By Mahmud Sipra
Ask Ardeshir Cowasjee for help and advice. He loves Karachi. Listen to the wisdom of this grand old man. He might give you an earful before he gives you some good ideas and advice — a small price to pay for being in the company of an idiosyncratic iconoclast, writes Mahmud Sipra
LAHORE, Pakistan (Daily Times), March 20, 2008:
This country seems to honour its heroes only after they have kicked the bucket. We name our battleships, our airports, our boulevards and bridges after them. What’s wrong with naming a few things after people who can still walk?
Then there is this other self-imposed limitation the country has not been able to break free of. We build plazas, colonies, townships and societies, but never cities, the only exception being Islamabad, the nation’s capital.
Even that suffers from unfortunate identity crisis because of an inexplicable label. It is refered to as one of the “twin cities”, the other part being Rawalpindi.
To compare an old garrison town which you could walk across on foot from the old Topi Park to where the old Auchinleck swimming pool used to be in less than an hour if you were so inclined to a city built to plan by names like Doxiades, Stone and Delokay is a travesty.
Proximity is hardly a reason for bracketing a planned city with a town that owes its continued existence to the fact that it is home to the army high command. The metaphor however is not lost on the keen political observer.
Talking of cities, none has lost so much in so little time as Karachi. It had everything going for it until 1972. Today, it has the ugliest shoreline of any port city.
Some forty years on that area called Clifton is a maze of substandard, unseemly-looking highrises that do nothing for showcasing the country’s only residential shoreline. Potholed roads with uncovered sewerage gutters large enough to swallow a car; festering garbage and refuse dumps that anywhere else in the world would trigger a riot.
Where were the political visionaries when such barbarism was being committed in the name of progress?
I heard Mr Farooq Sattar of MQM making the grandiose claim that he was going to pull the nation into the 21st century. Really?
How about starting with the 18th century paradigm of planning a city with civic amenities, chaste Palladian buildings, public parks and walkways for ordinary peace-loving people, where young and old can walk and jog, without getting shot or maimed or kidnapped for a cellular phone. How about setting up desalination plants to give clean drinking water to the people? How about setting up teams and sending convoys of trucks to collect the garbage that Karachi produces daily and turning it into a source of vitally needed electricity?
To embark on a mission to reclaim Karachi from rogue developers and robber contractors you are going to need help. That help is available. The Parsi community has played a pivotal role in shaping Karachi as it once was. Dinshaw, Nusserwanji, Cowasjee, Kothari and Avari are only a few names that come to mind. Their children are still living among us. Their love for their city is evident in some of the landmark structures the city is still proud to have.
Ask Ardeshir Cowasjee for help and advice. He loves his city. Listen to the wisdom of this grand old man. He might give you an earful before he gives you some good ideas and advice — a small price to pay for being in the company of an idiosyncratic iconoclast who has never turned away a friend or foe who he thought he could somehow help in some way. It is just that Ardesher suffers fools badly.
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Seniors World Chronicle adds:
Grand Old Man Ardeshir Cawasjee
of Karachi, Pakistan
writes regularly for
DAWN.
E-mail: arfc@cyber.net.pk
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I don’t know who is going to be the chief minister of Sindh in the next few days but whoever it is, ought to look into major intersections being named after people who have no historical or cultural or political right to claim such an honour. One might then ask: why is one of the most high profile and strategic crossings in Karachi named after someone called “Schon”? Who was he? What was he? Did he die for the country? Did he give the country a cancer hospital? Or a university? Did he pioneer stem cell research? If the answer to all these is no, then the Honorable Chief Minister-designate ought to set this travesty right.
It is an insult to the memory of people who gave their lives for the country or spent their lives working for the people. Role models are not made by naming roads or intersections after people with obscure identities and dubious reputations. Monuments are dedicated to the memory of individuals who have somehow touched our lives or contributed something of value to the soil and to society. Self-aggrandizement, inflated egos and misplaced hubris are poor substitutes for civic mindedness and responsible citizenship.
I have a personal request to make to Mr Shahbaz Sharif, the likely chief minister of Punjab. I have absolutely no doubt that he will do a great job in giving Lahore and the rest of the province a great face lift.
Maybe he will somehow turn the “Canal” or at least a portion of it into a beautiful floating Fruit and Flower market; or set up a Free Zone Facility at Iqbal International Airport for the export of flowers (like Dubai has); perhaps he will set up a “Film City” and grant the business of making films the status of an industry.
But before you do all these wonderful things, Miansahib, could you order someone to take over the management and the care of Shalimar Gardens. The last time I saw it, it was being used as a public latrine.
Set it right and set it straight, sir, and give it back to the people for what it once was — a perfumed garden. You can do it. I’ve seen what a marvelous job you did by reclaiming, restoring and refurbishing the old Masonic Hall on the Mall, which was once and will be again your office.
The people will applaud you and I, for one, will salute you.
Mahmud Sipra is a best selling author and an independent columnist. He can be reached at sipraindubai@yahoo.com
Copyright: Daily Times
