even when I’m on holiday, I’m studying the art of geographical map-making production. Intriguing, right? That’s what I thought…
I must be honest, at this point in the blog I thought hereafter would be rather dull. I wrote the paragraphs previous to this at about 6pm local time before leaving for a meal at the illustrious Port Grand. Meeting family was the main occasion but what was to happen, completely unexpected.
Port Grand is, to say the least, an interesting phenomena. It breaks so many health and safety laws that the British health inspectors would be having heart attacks every minute (and Pakistani doctors would be saving time, ironic right?). It is exists as an entertainment complex full of carnival games and horse-drawn carraiges. Correction: donkey-drawn. Karachi is not that posh to maintain a horse or two. Next to the restaurants exists the main port full of naval ships and pedigree. Now there is a division between the water and the promenade, lined by oil pipelines which children rest upon. Oil pipelines, rusty and unmaintained. Ridiculous really. It was at this point that I had another epiphany. We’ll get to the story soon enough, I promise.
This epiphany is somewhat controversial but hear me out. In the UK, the natives don’t wish to admit (but it does exist) that there is a large income/development gap between the rich and poor. The same exists in Pakistan, to an even greater extent, I might add. But in the UK, the rich and poor don’t live side by side. The rich in the UK are very much kept to their mansions and million-pound cars while the poor are relatively content with the little money they receive to make ends meat while working countless amount of jobs. While in Pakistan, when you’re driving around, if you stop at a traffic light (because you’re stupid- they never work in any order), you will come across a double amputee or a person in a wheelchair, no word of a lie, about 85% of the time. So the rich very much live by the poor. Now… my point is that, the British have a reason to forget about the poor, essentially they don’t see them. But in Pakistan, why is the government so ‘in the dark’ about the problems when it is right in front of them. Something I will never understand.
On to the story… we step into Port Grand and the tannoy is going off berserkly. Bilal… Bilal was being shouted down the tannoy. He is 5 years old and to my understanding, at the time, had lost his parents. I was wrong. Later I found out that his parents were putting out a call for him, he was lost. Turns out, amongst the group of family there was a private investigator type person. She called the CPLC which then got the police involved. During this time, the whole family was hungry and started eating without the Pink Panther character. She came back with news that Bilal had been found. Amazingly, he had been found in a rickshaw about 10 miles away, now how he got there, we don’t know. We’ll never know. Was it an abduction? Probably not. But how the kid managed to get to the rickshaw and leave his parents… well I’ll let your minds wander.
After all of that, I’m sitting here contemplating life decisions (just joking).
That’s about it (I think).
I’m out
DN