The loss of an unsung hero

Lyari is generally understood simplistically, through a limited set of cliches. Either people fear it as a den of crime and violence or they romanticise it by highlighting its love of football and boxing. Few people know much else about this part of Karachi. When I first began visiting Lyari two and half years ago, I too had a narrow view of the area. It was only after I met one of the area’s prominent community activists and local historians, Muhammad Umer Lasi, that I started to understand the richness of this part of the city. Umer sahib quickly became my mentor and guide, devoting countless hours of his precious time to helping me understand the complex history of this area. His love of Lyari and its people has been a deep source of inspiration to me.

Umer Lasi, whose family was originally from Lasbela in Balochistan, was born in 1956 in the Karo Lane neighbourhood of Lyari. Like many in Lyari, his father and brother worked as labourers in the port, and it was expected that he would do the same. However, Umer sahib was different. Friends tell me how, as a child, he would attend school in the morning, and do odd jobs such as working as a mechanic in a local garage to help support his family and fund his studies. At night, he would go to local dhabas to study because there was no electricity at home. After years of struggle, he eventually graduated from Urdu College in 1978 with a BA and from Karachi University with an MA in Economics in 1983. He worked for a variety of government institutions, including the finance ministry, and he eventually joined a bank. He slowly worked his way up the bank and was set to retire this month as a vice president in the bank’s agricultural division.



He had a deep understanding of social problems and knew that access to quality education and employment were key to solving Lyari’s problems. Although Umer sahib moved out of Lyari some years ago with his family, he never forgot his roots. His long-time friend and fellow community activist, Aftab Ahmed Baloch, told me how Umer sahib was a teacher and role model to hundreds of young people in Lyari, whom he would provide free tuitions to in the local anjumans, tuition centres, and street schools in the area. Several of his former students have gone onto become leaders in their community and continue to carry the torch of education passed onto them by Umer sahib.

Apart from his role as an educator, Umer Lasi tried desperately to mend Lyari’s fraying social fabric by helping to initiate several programmes for community betterment. Along with other social activists, he helped establish a joint platform of different NGOs working in Lyari called the Lords Club (Leadership Organisation Research Development and Service). Following in the footsteps of the Orangi Pilot Project, this organisation sought to improve the area’s sanitation system along with producing much-needed research on the demographic and social composition of Lyari. More recently, he along with several others helped establish the Lyari Resource Centre, which provided educational support to more than 200 ninth and tenth graders in Lyari, trying to fill the gaps in their education in order to help make them competitive for college admissions. As his friend and long-time social activist, Elahi Bakhsh Baloch explains, his commitment to social justice was not reserved only for Lyari; he worked for the cause of social justice in the whole of Karachi through his membership in the Citizen’s Liaison Police Committee, which he joined in 1997. Umer Lasi did all of this work with great humility, without any expectation of recognition or reward and against all odds, even as the law and order situation in Lyari deteriorated in recent years.

Umer Lasi’s sudden passing represents an immeasurable loss to the community and to the city as a whole. He leaves behind his wife, Sabra, and five children, Sohail Ahmed, Muniza Zainab, Moomal Zainab, Karim Baksh and Maheen Zainab along with countless others whose lives he touched and who he inspired during his many years of community service.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 13^th,  2015.

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