Keep Calm and Reclaim Karachi!

While usually the USP of Sunday mornings is the alarm-free dawn, this Sunday was exciting for a bigger reason – The Super Savari Express tour of Karachi that we had booked for the four of us – me, my husband, my daughter and our house-help. All four of us are from Lahore and my life in Karachi generally runs between do and teen talwar, so going all over town seeing different parts of Karachi was a pretty exciting prospect.

At 8 in the morning, with swollen faces, we met our fellow tourists and Jehanzeb, the tour operator, outside the Super Savari office in Saddar, behind Karachi Gymkhana.

We were super excited to see our ride – a signature Pakistani bus decorated with colorful truck art from the outside as well as the inside! It cannot get more Pakistani than that!

We first went up to the Super Savari office which was no less than a treat – truck art slogans decorated the walls and red fairy lights lit up the place. The office desk itself was a ‘theyla-cart’ decorated with truck art – I thought the idea was quite original. Lots of truck art frames were up for sale – I’d suggest spend a few $$$ on those if you don’t already own such pieces. I heart them. For details about the tour and how to book, you can check out their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/superkarachiexpress/?fref=ts.

The office door opens to this..

Home Decoration (itmes for sale)

Wouldn't mind a wall like that in my house!

Paul Smith shoes anyone?

 After the formalities were taken care of, the ‘Super Savari Family’ hopped on to the bus – the chicken-hearted took the seats inside while the more adventurous sat at the top!

The ride through the empty streets in the usually congested and polluted Karachi was an absolute treat. The crisp, clean air and the need for shawls added the X-factor to the city tour. We started off the tour from the Abdullah Haroon Road, formerly known as the Victoria Road from the British times. The State Guest House on this road happened to be the first Prime Minister House in Pakistan – its address being 10 Vitoria Road (sounds like 10 Downing Street address of the Prime Minister House in Great Britain). We passed by the Sindh National Assembly, the High Court and the first Free Masons Lodge in Pakistan (now Sind Wildlife Dept) with Jehanzeb telling us interesting bits of history. We even passed by what Jehanzeb called us ‘our version of the Trafalgar Square’ – this round about had hundreds of pigeons and we made them fly as the bus roared past them. At 8 in the morning, this sight was indeed beautiful.

The bus then took us into the heart of Saddar, Elphinstone Street, where it parked and we got down. We got a walking tour of Saddar, with the stories of various historical buildings being narrated to us.  We saw buildings owned by the Portuguese and by the Belgian (with European architecture), a mosque built by  Kattchi Memons,  the Parsi Dar e Meher and a Bori mosque (with North African Architecture) showing that Karachi is indeed the melting pot of Pakistan where you get so much religious and cultural diversity. 

As you walk around Saddar, and take a closer look at some of the colonial buildings you see architectural details you see in Europe. With good imagination and memories from Vienna if you have been, you will be able to see these buildings in their times of glory. Now, they are cracking and unkept, ‘khandar-type’ facades of buildings with renovated interiors. Sadness. Otherwise, with a tourism budget and without paan peeks, we too could have had something like the Viennese city centre. Also as you walk around, more than breakfast at this point, you might want a ‘jharoo’  to clean up the garbage that pollutes our beautiful city. Shame to the city government.

Suba ka suraj, scooter aur kachra.

As you walk some more, you see little street hawkers get ready for daily business – pathans opening stacks and stacks of cloth which you would probably get at amazing prices, chai walas brewing fresh tea and desi bakery walas making bread and biscuits – which btw make the streets actually smell so nice and make you super hungry. Now, finally we stopped for breakfast at a typical Karachi dhaba and ate hari mich walay omlettes with parathas to our heart’s content. They also serve really nice mix-chai.

Post nashta, we stopped at the Tit Bit book stall, saw a mandir as well as a gurdwara. We also saw the New Memon Mosque – reminiscent of the  Badshahi mosque with its white domes and red structure – not as grand of course,  but grand enough to make you wonder – why didn’t I ever see it? Why didn’t I even know about it?! The courtyard of the mosque was tiled with flooring that looked like individual jaa-e-namaazes – which I found quite interesting.  

Tit Bit book shop

It was wonderful to stop at the Big Ben of Karachi – The Merewhether Clock Tower – which I have always found interesting but could never stop to have a clear look because of traffic AND the fear of getting mugged. Getting a closer look at it today reminded me of the towers of the Rathaus towers in Vienna in terms of architecture – of course this is just a single tower, but it is beautiful.

like totallys

St.Patrick’s Cathedral was our next stop. The white marble structure decorated with statures of angels and behind it the cathedral itself, made of beige stones during the British Raj – so marvelous.

The tour usually ends here but today was special – we were treated to seeing one more place – the newly rejuvenated Eduljee Dinshaw Road!  And that was made possible as one the people responsible for this great effort and venture, the architect Shahid Abdullah Sahab, was on this tour with us! When we walked inside we saw people working hard to set up the area for the official inauguration event to be held this evening (13^th December, 2015). This street was basically a dump yard, serving two prestigious architectural landmarks of Karachi: Karachi Port Trust building and the Imperial Custom House. With joint efforts and finances of some private sector companies, this area has been refurbished, decorated with Victorian style lamp posts, fountains, benches and freshly laid stone walkways.  The rehabilitation of this road has also been covered by Sharmin Obaid Chinoy. The intention is to make it a pedestrian zone.

Names of Private Sector Donors. Awesome people.

When Shahid Sahab narrated his vision to us, I could clearly imagine this street looking like a street in Paris, lined with bistros and musicians and artists and happy people. Too optimistic? Maybe? Maybe not. Maybe more of maybe not! Though I was already in awe of our history and the colonial heritage and the potential our city holds as being a tourist destination, at this point, I felt SO, SO proud of our people. The trustees of this project took out the time AND money from their OWN pockets to clean up and reclaim a street of our city, to give back to their city – spending half a million a month over the last 9 months to give their vision the colour of reality. What an amazing act of patriotism.

We are a lazy bunch of people, true. But maybe all we need is a push. We want to change things. We want our city back. We want to feel we own it – and we do own it. We need to come out on the streets. We need to come out and enjoy our food, our history, our people. We need to take our cameras out and show the world what we are about. Karachi is about Pathans and Afghans and Punjabis and Sindhis and Balochis and Sunnis and Shias and Boris and Sikhs and Hindus and Parsis and Christians. Karachi is multi -cultural, multi-lingual and that’s what makes it vibrant, tolerant, refreshing and beautiful! Till we don’t take pride in ourselves, we will not be able to change the perception the rest of the world holds about us. Instead of apologizing for what a few hundreds do, let us celebrate the good things the thousands do.

What was the best part of the tour? I guess many would ask as a lot of the stops on this tour are places we see every day while going about our daily business. But the very fact that we were a group of ‘burgers’ out on the streets of Saddar with our ‘bags’ and phones and some of us with our cameras too, enjoying what our beautiful city has to offer, fearless, was a THING in itself. That is the best part for me. The sense of security, the sense of ownership. So thank you Super Savari for this brilliant idea and Jehanzeb for being a super duper tour guide. Thank you for making us love Karachi even more today!

So take out 2500 rupees from your pocket ‘coz I’ve got your next Sunday morning planned for you.

Ye watan hamara hai, ham hein paasbaan iskey!