For the dirt poor, nothing can keep away good clean fun

Skirting the poverty line, residents of Safoora Goth find plenty of things to keep themselves entertained in the camp.

KARACHI: Songs from Bollywood blockbuster Golmaal 3 and action from a Jet Li movie play at full volume as the crowd cheers. The fantastical respite from reality is welcome because the movies are playing at a small cinema set up at a squatter settlement for the near homeless in Safoora Goth.

The cinema entrances are plastered with posters of old and new movie releases and an enterprising soul has even opened up a small tuck shop between them, knowing that no intermission is complete without something to munch on. Inside, grownups and children alike sit transfixed at each scene that plays on a television set before them.

Each television has been connected to speakers with sound quality almost as good as any home theatre system. For seating there are a few wooden chairs but everyone else makes do with the cushions lined against the boundary of the tents and rugs on the ground.

“Each show is Rs5 for adults and Rs2 for children,” says a shiny-eyed Sangeeta, 7, while showing off the latest dance moves she has picked up from the last movie.

Mega Salman Khan fan Ram Prasad may be barely six but he knows when his hero is winning a fight sequence. “Most days I go with my brother to sell fruit and vegetables on a pushcart but when I get time I enjoy watching movies,” he says to his shoes.

Life is hard at the camp, which some say started to build a decade ago. The settlement can boast little more than tattered tents and makeshift shelters made with burlap sacks. Ravi Das, a 43-year-old intermediate-qualified former church school teacher, was forced to make it his home because of poverty. “I had a good life previously when I was teaching and used to live in the assigned quarters,” he says. “But the economic situation has brought me back to selling fruit and vegetables like my forefathers.” But even with life’s twists and turns, Ravi smiles when he talks about the cinema. “They show the latest ones,” he says adding that is is among the few good things they have in their otherwise arduous life.

But the cinema is not the only source of entertainment for adults here. Deeper into the narrow lanes of the camp stands a snooker table. The young boys living here fight to show off their skills at the game they have learned from television. The snooker table, treated as no less than a priceless treasure, may look old but is in good condition.

Elsewhere, younger children have managed to keep themselves entertained. Maina, a girl who doesn’t know how old she is, sells balloons at traffic lights and helps out at home during the day. But afterwards, she spends her down time making toys with the other children who have discovered that mud is a malleable entity that offers no resistance to their creativity. She is among the few children who has figured out how to give them a good finish — without breaking or ruining the mould. If only life were that controllable.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2010.