Pursukoon Karachi: Cantt station porters take a cinema break

Porters watch their life stories unfold at mobile cinema on Sunday night.

KARACHI:

Inside the main building of the Karachi Cantonment Railway Station, 50-year-old Allah Bukhsh and his young colleague Muhammad Nisar, were eagerly watching a video on a white sheet stretched across the wall.

On Sunday night, the Kolachi Brothers’ Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema, which was part of the last day of the Pursukoon Karachi Festival, played four videos dedicated to the hardworking porters of the city. These works included ‘Dhanak’ and ‘Umeed ka Safar’ - two documentaries by Kohi Mari, Adeela Farooqi, Shahrukh Khurshid and Naveed Farooqi, ‘Bunder Road Sae Keamari’ by Munizhe Ali, ‘Concert on Footpath’ by Mushtaq Gazdar, ‘Tabdeeli’ by Babar Sheikh and ‘Station of Life’ by Khalid Hassan Khan.

It was, however, the ‘Station of Life’ which had the porters at Cantt station glued to the screen. They pushed their way through the crowd, eager to find the own faces in the video and listen to their colleagues share their woes.



Meanwhile, ‘Concert on Footpath’ showed the life on the streets for people who migrate to Karachi from far flung areas of the country - hoping to seek a better livelihood. ‘Bunder Road Sae Keamari’ was a video showing, literally, the journey from Bunder Road to Keamari in a horse-driven cart.

Sunday night was one of the few occasions when the station’s otherwise inconspicuous porters were stealing the limelight. As cameras flashed in their direction, several of them decided to forego their jobs.

The train at platform one kept whistling, but Nisar and Bukhsh stayed put - their eyes on the screen. Both the porters, who regularly sleep in a plot inside the station after finishing the day’s work, had never seen a cinema before. For Nisar, the white sheet stretched across the wall without the support of an electric cable was no less than a magical paper. He had no idea that a projector fixed on the ceiling was showing the movie.

“I don’t know how this white sheet is playing a movie,” Nisar admitted to The Express Tribune. “I know a computer is running it from somewhere inside the ticket counter,” Bukhsh quickly informed him. They were not alone in their confusion as several porters, even an old policeman on duty, had no idea how a plain white sheet was playing the videos. One of them wanted to know how much the sheet cost so he could buy one for his children.

“I was at home when the video was filmed but my friends are in it,” Bukhsh said, regretting that he missed his chance. He was unhappy he was absent from a group photo of the porters that was displayed at the station on a large board.

Listening to his colleagues share their stories on the video, Bukhsh said he was grateful for whatever he managed to earn. “I am thankful to Almighty Allah for this and it is part of my children who are in Shikarpur,” he said, as he fished out his earnings from that day - Rs150 - from his pocket and arranged it in his hands.

The stories in the videos were no different from the stories of Nisar, Bukhsh and other porters who came to Karachi to earn money for their families. “We appreciate such projects as these people are revitalising the station’s building sincerely,” said Syed Ali Shah, a railways employee who was watching the photographs of the project and their plans hung on the walls. “They are not merely fulfilling formalities, like the railways’ own officials.”

Shah was hopeful the building will get its original beauty back. “This festival brought those people to the station who have never even seen trains in the city before,” he said, shocked.

The number of visitors on Sunday night did not impress the social media coordinator for Pursukoon Karachi, Anza Saqib, who insisted more people came on Saturday. “Visitors are scattered across the station watching the photographic exhibition on the platform and some are at other projects that are being held at Napa and Arts Council,” she explained.

A resident of Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Muhammad Yaqoub, had brought his son and young daughter to the festival. He felt it was a good chance to take out his children and show them the train engine closely, “I came here before but the beauty of this building was hidden in the multiple layers of paints. Now it is coming back to its original shape.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 26^th, 2013.