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The Story Of Karachi

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  • The Story Of Karachi

    http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...-3-2004_pg7_45

    Karachi hustle — Lahore stroll: ‘I felt surprisingly safe in Karachi’

    By Darren Boisvert

    KARACHI: A few days after I landed, a Karachi taxi driver approached me and flashed his wallet with a white card crudely embossed with the letters CIA.

    “I’m with the CIA,” he said redundantly. “It’s not safe for you people here.”

    I laughed with disbelief at his confidence attempt and he eventually sped off. Contrary to the fears he was pushing, I felt surprisingly safe in Karachi.

    Before I began living in Lahore six months ago, as a TV journalist in Canada I had helped shape the stories ‘coming out’ of Karachi – truck bombs, sectarian violence, Daniel Pearl, Tasman Spirit disaster. Bad news sells in journalism and Karachi was good for business. Still I wanted to visit.

    My friends in Lahore, who consider Karachi to be the armpit of Pakistan, also questioned my holiday plans to a city with bad roads, traffic congestion and smog-induced lung congestion. I was undeterred, for if I only believed what I could see on television, then Karachi would be a war zone and Lahore would not exist.

    I have heard the stereotypes many times since arriving in Pakistan. Lahore is an overgrown village: sleepy and conservative. Karachi is a crowded metropolis: dangerous and dirty. Labels might be good for soft drinks, but cities – like people – cannot be summed up in a few words.

    Karachi is bustling with an energy day and night that locals say has only resurfaced since the mid-eighties. With 15 million people and growing each day, it is swirling with a whirlwind of activity that is sucking in immigrants from rural Sindh, Afghanistan, Balochistan and the NWFP. It’s a cosmopolitan city, in both architecture and people.

    Money is king in Karachi, with commercial buildings, banks and office towers lording over the city skyline. Like other major port cities around the world, Karachi ships in new ideas along with every container that gets processed on its docks. There is more tolerance, if for no other reason than to make a quick buck. Westerners can openly buy bacon in Karachi, bookstores are filled with western dissident writers like Noam Chomsky and restaurants cater widely to tastes developed around the world.

    Karachi is so big, human differences seem smaller. But it is no utopia. Like other massive cities such as New York City or Bangkok, there are neighbourhoods that I was advised by my consulate to avoid or take a guide. That’s life in a big city, yet minding your own business and being careful doesn’t mean being afraid.

    Take taxi drivers. Karachi drivers, unlike in Lahore, are harder to negotiate with, more likely to take long detours, but are also more approachable and multilingual. They can’t be trusted, but the ride is more interesting.

    The ultra-violence of Karachi such as truck bombs is more targeted than widespread. The various police forces and Rangers surrounding the consulates and embassies are more visible in Karachi, but are also more helpful with directions, perhaps in an attempt to mitigate the negative perception of the their difficult and dangerous jobs.

    If Karachi has the crassness of the commercial hustle, Lahore has the exclusivity of the runway stroll. Lahore is green with trees, smooth with roads and cleaner with air, yet “Marriage, marriage, marriage,” as one friend told me, is all the people think about in Lahore. People dress better in Lahore, where social status and the trappings of wealth figure more prominently in the self-definition.

    Lahore may be sleepy, but it is a slumbering giant. Partition and a half-century of war with India has cut the legs out from underneath Lahore. The Punjab is lopsided, half of what it used to be when Lahore ruled over the region and was a hub of international trade. It is no surprise that when families are ripped apart and trade routes disrupted, the local inhabitants turned inwards, becoming more provincial and conservative. They lost so much that what was left to them was all the more precious.

    Lahore is run by cautious bureaucrats, urbanized feudals, fashion designers and models. Parties are more exclusive, the social hierarchy is more rigid, yet the city has less of the social disparity that marks Karachi. The upper-class may be clinging to their former glory, but the culture of the city is more distilled.

    The restaurants in Lahore have some of the finest Asian cooking a foreigner could taste. To eat at Mirchi on MM Alam road is to sample the best local dishes, cooked with local produce at the skillful hands of local chefs. The fashion industry is creative and booming, there are book readings, art shows and intellectual symposia to feed the mind. And while Karachi has beaches and crab fishing to bring people together, the kites of Lahore (when allowed to fly) are freedom in the air for even the poorest members of society.

    For all their differences, the Pakistani spirit of hospitality runs like a river through both cities – deep and wide. The rivalry of trade, power and influence that exists between the two cities is, like the stereotypes, superficial. It’s a big enough country for both cities to flourish. After the India-Pak cricket tour is finished, Karachi and Lahore should consider their own test match. Both cities have much they could learn from each other, and what better way than though train loads of tourists visiting their neighbours.
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