“Drive safe, yaar.”  This is the typical weekend sendoff as hosts of parties and impromptu dinners begin collecting the wine glasses and empty beer cans and say goodbye to their guests. There is rarely a debate on if anyone is “okay” to drive, and for the most part, everyone gets home.

But on occasion, the tales begin to filter out — of the young men and women injured, of mangled cars, of cops asking questions, of pain and of parties gone wrong.

Pakistanis’ utter disregard for traffic rules is made even more evident on weekends, when people frequently turn without signaling, break the speed limit and signals alike and speed by so fast that even presidential cavalcades seem like a procession of turtles by comparison.

And just a few months ago, one man — reportedly driving while inebriated — ran over and killed a man and a woman on Karachi’s Korangi Road. The case was eventually settled after a payment of ‘blood money’ under the country’s Qisas and Diyat laws.

With alcohol being ‘illegal’ in Pakistan (except for non-Muslims and foreigners), the debate on drinking, much less drunk-driving, is non-existent. Unlike the US, where advocacy groups such as ‘Mothers Against Drunk Driving’ have driven the debate and raised awareness, there are no similar organisations or examples available here. There is, similarly, no notion of having a ‘designated driver’ — someone who is abstaining from alcohol for the night and is fit to drive at any hour of the night, and most people avoid calling cabs if they’ve had too much to drink.

According to Pakistan’s driving license rules, “tighter rules apply for drivers who have been disqualified for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) of alcohol, drugs or narcotics. Such drivers will not regain their license until thay (sic) have satisfied the Medical Adviser at the Traffic Police Office that any drink / drugs problem he/she may have had is under control and there is unlikely to be any road safety risk if he drives.” Driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs means eight penalty points on the license. Not surprisingly, alcohol doesn’t even get a mention in the tests required to obtain a license in Karachi.

“There are laws,” says Ahmed Chinoy, the head of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC). “Drunk driving is prohibited… drinking is illegal. There is a need to enforce these laws.”

Statistics on drunk driving however do not exist, because few cases are charged officially.  Drunk driving hardly ever gets a mention in the press, save for the odd report about someone being found inebriated or the occasional letter to the editor calling for stronger regulations. But the accounts of those who have been injured or even killed in drunk driving accidents can serve as a cautionary tale.

Saad Khan* was injured in an accident after his car nearly swerved off the highway a few years ago. “I was at a friend’s place, drinking — not even drinking  heavily actually — and left around 1 or 2 am. My friends asked if I was fine, and I felt I was, because I did this pretty often.”

Khan was driving on a steep section of the highway and a truck came up in front of him. He says his delayed reaction was likely because of the alcohol he had consumed. By the time he noticed the truck, he slammed the brakes “a lot harder than was needed”.

“There was still a lot of space between the truck and my car, and I was going around 90 to a 100 km/hr. The wheels abruptly turned to the right and the car went out of control. It was going off the road — and there was a pretty big drop — but I just held on to the steering wheel.”

Saad Khan passed out. By the time he regained consciousness, he was surrounded by a number of people asking him if he was okay. “I was still disoriented, but I had been wearing a seat belt and that saved me from further damage. I had cut my tongue quite badly and there were bruises everywhere.” The passers-by pulled him out of the wreckage of the car, and a well meaning cab driver helped collect his possessions and drove him home.

The episode left Khan feeling nervous and he now never gets behind the wheels of a car that doesn’t have a seatbelt. However, Khan echoes a familiar refrain: that you have no choice but to drive home even if you have been drinking. “You think you should be careful and not have too much to drink, but at the end of the day, it’s a matter of whether you can discipline yourself.”

Adil Aslam* lost a friend in a drunk driving accident a couple of years ago. “It was after a party, and he was clearly drunk. I had put him in a car with a friend who needed to get home and made sure that his girlfriend was driving. After they dropped the friend home, at some point he convinced his girlfriend to let him drive. The next thing we heard was that they had been in an accident. He crashed the car straight into a wall,” he recalled. The girl survived with injuries, but Aslam’s friend was not so lucky.

Alcohol, along with reducing inhibitions, also impairs motor function and judgment. While those around you can usually tell that you’re in no shape to drive, saying this to an intoxicated person usually gets the response: “I’m not drunk.” While some may actually realise that it would be safer not to drive themselves, the majority of drunk drivers naively believe they’ll be fine, their confidence artificially boosted by alcohol.

Others have devised rules for themselves. Mohammad Ali*, in his 30s, says that he has a “third gear rule” — not driving higher than the third gear after drinking. When asked if it would not be safer to simply not drive at all, he replies, “the problem with leaving your car behind and calling a cab is that you wake up far from your car and then it›s a hassle to retrieve it the next day.”

The third gear rule seems to work for him, as he has rarely been stopped by the police. Others of course, are not as lucky.

Drive down any major city’s main streets on a weekend night, and you can spot a number of cars being stopped by the police. One by one, the drivers get out, let the cops check their car or the registration papers, and answer a couple of questions about what they’re doing and where they are going. There’s no breathalyzer test, and cops asking questions about alcohol are often more concerned about the quantities present, and the money that can be extorted, as opposed to whether the drivers are a danger to themselves and others.

“You see these police mobiles parked in Defence on the weekends and checking cars?” Chinoy says. “They are only extorting money from people who are drunk and driving. People are stopped; they pay the police and then go away.”

Khan recalls having been stopped by the police. “Once, they found beer in the car and the other time, they could smell it on my breath. One cop was drunk himself, so he let me go.” But he said no officer has ever tried to take him to the police station or the hospital. “They assume they can get money or alcohol out of the person, and that’s how it usually ends.”

DSP Zameer Abbasi, who has served at the Gizri and Frere police stations in Karachi, doesn’t dispute that officers are often paid off. But he claims it depends on how cops are “tuned” by their in-charge, quoting episodes where he’s stopped influential young men in Karachi for traffic violations. According to him, police officers haul away anyone driving under the influence for a blood test to ascertain the level of alcohol in their system. “If someone is rude and is misbehaving, then they are definitely taken in,” he stresses. “The person and the car are both booked.” Those driving under the influence, he says, are always found in the upscale neighbourhood of Defence and are men aged between 20 and 30.

Ideally, Chinoy says, these drivers need to be taken right away to a public hospital to be tested and charged accordingly. But, as always, the problem in Pakistan boils down to enforcement: Chinoy says medico-legal officers can be bribed to produce any report one wants. DSP Abbasi has another complaint: that if the “level of alcohol is less, then the report is ‘reserved’ by the medico-legal officer, and the police have no authority.”

Dr Seemin Jamali, who heads the Casualty department at Karachi’s Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, describes the profile of those who end up in the hospital after drunk driving incidents. “Usually these are people who enjoy having a drink, and then they start driving. They’re very prone to having accidents, often crashing their car into poles or on traffic islands. They are brought into the hospital by ambulances or passers-by.”

For the few who end up going through the legal process, charges are usually filed under sections of the Pakistan Penal Code that include unintentional murder committed as a result of ‘rash or negligent driving’, which carries a 10-year sentence and diyat. ‘Rash driving’ that endangers lives carries a two-year sentence and/or a Rs1000 fine.

DSP Abbasi believes that the punishments for drunk driving need to be made stricter, and more weight should be given to police officers’ testimony in court. The CPLC chief notes that the reason these cases are never reported in the press is because there is always a settlement, a “muk mukaa”.

Aslam, whose friend died in a tragic car crash, says that there should be repercussions for driving under the influence of alcohol and that the priorities of the police need to change. “Instead of looking for booze, the police should be looking for drunk drivers. The focus should not be on ‘badnaami’. Serious action should be taken — it shouldn’t be a Rs500 payoff. There should be no social stigma attached to it.”

Given that the police force is barely equipped to investigate simple cases of theft, let alone testing for drunk driving, it isn’t surprising that these cases end up being haggled over and settled. But at the end of the day, is this the state’s responsibility? Most people are willfully ignorant of the consequences of getting behind the wheel with even one drink in their system, let alone more, unaware that they could easily become a statistic tomorrow.

“It was always in the back of my head,” Aslam says, when asked whether anything had changed as a result of his friend dying in the accident. “We should go out with a driver now, but we still don’t. It is totally out of convenience — ‘the driver isn’t available, he’s been awake since the morning’. It’s stupid. We should’ve learnt our lesson. I’ve failed to realise why we’re not more careful. That’s one of the things that strike me over and over again.”

The standard field tests:

• Try to walk in a straight line, heel-to-toe.

• Tip your head back with eyes closed and try to touch the tip of your nose with the index finger.

• Stand on one foot.

• Recite all or part of the alphabet, forwards or backwards.

If you feel that you, or someone you know, is too drunk to drive, here’s how you can be sure

Administer the (In)sobriety test

You are considered drunk if you…

• Can’t talk without slurring words.

• Cannot multitask.

• Have weak coordination, control, and reaction time.

• Thinking appears to have slowed.

 You’re never too drunk to use an app

• If you have nobody around to take your test, download the “BreathalEyes” app on your IPhone. This app lets you know if you’re too drunk to get behind the wheel. It tracks eye movement to estimate the blood alcohol level and discerns the eye waggle from left to right as you look at the maximum deviation from side to side.

 Look me in the eyes! Here is how you can make sure your friend is not too drunk to drive back home:

• The Eye Jerk: The horizontal gaze “nystagmus” is an involuntary jerking of the eyes when they attempt to follow an object moving across their field of vision horizontally. Move your finger across your friend’s field of vision. If the person is under the influence of alcohol you’ll notice that the eyes will jerk. The greater the level of intoxication, the more profound the jerking.

• The Eye Bounce: Another noticeable sign of intoxication is that the eyes “bounce” (literally!) when they are at the extreme limit of horizontal tracking (i.e. not able to move any farther in that direction).

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, February 17^th, 2013.

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Rickshaws have their own hierarchy; there are the broken down ones with ‘meters’ that last functioned when dial-up was the best way to connect to the internet and then there are the newfangled ‘CNG’ rickshaws that sport sound systems and LCD screens. And sometimes even disco lights.

Over the years, rickshaws have been used for everything from advertising television shows to spreading hateful messages against India courtesy of the Jamaatud Dawa and other groups. Both inspired and alarmed by this latter phenomenon, an enterprising group of youngster calling themselves the Pakistan Youth Alliance (PYA) decided to counter the messages of hate by designing rickshaws around the theme of peace.

The PYA plans to send out 50 rickshaws — refurbished and emblazoned with a message of peace into the streets of Karachi. Five of these rickshaws have already been redesigned at Nusrat Iqbal’s chamak patti workshop in Sohrab Goth. Iqbal is the man who designed the W-11 buses being displayed across the world and also has a decorating commission in Dubai to his credit. He agreed to take on the project as a ‘good deed’.

The pimped up rickshaws scream for attention. Decorated in the truck art style, the rickshaws are not adorned with the usual poetry about love, spirituality, women and flowers but instead bear a message of peace. Mohammad Tariq Shah, who has been driving a rickshaw for around six months, is now behind the wheel of an eye-popping fuchsia rickshaw with the potent slogan: ‘Rickshaw chala raha hoon, goli to nahin!’ (I’m driving a rickshaw, not firing a bullet). Another rickshaw’s cover has been replaced with a print of an Urdu newspaper’s editorial page; with headlines like ‘deen mai jabar nahi’ (there is no oppression in religion).

“We wanted to counter extremism by using art as a medium. Rickshaws are always on the go, everyone sees them,” says Maria Naqvi, the director of art and advocacy for the PYA.

The PYA doesn’t take credit for the designs and the slogans though; these were decided by children from government schools all over Karachi, who were part of a workshop that preceded the rickshaws project. “We talked to them about the problems in their area and in the country. We were amazed at how much they knew about the ground realities,” Naqvi says, “they knew words like ‘firqa variyat’ (sectarianism).”

Over the course of the workshop, the students came up with the catchphrases, playing on existing slogans and advertisements like: ‘Pappu yaar jang na kar’ and ‘aman ko phaila dala to life jhingalala’.

Though the jazzed up rickshaws have only been on the road for a few weeks, people are already showing interest. Curious rickshaw drivers have approached Iqbal to redo their rickshaws in the same style. “It has become more beautiful than before,” Shah says of his newly refurbished ride, “the other day I had a Pathan passenger who claimed that there wasn’t another rickshaw like this in all of Karachi!” A pick-up driver also approached Iqbal, and said that he wanted the same peace messaging since he travelled throughout the country. This is exactly what PYA co-founder Maryam Kanwer hopes to achieve — that the slogans go viral and spread the message of peace.

The drivers of the five redesigned rickshaws come from what Kanwer describes as the ‘conflicted areas’ of Lyari, North Karachi, Korangi and North Nazimabad. The drivers were found via a member of the organisation; one was a distant relative, who brought along a cousin, and thus the word spread. Naqvi says that they picked rickshaws that operated in different parts of the city, and ones that were pretty rundown to begin with. Each rickshaw cost Rs6,000 to Rs10,000 to redesign and to refurbish, and if you haven’t spotted one yet don’t worry, the PYA is planning a peace march in the coming months which will feature all the rickshaws and the students from the workshops along with (hopefully) the citizens of Karachi.

The PYA is very careful in terms of the messages they put on the rickshaws as they can be easily misconstrued. “We understand the concerns of the rickshaw drivers,” Naqvi said, “one of them, whose rickshaw has ‘aman’ [peace] written on it, got threats from some Pathans in Lyari who thought that this was a message from the People’s Aman Committee!”

But can five or even 50 rickshaws counter the messages of hate being spread by other groups, who have more resources, manpower and reach than the PYA? Kanwer believes they can. “I have faith that even in the darkness there is light,” she says.

The PYA is not alone, and over the past few years the deepening crisis in the country has served as an inspiration for local artists, who are actively trying to spread the message of peace through t-shirts, street art and paintings.  Kanwer’s faith is also shared by the rickshaw drivers, who are excited about spreading peace and, of course, about the shiny, happy interior of the vehicles. They hope that this will not just attract customers — “people turn around and stare at the rickshaws in traffic,” says one driver — but also help change people’s mindsets.

One of the drivers of the rickshaws, Mohammad Yousaf, best describes their intentions with a Seraiki poem from his childhood:

‘Wafadar haan mai wafadar rahsaan,

Wafavah di nagri da sardar haan

Aman wandawan gunah hai jai kar

Gunahgaar haan mai gunahgaar haan’

‘I am loyal,

the lord of all those who are loyal.

If spreading peace is a sin,

then I am a sinner’

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, February 10^th, 2013.

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Correction: An earlier version of the article had incorrectly translated the word ‘jabar’. The error has been rectified.

During the meeting, President Zardari reiterated Pakistan’s resolve to extend political, moral and diplomatic support to the people of Kashmir. The president said that people of Kashmir had given many sacrifices for upholding their dignity and freedom.

He called upon the international community to focus its attention towards the troubles of Kashmiris who have been waging a legitimate struggle to attain their right to self-determination for over six decades and suffered human rights violations time and time again.

The president said Pakistan firmly believes that a meaningful, sustained and result-oriented process of engagement with India would help in finding a permanent solution to the Kashmir dispute.

Meeting with MQM

Meanwhile, in a meeting with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), APHC leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq urged Pakistan’s political parties to highlight the Kashmir issue in their manifestos for the upcoming general elections.

Farooq met a delegation of the MQM at their headquarters Nine Zero, and also spoke to the party’s chief Altaf Hussain, who called for the Kashmir issue to be resolved in line with the wishes of the people, and said that talks without their representation would be meaningless.

Providing details of the meeting to the media, Farooq said, “we spoke openly about Kashmir and Indo-Pak relations, and we believe that our concerns are mirrored by the MQM and Altaf Hussain.”

The delegation of Kashmiri leaders from across the Line of Control (LoC) is visiting Pakistan for the first time in four years.

“We believe that any change [in Indo-Pak relations] will not persist as long as the basic issue – Kashmir – is solved. The primary issue is not trade or Sir Creek,” Farooq said adding that “Altaf’s team has assured us that without the involvement of the Kashmiris, progress will not be achieved.

Speaking to the APHC leader, Altaf offered his support to the people of Kashmir and urged them to unite, “because no movement could be successful without unity,” he said.

Altaf added that if the MQM was elected to all provincial assemblies, it would resolve the issue of Kashmir based on the wishes of the people.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st, 2012. 

For weeks, cinema facades were covered with posters depicting the September 21 carnage and asking who would help. On Thursday, bystanders were admiring a massive new billboard for the movie.

Capri’s owner, Chaudhry Asif, smiled as he addressed a press conference at the cinema – it’s newly laid marble still sparkling – on Thursday evening. “They can keep breaking down cinemas – and we will keep building them,” he said.

“This has been a struggle,” Asif said. “With the help of our friends and family, we’ve been able to reopen it.”

Asif was not in Karachi when the city’s iconic cinemas were targeted by mobs. On that day, arsonists and rioters broke open the grilles and beat staff. The rampage, which took place as the country marked a national holiday for Yaum-e-Ishq-e-Rasool, saw prominent cinemas, such as Nishat, Capri, Bambino and Prince damaged and destroyed.

“I came back, and I came here first, and when I went to Nishat, I just sat down. This is my house, and so is Nishat, and everyone here is my family.”

But cinema owners at the press conference sounded a note of caution. The government, they said, must step up and ensure security.

Asif noted that let alone providing any help, there was not a “single phone call” from government representatives.

Mandviwalla said that the DC south had prepared a report on the riots and spoken to cinema owners about the damages. The report, as far as he knows, has been submitted to the government.

Nishat and Prince

While Capri is back in business, its neighbours – Nishat and Prince Cinema – are still closed.

Mandviwalla said that the damage to both was far more extensive than Capri’s, since they had “burned for four to five hours” and the roofs had caved in.

In October, the door to what was once an office at Nishat Cinema was still on its hinges. The glass was gone, as was the roof, screens and projectors. The chairs were made “from the best wood,” said Mukhtar, who worked there for over 20 years.

A hawk flew through the building, in the same space where crowds once hooted, applauded and cried at films. In one room, stacks of posters of the last few animated Hollywood films were charred, stuck together. A charred fire extinguisher clung to a wall.

In the rubble at Nishat were glimpses of the cinema’s rich past. An attendance book from 1981 recorded the daily attendance of the employees at ‘Nishat Talkies’ and their monthly salary, which then ranged in the hundreds. Another damp book, with roaches scuttling over it, was described as a ‘stamp book’ which had entries from July 1963, with meticulously recorded details of amounts paid out.

Employees at Nishat said that several prints of films from the past decade were also destroyed in the fire, including a print of Jinnah, as well as the colour version of Mughal-e-Azam.

Mandviwalla Entertainment’s Nawab Hazoorul Hasan said that Nishat had probably incurred a loss of Rs140 million in the September 21 riots.

“The process of deciding what to do with Nishat will only happen once the insurers assess everything. It could take a very long time,” he said.

The exterior of Prince Cinema presents as bleak a prospect. The large imposing gates are shut, and through the gate one can espy the charred structure, with three workers asleep in the midst of the rubble.

The cinema is currently being the subject of a property dispute case ongoing at the high court.

According to Muhammad Sohail, the manager at Prince, “This tragedy [riots] happened while it was in the court’s custody”. Until there is a verdict in the court case, the management of the cinema cannot make a decision on what to do with the building.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st, 2012.

Hina Mir, who was getting married this year, decided not to schedule any wedding event on December 27. “It is Benazir Bhutto’s death anniversary and it’s bound to be that the city situation will not be normal,” she said. “I don’t want to have to worry about whether there will be a girl at the salon to blow-dry my hair or if my driver or any of the people who have to make arrangements will show up. It has happened to other people I knew so I didn’t want to go through that.”

According to Faisal Qureshi, the owner of the Aero Club in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, people account for religious months, when their extended families can travel and school vacations when setting a date. “In 2008, a year after Benazir Sahiba died, people did avoid the date because it was still fresh and it was the first death anniversary,” he said. “But time heals the deepest wounds, so in the following years the number of people holding events on December 27 has increased.”

Dates such as April 4, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s death anniversary, and May 12, 2007 which went down in history for being one of Karachi’s bloodiest, are also avoided by some prospective clients at Bahria Auditorium.

As it turns out, however, one person’s fear is another one’s opportunity. There was a mad rush in April to book wedding venues for December. Representatives of popular locations, including Creek Club and Sadabahar Banquet Lawn, said that December had been locked down far in advance. “We’re taking bookings for next March now,” laughed a staffer at Sadabahar. Zaman at Imperial Lawn added that expatriate Pakistanis tended to book a year in advance and locals claim a place six months before the date.

This means that the dates that some couples avoid, can be picked up by others. Mushriquz Zaman, the general manager at Clifton’s Imperial Lawns, estimates that about 30% of the people who approach them are too scared to pick December 27.

When Zohaib Akhtar started to look for a wedding venue in Karachi, he thought he had covered his bases. But three separate venues – Bahria Auditorium, Creek Club and the PAF Museum – told him that they were booked solid for all dates in December – except for the 27th.

These ‘untouchable’ dates can work for people who are desperate, such as the “jhat mangni pat biyah scene” as one of the city’s most popular event planners Frieha Altaf puts it. And then there are families who have to hold an event on December 27 due to constraints but decide to keep it low key and at home. Either way, whatever the family decides in the end, the fact is that they cannot ignore the city’s history.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 15^th, 2012.

KARACHI: The Pakistan Peoples Party, forever under attack for either using or abusing the ‘Sindh card’ or ‘selling out Sindh’, turned the provincial assembly session into a melee of accusations and counter-accusations for the second day in a row.

The ghost of Kalabagh Dam rattled around in the Sindh Assembly, but one could presume that even the ghost got fed up and went for a nap.

The PPP MPAs offered a history lesson on the defensive after opposition leaders accused the party on Thursday of being all talk and no action and then began yelling at the Pakistan Muslim League- Functional MPAs for having made the allegations.

Egged on by his cabinet colleagues Sharjeel Inam Memon and Murad Ali Shah, PPP’s Zahid Bhurgari launched into a tirade against the PML-F while Memon didn’t help matters by calling PML-F MPA Nusrat Seher Abbasi out for her choice of words on Thursday.

There were inflammatory quotes a minute. PPP’s Makhdoom Jamil-uz-Zaman criticised the Lahore High Court judge, Humera Alwani led chants of ‘shame shame’ against former minister Nisar Memon and his daughter while, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s Marvi Memon and Speaker Nisar Ahmed Khuhro tried to calm the indignant PML-F MPAs with ‘bardasht, bardasht’.

One wonders why, exactly, the PPP is so miffed at the Pir Pagara-led party that recently called it quits with the coalition. As much as the PPP seems to be enjoying levelling allegations against the PML-F, they’ll soon realise that people are laughing at them, not with them.

But for now, the PPP in Sindh has other issues to tackle, including what it claims will be the “one of the largest rallies ever organised in Pakistan.” This April, at the death anniversary of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari was nowhere to be seen in Garhi Khuda Bux.

One heard he was there, but the doors of the Bhutto family mausoleum were closed when he arrived and the hundreds waiting outside weren’t able to catch a glimpse of him. On December 27, the chairperson of the PPP is set to speak…”…in Urdu!” MPA Humera Alwani told The Express Tribune.

“There are divisional meetings of the party going on and we are aiming for 500,000 to 1,000,000 people to attend the rally,” she said. “The female MPAs, in particular, have been tasked with this.”

Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, she said, is expected to “unveil the party manifesto and the elections strategy” in his speech.

While one does not look forward to the jalsa arithmetic that will be used after the December 27 rally to calculate whether it was a million, 10 million, or whether the crowd could be seen from the moon -  for now, the PPP is all set to board the Bilawal Express, as this is their winning ticket for the elections.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2012.

When National Peoples Party MPA Arif Jatoi objected to Sindh Finance Minister Murad Ali Shah’s presence in the assembly, given Shah’s recent resignation over his dual nationality, Shah retorted by accusing Jatoi of doing just that.

But Jatoi managed to make a point, repeatedly accusing the speaker of violating the Constitution by allowing Shah to sit there, while Speaker Nisar Khuhro muttered, “No theatrics, no drama.”

Given how MPAs trudge into the assembly, dawdle over starting proceedings – Thursday’s session was a full 90 minutes late – and rush off the minute the speaker calls off the show, it’s highly unlikely anyone is sitting there by choice. But while the Shah-Jatoi spat ended fairly quickly by assembly standards where arguments can last up to two hours, the government is apparently pulling a fast one on everyone.

Hidden within the question-and-answer document was a surprisingly frank admission by the minister for environment and alternative energy. On wind power projects in Thatta and Jamshoro, the document states: “The Department is not actually involved in these projects as the Sindh Board of Investment and Board of Revenue, Sindh, are encroaching into the domain of the environment and alternative energy department.”

And that fairly sums up the state of governance in Pakistan. Ministries and politicians frequently wade into each other’s territories, leaving the other out of the often lucrative loop. This plays out beautifully in court, when ministry representatives are forced to state that they really have no clue about the issue at hand.

And instead of focusing on the many, many problems in Sindh, the Kalabagh Dam reared its head in the assembly with MPA after MPA rallying against the project, even with PPP minister Nadir Magsi protesting that there wasn’t really anything to protest since “there was no Kalabagh Dam.”

May the season of politicking and election fever never end as PPP MPA Imran Zafar Leghari took the dramatic statements to another level, “We do not want Sindh’s situation to become like that of Somalia” and predictably enough, the discussion ended in rancor with screeching speeches from PPP and Pakistan Muslim League-Functional legislators, still upset at their acrimonious split.

The elephant in the room though was the illness of long-serving Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad Khan, after his party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, issued an appeal for prayers for Dr Khan. Speaker Khuhro appeared entirely unaware that the governor was unwell, but whether this means that there could be another contender for the coveted slot – even if there are a few months left for the government’s tenure to end – will undoubtedly be the subject of the day in salons across Defence.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 7^th, 2012.

KARACHI: “Take the car but not my husband.”

This plaintive plea may have crossed through every Karachi-ite’s mind when they are facing the barrel of a gun held by a man who wants their money, cell phone and car – or in the worst case scenario, them.

The fear of muggings and kidnappings that has engulfed Karachi – making people keep backup cellphones to give away to the mugger, hiring an entourage of guards and breaking red lights to avoid stopping the car – is evident in the work of Fatima Munir, who topped her Fine Art class at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture this year.

Munir’s deeply personal Fine Art thesis, now on display at the school, is a testament to the terror that grips one’s heart when a motorcycle is too close for comfort, when the rear-view mirror has that persistent figure. On car screens and fabric, Munir’s fear and wish to “protect her children without the conventional ways of guards”, is evident.

A t-shirt in camouflage print bears the name tag ‘Innocent civilian’ and car screens are embroidered with pleas such as ‘jaanvar mat baniye’ [don’t become an animal] and ‘Please do not loot, shoot or abduct’. Munir chose car screens, in particular, since she feels “most vulnerable” when in a car, and as a social experiment, she put them on her vehicle to gauge the reaction.

A dress shirt has several similar pleas stitched on it, emanating from Munir’s concern for her husband – a wealthy businessman who travels a fair bit – and how she is a “wreck” every time he leaves.

Fear and violence emanates in other works produced by this year’s graduates of the Fine Art department. Quratulain Mahar took a cue from her life in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, and the number of sectarian killings. “There is discrimination everywhere,” Mahar told The Express Tribune. “In skin, religion and language.”

Her thesis focuses on prayer caps and how, she explained, when you take an image of the Hajj pilgrimage, all you can see is the same outfit and the prayer cap. “There is no discrimination in God’s house,” Mahar said.

The standout piece in her display is an image of men with their prayer caps in black and white beads, which took six months to translate from a photograph taken at the Awkarwi Masjid in Garden, printed to a billboard size and then into the beaded version.

Aniqa Imran’s work was a personal statement but on another level. Her thesis featured books, wrapped up and locked, to suppess her own love for reading which she was “using as an escape and neglecting real issues.”

Imran’s pain was also bared on Time magazine covers. The magazine blurbs were changed to personal statements, which for her, were the range of emotions she felt as her father was unwell.

The urban chaos of Karachi was reflected in Anum Jamal’s blown up panels featuring pencil drawings inspired by her old apartment in Defence. The centre – a massive exhaust fan – is offset by sewage pipes and windows and doors, all bursting out in the 3D display. Her examiners, she said, “liked that it was architectural and something related to design.” And while ‘Fine Art’ throws up notions of paintings and murals, the work on display at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture is anything but Rameez Rahman’s work with mirrors – a modern retelling of the wonder one may have felt when entering the Shish Mahal at the Lahore Fort in its original glory days – is one of the first striking pieces when entering the school. The work isn’t just winning kudos from peers: gallery curators, such as Sameera Raja and Shakira Masood, have also commented effusively in the guest books.

The theses display of the Fine Art graduating class will continue till December 8.

View a slideshow of the art here.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4^th, 2012

KARACHI: An old, beautiful tree looms in front of the Cowasjee residence in Bath Island, hiding the house from the street. Most people would have cut that tree down.

Not Ardeshir Cowasjee, the legendary Dawn columnist and activist, who died on Saturday.

The champion of Karachi’s environment and its landscape – among other causes that he espoused and rallied for in his weekly acerbic columns – was a regular fixture in the Sindh High Court’s roster.

Cowasjee was the pioneer of public-interest litigation that now dominates headlines.

His lawyer, Barrister Abdur Rahman, told The Express Tribune that the Costa Livina building case “set the landmark”.

His father Barrister Naimur Rahman represented the late Cowasjee in the Costa Livina case, which involved a number of influential people trying to take over a portion of Bagh Ibn-e-Qasim. “Previously a person had to be personally aggrieved in a case,” Rahman said. “But in this case, it was held, once and for all, that any person can petition the court in the public interest.”

“This was the case that opened the doors for public-interest litigation.”

In a 2010 column, Cowasjee described this case as a ‘partial success story’, which involved a commercial plot from the Bagh Ibn-e-Qasim land, and eventually being allotted to build a high-rise commercial and residential complex. After its conversion was successfully challenged, the builders managed to get stay orders and eventually the skeleton of their building was regularised by the Karachi Building Control Authority.

Through Cowasjee’s litigation, illegal construction was stopped, rules were enforced and allotments were cancelled. In the Glass Towers case, the Supreme Court ruled that the part of the building that had been constructed beyond the ‘cut line’ of the plot, and should be demolished.

There are currently 30 to 40 cases still pending in the high court that Cowasjee had filed, and Rahman represented him in each case. By his count, Cowasjee must have filed over a 100 cases in his lifetime. “Right up to the last week, I was fighting an amenity plot case – the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA) was trying to build their office building on a plot reserved for a park on University Road,” his lawyer said.

“He was passionate about what is right or wrong… about what Karachi should be like and what it was, and to fight for it.”

“There were three or four of us – Roland deSouza [from Shehri], Rafay Alam from Lahore… who were intimately involved in this, day in and day out. Working with him, you kind of absorbed some of that passion.”

According to Alam, who is also the vice-president for the Pakistan Environmental Law Association, “Ardeshir Cowasjee’s contribution to public-interest litigation can’t be understated. Even in Lahore, he led litigation against the conversion of Doongi Ground into a cinema. “

“He also wrote a column addressed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan requesting him to take suo motu notice of plans to widen the Lahore Canal Road (and cut down thousands of trees). The Chief Justice of Pakistan did take notice, and the Lahore Canal case decision of 2011 is a precedent-setter for public-interest, environment litigation.”

Cowasjee’s impact on public-interest litigation – which now forms the basis for key decisions – will continue to live on and Rahman will be fighting the pending cases in court. “Legally, they strike the name of the deceased but I am going to make sure they continue in his name,” he said.

Shehri-CBE’s Citizen Emeritus award

This March, Shehri – Citizens for a Better Environment gave Cowasjee the Citizen Emeritus award, noting at the time that “although he has never been a formal member, he has been popularly and widely known as our ‘sarbarah’ (leader)” and wrote of his “inimitable ability to shame some into reversing wrongs.”

Roland deSouza said that Shehri and Cowasjee had a lot of common interests. “The environment, generally, and specifically things such as land grabbing, parks, illegal buildings, playgrounds.” The first case that Shehri and Cowasjee worked on together was the Glass Towers case, which brought Shehri’s name into the open.

Cowasjee was not big on seminars but he did come to speak at a few ones Shehri organised, he added. He also gave financial support to the organisation. “There were times when members of Shehri were threatened physically and Cowasjee stepped in and complained to the right people in the government and exposed them,” deSouza recalled. “He always believed that bullies were always cowards and he stood up against chief ministers, governors – just about anyone.”

For deSouza, working with Cowasjee was a “grooming experience”. He recalled that some government officials were unable to talk to him or tackle him because he was so tough with them. There has not been a lot of activity in public-interest litigation in the past five or six years, particularly after the chief justice was deposed in 2007, deSouza admitted.

“As you develop a vaccine to the germ, the disease takes a new form. And since the bad guys are spending 24 hours a day figuring out to be bad – changing laws, etc – the good guys are doing this part-time.”

Sadly, there may not be many patrons of the city who are as devoted as Cowasjee. “He was a man of means and he wasn’t greedy. Most people don’t have the time for public interest – becoming richer than they already are.”

Some cases in the Supreme Court:

1993 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Ors. Vs. Saleem Akhtar Rajput & Others Clifton Broadway 13, FT-4, Clifton

1993 – Multiline Associates vs. Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others Springfield Apartments 18, FT-3, Clifton

1996 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. KBCA & Others Costa Livina; ST-15/3, Clifton

1998 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. Govt. Of Sindh & Others Glass Towers; 2, FT-3, Frere Town Quarters

1998 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. Clifton Cantonment Board (CCB) & Others The Plaza; G-7/9, Clifton

2001 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. Province of Sindh & Others Karachi Play House ST H-1/A, Block 8, Clifton

Cases in the Sindh High Court

1994 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. Karachi Development Authority & Others Park on Plot # ST-2/8, Clifton

1996 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. Govt. Of Sindh & Others Glass Towers; 2, FT-3, Frere Town Quarters

1997 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. Govt. Of Sindh & Others 11 KTC Amenity Plots

1997 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. KBCA & Others JM 459, Jamshed Quarters

1997 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. CCB & Others The Plaza; G-7/ 9, Clifton

1999 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. KBCA & Others Fortune Towers 43-1-A/6, PECHS

2001 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. Province of Sindh & Others Karachi Play House ST H-1/A, Block 8, Clifton

2002 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. Province of Sindh & Others Sind Regulations & Control Ordinance No. VIII of 2002

2003 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. KBCA & Others Business Centre 19-1-A/6, PECHS

2004 – Ardeshir Cowasjee & Others vs. KBCA & Others G/5,28/1,PR-2/I-V-B-103, Preedy Quarters

Source: Advocating Good Governance: The Shehri Story

Correction: This article was corrected to replace the word police with bullies, owing to a transcribing error. 

Published in The Express Tribune, November 27^th, 2012.

It envisages making “educational, informative and philanthropic kind of games that will infuse positive thoughts such as helping others in need, emergency situations, Islamic ethics and learning of the Holy Quran and Sunnah,” according to Abdul Rehman from JuD’s information technology and social media department.

The Ahle Hadith group’s acceptance of technology, and particularly digital games, may raise some eyebrows, but Rehman told The Express Tribune in an e-mail interview that, “We have also learned from the life of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him), that he has always forbidden from things that waste time and have no benefit as such. Games and cell phones are few of those factors. So the best way forward is to provide a replacement that does provide entertainment but with sound learning and information – anything that helps an individual or the society.”

In the past couple of years, JuD has developed an extensive online presence, which includes websites for JuD and its philanthropic arm, the Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation, and Facebook and Twitter accounts. The managers of Twitter accounts for the JuD and its head, Hafiz Saeed, engage actively with users – including its many detractors.

After the JuD offered assistance to the US to help those impacted by Hurricane Sandy, the US Embassy in Islamabad wrote on Twitter: “We respect the Islamic tradition of help to the needy, but we can’t take Hafiz Saeed’s offer seriously. Saaed is wanted for suspected involvement in the Mumbai attacks, which killed 166. JuD is a UN and US-designated terrorist organisation.” The US offered a reward this April for up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Hafiz Saeed. The group, however, works openly in Pakistan and has expanded rapidly after its leadership was implicated in the 2008 attacks in Mumbai.

The digital project, ambitiously, will also try to provide an alternative to the “damage that has been done by violent games that most gaming giants have made throughout these years, by incepting [sic] all the wrong ideas and concepts.”

“Our vision behind these games would be to make the player a better human being, Muslim and a person who is equipped with the art of helping others with real-time information and practice in these games,” Rehman said. They also might have a brief introduction to JuD or Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation, but will use the experience of these two groups in games related to education, rescue and relief.

Given that there are a considerable number of smartphone applications available with religious teachings, Hadiths and prayer timings, JuD will need to differentiate its product. “We know that a lot of work has been done already,” Rehman said. “For instance, authentic supplications with related keywords are something that can tremendously help people finding solace whenever and wherever they need, not sure if this kind of app is already available but we will ensure that wheel is not reinvented.”

Other religious groups in Pakistan have also upped their online presence. The banned Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat has a number of Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. Other banned organisations, such as the Masood Azhar-led Jaish-e-Mohammad, have a number of their publications available online. The Jamaat-e-Islami also has separate Twitter accounts for its head Syed Munawar Hasan and Liaquat Baloch, its secretary general.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th, 2012.