KARACHI:
It was year 1963 and I was a just six years of age when my mother took me to Mrs Alexander for mathematics tuition. A middle aged Anglo-Indian lady with a good command of English, Mrs Alexander was residing in Block 6, PECHS, Karachi. There was a large community of Christians in the area then. Mrs Alexander had a large, regal portrait of Queen Elizabeth in her living room. I used to glance up at the beautiful Queen’s majestic costume and jewellery occasionally. It seemed that Mrs Alexander had the picture to remind herself and anyone who visited her that she belonged to the elite and ‘non-native’ British class. Therefore no one should ever dare think of antagonising her. The Queen had a solemn, steely gaze facing the horizon. I dreaded if she might turn around any minute and give me a reprimanding look if I didn’t obey or respect Mrs Alexander.
I am sure Mrs Alexander pined for the time before the British left sixteen years ago. She never smiled and always had a stern look on her face. Maybe she had an eerie foreboding of the way Karachi would eventually change. Drigh Road, a stone’s throw from her small house, would be renamed Shahra-e-Faisal; ethnic rivalries would bubble up to the surface and corrode the social fabric of the city; Islam would be used to loudly wield power instead of sheltering the voiceless; and the elite schools will teach in English only for its graduates to flee the crime-ridden city. I wonder if she ever succeeded in fleeing to safety to be closer to her sovereign, Queen Elizabeth.
Mrs Anjum Rashid
Bradenton, USA
Published in The Express Tribune, September 13th, 2022.
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