These are two of the three portraits I made in 1969, asking two fellow students to model for me. The third, a portrait of an elderly woman with long earlobes, was stolen at some point from my husband’s office. I’m oddly glad, though, that someone fancied it enough to take it! :)

We created sculptural pieces under the instruction and guidance of our ever-smiling, leg-pulling, chai-drinking, and affectionate teacher from Amroha, UP, Afsar Madad Naqvi saheb, who had studied at the Government School of Arts and Crafts in Lucknow, India. He was always clad in a white kurta and wide-bodied pajama. While some of his students made experimental pieces, he himself never deviated from the Indian classical style of figurative sculpture.

With Afsar Naqvi saheb and Rashid Arshad saheb. We are a mix of students from different years. I am sitting on the floor, third from left, with my friends Shama, Seema and Shaheen.

Quite the opposite in demeanour and outlook was our pipe-smoking principal and life-drawing teacher, Syed Ali Imam - a committed socialist and member of the Communist Party - who made sure that every morning we had a male model who posed for us for two full hours. These were load-lifting labourers brought in from Bohra Bazaar in Saddar, who made some extra money before the shops opened and they began carrying the weight of people’s heavy shopping.

One of my many sketches from life. This is a young man, although we mostly found ourselves drawing elderly labourers.

Imam saheb was trained at Sir J. J. School of Arts in Bombay, at Punjab University in Lahore, and later at St Martin’s School of Art in London.

This memorable group picture of the CIAC students and staff members, together with the great Sadequain (partially seen on the extreme left), was taken on the occasion of Syed Ali Imam’s farewell dinner. Imam saheb is flanked by our other teachers, Rashid Arshad saheb, Ms Sabiha Qureshi, and Afsar Naqvi saheb. I am the one on the extreme right, sitting in the second row.

It indeed was the end of an era! My tribute/obituary for Dawn newspaper.

Our design teacher, Rashid Ahmed Arshad, who later became principal of the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts (CIAC), had a profound impact on me. I became an admirer of his paintings and his use of calligraphy in compositions that embodied all the design elements he taught us — balance, contrast, alignment, colour and texture.

With Arshad saheb, at his solo show at Koel Gallery a few years ago.

Arshad Saheb was visiting from the US, where he has been living for several years. Here, seven of his students, accompanied by some of our spouses, gathered for a dinner hosted by Seema and Taher Khan.

Then there was Bashir Mirza, one of our most flamboyant teachers, who started painting his Lonely Girls series right in front of our eyes, inspiring a whole generation with his command of drawing and painterly skills.

Our teacher, Bashir Mirza, and one of his ‘Lonely Girls’.

Sabiha Nasruddin, née Qureshi, was the only female teacher we had. Lovely to look at and a great teacher too, she left after getting married.

We were invited to our much-loved teacher’s wedding. I am sitting on the floor - on the right - between Tabinda Chinoy and Farhat Husain.

We then had the pleasure of having Meher Afroz, a fresh migrant from Lucknow, and Waheeda Mansoor, née Najam, a fresh graduate of the National College of Arts. Our other wonderful design teacher, Khalil Ahmed, also came from NCA to teach us. These teachers taught us the importance of grounding our work in our local environment and the wider South Asian culture.

With my teachers Meher Afroz and Waheeda Mansoor at a get-together at Nighat and Imran Mir’s house.

Begum Nusrat Bhutto’s visit to the CIAC. Mr. Khalil Ahmed is standing fourth from the left.

I am getting physiotherapy sessions these days from “Mohini Jaishankar” (not her real name), who comes to my house three times a week. When she first arrived, she was greeted by a seated wooden Buddha in a niche at the entrance, and a wall-mounted head of Ganesh nearby. As we sat in the living area discussing my pain issues, she noticed the large pichwai on the wall depicting Krishna and his gopis.

This, that, and the other! Our baithak - living area.

What she perhaps missed were the Quranic calligraphies on paper and canvas, and on ceramic tiles on which the script has been sandblasted. She may also have overlooked the almost fifty masks from different countries displayed on the walls, along with the many oil and acrylic paintings.

“Muslims don’t keep the images of our deities in their homes,” she said softly, cautiously and inquiringly, as she tried wrapping her head around the kind of people we were.

Her remark was neither hostile nor judgmental. It was, rather, an expression of genuine bewilderment - the result of a mindset in which religious identity determines what one is permitted to look at, appreciate, or bring into one’s home. And this made me think about how easily we confuse art with worship, representation with belief, and appreciation with acceptance. Yet we seem increasingly uncomfortable with that possibility. We are quick to label, categorise and police what we see.

A sculpture becomes an idol; a painting becomes religiously suspect; a depiction of the human body becomes obscene; an artwork from another culture becomes a challenge to our identity.

Instead of asking, “What does this make me feel? What is the artist trying to say? What can I learn from this?” we often ask, “Is this allowed?” Perhaps that is where we have lost something essential.

Art is meant to open doors, not build walls. It allows us to enter worlds that are not our own, to encounter beliefs and cultures different from ours, and to appreciate beauty without claiming ownership of it.

I don’t worship the Buddha at my entrance, Ganesh on my wall, Krishna in the pichwai, or the masks from distant cultures. I simply live with them. And perhaps that is the point: art does not ask us to worship what we see. It asks us to see. And in a world increasingly determined to tell us what we may see, how we may see it, and what we are allowed to feel about it, simply seeing may be the most liberating act of all.

I seem very happy sitting in my sister’s lap. We lived in this building until I was four years old, and I remember my father taking her to St. Lawrence’s Convent School on his bicycle.

Yes, Karachi was a kaleidoscope of kolours and smells back then, and it continues to be so. From Karachi to Karakoram, they are all here. Karachi may koee krorepati hay tau koee kangla! From kichree to kabab rolls, kold koffee to kulfi, kolas to king prawns, Kandhari naan to kulchaas, one kan find an astonishing variety of food here as well.

Speaking of the city’s remarkable multiculturalism, Karachi was home to people of many faiths, ethnicities and communities - Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis and Jews. Their lives, traditions and cultures were woven into the very fabric of the city.

The ’50s and ’60s perhaps had more close-knit neighbourhoods than they do now, and, come hail or storm, I walked to school and back. There were trams, cycle-rickshaws, Victoria rides and buses for longer distances. The freedom of dress - especially for non-Muslim women - and the freedom of movement that women generally enjoyed are difficult to imagine today.

There were Saturday evenings at Frere Hall, listening to and watching bands perform at its bandstand; statues of Queen Victoria in the park; swinging from trees, a most pleasurable activity; and fountains scattered across the city, especially the musical fountain near Trinity Cathedral, which provided a calming atmosphere…

There was ice cream at Havmor or Pioneer, and books borrowed from the British Council Library, located in the Saranagati Building on Pakistan Chowk. The city was dotted with hundreds of cinemas - the cheapest form of mass entertainment - all of which have long since disappeared.

These are just a handful of the memories that come tumbling back whenever someone asks us to talk about the Karachi of yore. How can decades of a city’s sights, sounds, smells, people and experiences possibly be squeezed into a few brief paragraphs?

Please note: Except for the first image, all others are taken from various websites and sources.

A 1984 oil painting by Professor Abdul Rahim Nagori. Titled ‘King of Clubs’, it is a biting satirical commentary on military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq.

I explored these questions in a talk at the Aga Khan University Institute of Educational Development’s (AKU-IED) Funkari Art Gallery on 17 August 2026.

We tend to think of censorship as a government banning a book, cutting a film, or stopping a newspaper from publishing a story. But censorship operates at several levels: state, institutional, commercial, social - and self-censorship.

The arts often reveal what society is unwilling to discuss openly.

From Ayub to the digital age

Pakistan’s early years allowed considerable space for creative expression, but concerns about national identity, political stability, religion and morality soon began influencing what could be published and performed.

Under General Ayub Khan, the Press and Publications Ordinance of 1963 tightened government control over newspapers and publications. During General Zia-ul-Haq’s rule, from 1977 to 1988, censorship became much more pervasive. Newspapers faced pre-publication censorship, sometimes leaving conspicuous white spaces where reports had been removed. Television, theatre and music were subjected to stringent moral and religious controls. Female singers were restricted from appearing on state television, while women appearing in television dramas faced rigid requirements of dress.

The democratic interludes of the Benazir Bhutto governments in the 1990s brought greater cultural space. Music revived, new bands emerged, and writers and journalists were able to address political and social issues more openly.

The Musharraf era presents an interesting paradox. Although he came to power through a military coup, his government liberalised electronic media in 2002, ending the state’s virtual monopoly over television. Private news and entertainment channels proliferated. Yet when television became increasingly critical of the government, that freedom proved fragile: during the 2007 Emergency, private channels were taken off air.

Liberalisation and censorship can, therefore, exist under the same regime.

Writing against censorship

Sometimes simply documenting censorship becomes an act of resistance.

Zamir Niazi’s The Press in Chains, first published in 1986, was published by the Karachi Press Club because commercial publishers were unwilling to take the risk. Niazi had begun documenting government “press advices” as early as 1965. His painstaking records became the basis of the book.

Book cover and inside spread for Tasveeri Kahani Silsila: Zamir Niazi, a graphic biography written by Rumana Husain and published by Oxford University Press.

Poet Habib Jalib took a more direct approach. His accessible, political poetry challenged both Ayub Khan and Zia-ul-Haq. His Dastoor became a popular expression of resistance to a system in which power and privilege belonged to the ruling elite. Jalib was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned.

Saadat Hasan Manto’s stories, including Thanda Gosht and Khol Do, exposed the brutality of Partition and uncomfortable aspects of human behaviour. He faced obscenity trials. Today, those same stories are considered classics.

Censorship often reflects the anxieties of a particular era rather than the intrinsic value of a work.

What is banned, and what is omitted?

Official bans are only one form of censorship.

Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was banned in Pakistan in 1988 on religious grounds. Stanley Wolpert’s Jinnah of Pakistan was also banned for a period, reportedly because of passages concerning Jinnah’s personal life.

Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes offers a more curious example. The English novel, published in 2008 and satirising General Zia-ul-Haq, circulated for years without major official objection. But when its Urdu translation appeared in 2019, copies were confiscated from the publisher Maktab e Daniyaal and bookshops in early 2020.

Did the book become more threatening when it became accessible to a much larger Urdu-speaking readership?

There is also a quieter form of censorship: the shaping of history through textbooks. What children are taught - and what they are not taught - can influence collective memory for generations.

It is also: who decides which version of history children are allowed to read?

The artist’s indirect language

Visual artists have often negotiated restrictions through symbolism.

Left to Right: Colin David, Iqbal Hussain and Jamil Naqsh.

A.R. Nagori used dogs and vultures as metaphors for power, corruption and violence. Ijaz ul Hassan’s birds behind windows and cages, barbed wire and plants struggling through hostile landscapes evoked confinement and repression. Jamal Shah used the traditional miniature figure of the king to comment on power and authority. Akram Dost Baloch, Anwar Saeed, Salima Hashmi and several other artists use various metaphors to express their concerns and resistance.

Artist Nagori, interviewed for Dawn in 2001 by Rumana Husain.

Shahzia Sikander, studying at the National College of Arts during the Zia years, turned to miniature painting. Her thesis work The Scroll incorporated contemporary architecture and aspects of her experience of growing up under Zia, using a traditional form to express contemporary realities.

The gallery has generally offered artists more freedom than television or cinema, partly because its audiences are smaller. But even here artists remain conscious of religious sensitivities, public reaction, institutional policies and funding.

Theatre, film, music

Theatre has long provided a space for social and political critique. Groups such as Tehrik-e-Niswan started by Sheema Kermani and few like-minded friends, and Ajoka Theatre started by Madeeha Gauhar and her husband Shahid Nadeem, have addressed women’s rights, intolerance, and authoritarianism, often through satire and symbolism.

Sheema Kermani - performing classical dances over the years.

Book covers of the Urdu and English versions of Tasveeri Kahani Silsila: Sheema Kermani, a graphic biography written by Rumana Husain (translated into English by Amna Azfar), and published by Oxford University Press.

Madeeha Gauhar’s interview “Directing with a Cause,” speaking about Ajoka working under censorship. By Rumana Husain for Dawn's Images (probably late 1998).

Music, too, has found ways around restrictions. Iqbal Bano’s famous 1986 performance of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge became an enduring symbol of artistic resistance. The poem itself was not new. But its performance, in that particular political climate, transformed it into something larger.

Film has faced more formal restrictions. Religion, sexuality, national security, ethnic conflict, and politics remain sensitive subjects.

Sarmad Khoosat’s Zindagi Tamasha is a striking example. Despite international acclaim and clearance from the censor board, its local release was delayed after groups alleged that it offended religious sentiments. Another recent example is the critically acclaimed independent film Ghost School, directed by British-Pakistani filmmaker Seemab Gul, which was denied a censor certificate by the Sindh Board of Film Censors, despite being cleared and approved by the federal and Punjab censor authorities. The Sindh Board labelled it “not suitable for public viewing”.

The new censor

The internet initially appeared to promise unprecedented freedom. Artists and writers could bypass publishers, broadcasters and other traditional gatekeepers.

But the digital world has created new forms of control: government blocking, cybercrime laws, platform policies, algorithms, organised trolling and online outrage.

Pakistan’s blocking of YouTube from 2012 to 2016 demonstrated the consequences of broad censorship. Alongside the targeted material, countless unrelated educational and creative videos became inaccessible.

And social-media outrage can be as intimidating as an official ban.

The invisible censor

Perhaps the most pervasive form of censorship today is self-censorship.

Before publishing, exhibiting, performing, or filming, creators may ask:

Will this be published? Will funding disappear? Will the exhibition be cancelled? Will I be threatened? Could my family be affected?

A writer may soften a passage. A filmmaker may remove a scene. An artist may avoid a subject altogether. A publisher may decide that a manuscript is simply too risky.

No official order is necessary.

This is why self-censorship is so difficult to see. We can document a banned book or a cancelled film. We cannot document all the books never written, paintings never exhibited, plays never staged, and stories never told because their creators anticipated the consequences.

Creativity under constraint

Yet censorship has never completely silenced creative expression in Pakistan. Instead, it has often changed its language.

Artists turn to allegory, metaphor, irony, humour, symbolism and historical parallels. Faiz’s poetry could be read as love poetry or political commentary. Anwar Maqsood used humour and seemingly ordinary conversations to make pointed observations about society and politics.

Sometimes what cannot be shown becomes more powerful precisely because it is not shown.

There is an irony here: attempts to suppress a work can sometimes become part of its history. Manto’s stories, Hum Dekhenge and Zindagi Tamasha are remembered not only for their artistic qualities but also because attempts to restrict them gave them an additional resonance.

But censorship is not beneficial simply because artists can sometimes overcome it. It silences many voices permanently, particularly those without the resources or protection to withstand pressure.

So the question I keep returning to is a simple one:

Who censors?

The government? Institutions? Publishers? Markets? Religious groups? Social media? Society itself?

Or, increasingly, do we censor ourselves before anyone else gets the chance?

The cruel and dehumanising practice of sending human beings into raw sewage gutters and manholes is one such issue.

Yesterday, we came together once again after a screening and discussion of renowned Pakistani photographer Mobeen Ansari’s intensely powerful short film Hell Hole. I had already watched it once when Mobeen had invited us for its first screening in Karachi, and then again, but seeing it yesterday afternoon was no less disturbing. Do watch it though. It is a ten-minute film. Here is the link:

What made this gathering particularly significant was the audience at the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA). Mr Naeem Sadiq and Advocate Sara Malkani organised the event, together with PMA’s Dr Ismail Memon and Dr Shahid Mamsa. There were many doctors present, and several expressed their determination to join the struggle and become part of the protest against this inhuman practice.

Their involvement could bring a powerful new dimension to the campaign, particularly in highlighting the grave health and occupational hazards faced by sanitation workers.

Throughout this long struggle, our relentless friend Naeem Sadiq deserves special recognition. For some 15 years, Naeem has painstakingly collected and documented information, data, photographs, videos, newspaper reports and testimonies relating to sanitation workers and their deaths. He has written letters to people who are in authority, and persisted when others have moved on, ensuring that these lives are not reduced to forgotten statistics. His commitment to seeking justice for the voiceless has been extraordinary. This is not about charity. It is about human dignity, workers’ rights and accountability. Why should reform not begin by improving the lives of those at the bottom of our social hierarchy—rather than simply increasing the salaries and perks of those at the top? No human being should have to enter a sewer to earn a living.

For many years, I have also been involved with the struggle for the rights and dignity of sanitation workers, through protests, walks, press conferences, television appearance, and, at one point, as a petitioner in the case seeking minimum wages for sanitation staff of the Cantonment Board. Yet despite all these years of raising our voices, people continue to die in the most horrific and entirely avoidable circumstances. There is something particularly painful about this when one remembers the individuals behind the statistics. Many years ago, while researching my book Karachiwala: a Subcontinent within a City, I visited the home of a sanitation worker’s family in E.I. Lines. Upon enquiring about a man lying on a charpai there, I remember being told that he was ill—he had been going into the gutters. That image has stayed with me. It was not simply about poverty or an unpleasant occupation. It was about a system in which some people are expected to perform work that no human being should be required to do.

A recent special report by the Citizens’ Commission for Equality & Human Rights (CCEHR) documents the deaths of at least 22 sanitation workers in Pakistan in just six months. In Karachi alone, six workers—Vishal, Shahar and George in Usmanabad, and William Masih, Naseer Masih and Waqas Khalid in Surjani Town—lost their lives while cleaning sewage gutters in September 2025 and April 2026 respectively. Similar deaths have occurred in Sahiwal, Faisalabad and Lodhran. These are not simply unfortunate accidents. Workers are being sent into toxic, confined spaces without adequate safety equipment, air monitoring, breathing apparatus or proper rescue arrangements. The CCEHR report rightly describes these as avoidable deaths resulting from gross negligence. The question is: why are human beings still being sent into sewage gutters at all?

Our demands are simple: Manual scavenging and the entry of human beings into raw sewage gutters must be completely prohibited. Gutter cleaning must be mechanised. Those responsible for sending workers into these death traps must be held accountable. And there must be meaningful compensation and justice for the families of those who have already lost their lives.

The invitation came from my dear friend Dr Asma Ibrahim, archaeologist, museologist, conservationist and Field Director of SEAS, who presented an overview of the work carried out so far. It was also a particular pleasure to meet again Prof Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, archaeologist and Field Director, whom my family and I had first met almost three decades ago during a visit to Harappa. Reconnecting after all these years brought back fond memories of that memorable road trip from Karachi to Hunza, with Mohenjo-daro as our first stop.

Prof Kenoyer, a senior archaeologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has devoted much of his professional life to the study of the Indus Civilisation. He has been involved in research in the region since 1975 and has excavated at Harappa since 1986. I had taken along my copy of his delightful book, The People of the Indus: The Birth of Civilisation in South Asia, beautifully illustrated by an Indian writer and illustrator, Nikhil Gulati. It was a gift from our architect daughter - also called Asma - during her visit to Karachi earlier this year, and I was delighted to have it signed by the author. As a child, Asma had also wanted to become an archaeologist. Her interest was sparked when we first took the children - our son and daughter - to Bhambore - an ancient archaeological site located some 60 kms from Karachi.

Following an introduction by archaeologist and historian Dr Kaleemullah Lashari, members of the research team presented specific aspects of the ongoing work. One of the most striking revelations concerned a massive mudbrick perimeter wall at Mohenjo-daro. Evidence from multiple construction phases indicates that the wall originated during the Early Harappan period, substantially revising our understanding of the city’s early urban development. The earliest phase has been dated to around 2700–2600 BCE, at the very end of the Early Harappan period and approximately a century before Mohenjo-daro entered its classic urban phase

Radiocarbon dating of charcoal recovered from the excavated contexts and from within the mudbricks, together with the discovery of Kot Diji phase pottery, provides the first firm chronological evidence that the city’s defensive perimeter wall was constructed during the Early Harappan period. The Kot Diji phase itself, dating broadly to 3300–2600 BCE, represents an important precursor to the Mature Indus or Harappan Civilisation.

Prof Kenoyer also pointed out how misleading some long-established representations of Mohenjo-daro can be. An early map prepared following Mortimer Wheeler’s work in the 1930s, he explained, depicts what was essentially an imaginary city based on very limited information. Yet it is this map, he noted, that has continued to appear in textbooks published in Pakistan, India, the United States and elsewhere.

Dr Ibrahim explained that while conservation of the excavated structures at Mohenjo-daro has not yet begun, work is already under way to conserve the objects recovered from the site and now housed in the stores of the Mohenjo-daro Museum.

Since the massive mudbrick city wall lies buried beneath eroded levels, one imaginative way of making this remarkable feature accessible to visitors has been to produce plans and diagrams and construct a small replica segment. Special moulds were made to reproduce the ancient mudbricks, which average approximately 10 × 20 × 40 centimetres, using local clay similar to that employed by present-day brick makers. A section of replica wall was then built using mortar and bonding techniques modelled on those used by the ancient builders. There is even a long-term proposal to construct a larger segment, encircling the site, as part of broader conservation efforts.

What struck me most throughout the morning was how every discovery, however small, adds another piece to the remarkably complex story of Mohenjo-daro. Occupied from the Early Harappan period and transformed into one of the world’s earliest great urban centres, the city continues to challenge assumptions and deepen our understanding of the Indus Civilisation.

When Dr Asma Ibrahim and I went to an upstairs gallery of the museum, she pointed out some of the remarkable objects unearthed from the Kot Diji period, drawing my attention to this beautifully shaped ceramic vessel (image below), its rich surface still bearing the striking image of a black serpent winding around it. I exclaimed at the sheer thrill of encountering something so extraordinary by her and other archaeologists, preserved across more than four millennia. There is something almost magical about standing before an object fashioned by human hands so long ago and realising that its maker could never have imagined that, thousands of years later, we would still be looking at it with such wonder.

It was perhaps the perfect note on which to end an inspiring morning - one that reminded me that, even after decades of excavation, Mohenjo-daro still has many stories left to tell.

In 1987, while heading a private school that had opened the previous year, I decided to do away with conventional geography textbooks. An experiment I conducted with a group of students had convinced me that much of the prescribed content was irrelevant to their lives and surroundings. Instead, we taught geography through extensively researched notes and worksheets that I prepared, enriched with photographs I had taken or collected, maps, and regular field trips. The aim was to make learning more direct, meaningful, and purposeful. I believed that before children read about distant lands and unfamiliar cultures, they should first develop an understanding of their own surroundings, environment, and heritage.

In my notes for myself, titled Environmental Education at the Primary Level, written on 22 April 1992 (which I recently came upon while going through some old stuff), I recalled reading Dennis Overbye’s essay, Fear in a Handful of Numbers, published in TIME magazine in 1989. And I quoted the following passage:

“What do we do when it is not war that is killing us but progress? When it is not the actions of a deranged dictator threatening the world but the ordinary business of ordinary people? When there are no bombs dropping, nobody screaming, nothing to fear but a line on a graph or a handful of numbers on a computer printout? Dare we change the world on the basis of a wobbly line on a graph? We can change the world, and those numbers, slowly, painfully — we can ration, recycle, carpool, tax and use the World Bank to bend underdeveloped nations to our will. But the problem is neither the world nor those numbers. The problem is ourselves.”

Those words have stayed with me ever since, and they seem even more relevant today than they did in 1989. Scientific data and climate models are indispensable, but they alone cannot bring about change. The deeper challenge lies in transforming our attitudes and our relationship with the natural world.

Unless our relationship with nature is one of harmony rather than confrontation and domination - echoing the way many of our ancestors understood themselves to be part of, rather than separate from, the larger web of life - we will struggle to address the environmental crises that now confront us. The solutions we seek are not only technological or political; they are also ethical, cultural, and deeply personal.

Looking back, I realise that Overbye’s words have quietly informed much of my own work over the past four decades. Without consciously setting out to do so, I have found myself returning, again and again, to questions of our relationship with nature, heritage, community, and the consequences of unchecked “progress”. The following are some of the ways these concerns have found expression in my writing, illustration, educational work, and public art.

Children’s books and stories

• Hasan ki Gali — keeping neighbourhoods clean. It was my first children’s book, after I co-founded the Bookgroup in 1988. I went on to write its Teacher’s Guide and consequently many more. Also trained teachers across Pakistan to use storybooks in the classroom rather than relying solely on textbooks.

  

• Kala Bhoot — the environmental cost of plastic bags.

  

• Rani aur Chimkara — compassion for all animals.

  

• Ool Bala — greed, expansion, and militarisation.

  

• Hara Samander — an old girls’ game reimagined as an allegory for rising waters and climate change. You may want to read this: https://images.dawn.com/news/1193996/bol-meri-machhli-kitna-pani-a-childrens-game-and-the-rising-tide-of-climate-crisis

  

• Ye Kaise Keeday Hain? — every creature has a place in nature.

  

  

  

  

Badaam ka Ped, Peepal ka Ped, The Lal Badam Tree

• The Winged One, Jungle May Mangal

• Khoo Khoo Khoo: The Coughing City, Rani and the Flood, Prerana aur Lal Peela, Pashmina,

• Layla aur Munni Gudia, Tota Khan aur Bakri Ara ka Safarnama

• Etienne and the Angry Dot, and Travels with Khala all explore, in different ways, our connections with nature, wildlife, heritage, sustainability, and responsible living.

Educational work

• Save Our Earth, a five-volume environmental studies series for primary schools.

  

• Pakistan’s Climate Change Heroes, documenting fourteen individuals working across Pakistan to address climate change.

Books on society and culture

• Karachiwala: A Subcontinent within a City, celebrating Karachi’s remarkable cultural diversity.

  

• Street Smart: Professionals on the Street, documenting occupations that animate the city’s streets.

  

Publishing and the arts

• As one of the founding editors of NuktaArt, a special issue titled Art Interventions in Ecology was published by us.

Public art

• A 16-foot fabric applique mural on Pakistan’s endangered flora and fauna for the IUCN office in Karachi.

  

• A 10 × 10-foot mural, The World of Nature, for the IUCN headquarters in Gland, Switzerland.

• Fifty-five fabric applique artworks for the Aga Khan University Hospital’s Children’s Ward in the 1980s, and more recently, thirty fabric applique artworks for the hospital’s Women & Child Health building, several depicting marine life and Pakistan’s endangered mangrove forests.

  

None of these projects, on their own, can alter the trajectory of the planet. But together they represent my small attempt to encourage curiosity, empathy, and respect for the living world - qualities that, perhaps even more than data and technology, will determine whether we learn to live within nature rather than against it.

Soon the imposing Karachi Metropolitan Corporation building came into view.

I asked Waris to stop so that Sonia could appreciate its grandeur. Built of pink sandstone from Jodhpur in Rajasthan and yellow sandstone quarried from Karachi’s own Gizri Hills, the building remains one of the city’s architectural masterpieces.

Navigating the busy road and the footpath required weaving between parked motorcycles, dodging pedestrians and skirting rows of shops selling every conceivable electronic item. Holding Sonia’s hand tightly, I led her towards the entrance of the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, remarkable for both its scale and elegant frontage.

We stepped inside briefly, absorbing the quiet calm that contrasted so sharply with the bustle outside, before continuing our journey towards Lyari.

As we drove, I pointed out familiar landmarks almost instinctively - Denso Hall, Memon Masjid, and other buildings whose names have become part of Karachi’s vocabulary, even if many pass them without a second glance.

Our next stop was a dry fruit shop where walnuts, raisins and almonds were displayed in enormous transparent plastic bags. I found myself remembering the coarse burlap bags in which such goods used to be stored. Even the containers, I realised, tell stories of changing times.

After leaving our purchases in the car, Sonia and I crossed the road and entered Khajoor Bazaar.

The moment I stepped there, I felt transported back to my student days.

For my classmates at the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts and me, Khajoor Bazaar was always an adventure. We would wander through its narrow lanes, drawn as much by its atmosphere as by its merchandise. There were textiles, ribbons, lace, beads, trimmings, household odds and ends, cow bells, and countless little objects that could find their way into an art project or simply delight the eye.

The market derives its name from the astonishing variety of dates sold there. Hundreds of local and imported varieties from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq pass through its shops before making their way across Pakistan. Yet Khajoor Bazaar (adjoined to Lee Market) has always been much more than a wholesale market. It is a place where people come in search of things that are difficult to find elsewhere.

As students, we were perpetually short of money, and that was part of its charm. Shopping here felt exotic without being expensive. We could spend hours browsing and still return home with a handful of treasures that had cost very little.

After we got married, I introduced Mukhtar to the bazaar, and visiting it gradually became an annual ritual. Later, when our children were young, they too became part of the tradition. Some places weave themselves so naturally into family life that one hardly notices when they become repositories of shared memories.

I asked Sonia to look around and see if anything caught her eye.

As for me, I had only one mission: to find the large, colourful handmade ceramic beads that I used to buy decades ago. I simply wanted them for old times’ sake.

A shopkeeper directed me to a tiny store where two women were crouching on the floor, carefully examining their purchases. I waited until they had finished before drawing the sales boy’s attention.

Curious, I asked the women what they had bought.

“Kor,” one of them replied, referring to decorative lace and crocheted edging that would be sewn onto their dopattas and chadars.

Something about them made me ask where they had come from.

“Mirpur Sakro,” they answered.

I was astonished. The town lies some 90 kilometres from Karachi.

“That’s quite a journey just to buy lace,” I remarked.

They smiled.

“We don’t get these things there,” one of them said simply. “Whenever we need them, we come to Karachi.”

Her matter-of-fact reply stayed with me.

People often speak of Karachi in terms of its traffic, congestion, pollution or law and order. Yet for countless people across Sindh and beyond, the city remains a place of opportunity - a marketplace where one can still find what cannot be found elsewhere. For generations, people have travelled here not only in search of livelihoods, but also for education, medical care, commerce and the innumerable small necessities of everyday life.

That brief exchange reminded me that while Karachi can often feel overwhelming to those who live here, it continues to draw people from near and far with a promise that is both practical and enduring.

By now, the afternoon sun was relentless. We retreated gratefully to the air-conditioned car, carrying our small purchases and rather larger memories.

As we drove through Lyari, we told Sonia that Zarina - our old Sheedi helper – lived in a street here. I pointed out neighbourhoods that have so often been defined by outsiders through stories of gang violence and poverty. But Lyari is far older and richer than those narratives suggest. It has long been home to close-knit communities, distinctive architecture, vibrant football culture (both boys and girls), celebrated boxers (girl boxers too), gifted musicians and remarkable resilience. Like so many parts of Karachi, it refuses to be reduced to a single story.

Sonia, who was also taking photographs through the car window, asked questions faster than we could answer them.

That, I realised, had been the purpose of the day all along.

Not to make her an expert on Karachi.

Not to show her every monument or recount every historical date.

But to help her see that cities, like families, are made of stories. Some are written in books and archives. Others survive only because someone remembers them - and takes the time to pass them on.

As our tour drew to a close, I wondered which Karachi Sonia would carry back with her to America. Would it be the bustling markets, the crumbling, faded balconies, the majestic colonial buildings, the crowded streets or the quiet dignity of places that have endured for generations?

Perhaps it would be a little of each.

For me, the day had been far more than a sightseeing excursion. It had been a journey through my own past, viewed through the fresh eyes of my granddaughter. In showing her the city, I found myself rediscovering it too.

She arrived in mid-June - arguably the least forgiving time of the year, when Karachi is at its hottest and most humid - to undertake a four-week internship at one of the country’s leading publishing houses. Every evening she returned with stories: about colleagues, deadlines, workplace dynamics, and the small discoveries that come with working and moving about in an unfamiliar city.

Although Sonia had visited Karachi many times with her parents and younger sister, this stay was different. For the first time she experienced Pakistan not as a child on holiday, but as a young adult trying to understand the society around her - its warmth and contradictions, its inequalities and resilience, its work culture and everyday rhythms. She celebrated her nineteenth birthday here.

Karachi has always been a city of paradoxes. Its many overlapping worlds exist side by side, yet its deeper stories often remain hidden from those merely passing through. To appreciate the city requires empathy, curiosity and a willingness to look beyond the obvious.

Perhaps that is why I have remained so deeply engaged with my birth city’s past and present. Over the years I have come to realise that Karachi’s history survives in fragile fragments - in fading photographs, family memories, forgotten buildings and overlooked neighbourhoods. Piece them together, and an altogether different city begins to emerge.

By the time Sonia’s internship ended, she had also attended the inevitable round of dinners, family gatherings and parties with other young people. She had been saying, “I want to visit the bazaars, not just malls. I want to see old Karachi - the real Karachi.”

She had realised that the comfortable enclave where we live is only one version of the city. There were many more Karachis waiting to be discovered.

And she was right.

Layered with centuries of migration, commerce, conflict and reinvention, Karachi conceals as much as it reveals. Reading the city requires far more than recognising its landmarks. It means paying attention to the traces left behind in architecture, archives and personal memories, each offering a small piece of a much larger story.

Of course, I knew that a single day’s excursion through the older parts of Karachi could never do justice to such a city. At best, it would be a whirlwind introduction. Ours was not a research expedition but a leisurely exploration - part sightseeing tour, part family history, part love letter to a city that continues to surprise even those (like me and my husband) who have lived here all their lives.

I had mapped the route in my mind well in advance and was determined to stick to it. My husband, Mukhtar - an architect who has presented a television series on Karachi’s historic buildings, exploring both their architecture and their stories - joined us for the drive.

The day before, I had taken Sonia to Zainab Market where she loved to shop, and made a brief detour through Bohri Bazaar, where I was pleasantly surprised to find the streets remarkably clean. Although most of the shops were still shuttered, despite it being nearly one o’clock in the afternoon, the recently installed canopy of colourful umbrellas lent the area a cheerful, almost festive air.

The following morning, we made our journey through old Karachi, with our driver Waris at the steering wheel.

We began near the impressive D.J. Science College, pausing to look at the Department of Architecture of NED University nearby before driving on to the Arts Council of Pakistan. That stop was especially meaningful for me. It was there, at the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts, that I spent four memorable years studying art - years that shaped not only my career but also my way of looking at the world.

Our next stop was across the road to the National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA), housed in the beautifully restored Hindu Gymkhana building. Over the years, Mukhtar and I have watched countless memorable theatre productions at the Arts Council and at NAPA. I was happy to introduce Sonia to yet another landmark where Karachi’s cultural life continues to flourish within a historic setting. A few days before that she also attended a talk at the historic Flag Staff House, now known as the Jinnah Museum.

From there we meandered through the narrow streets of Burns Road, but not before I pointed out the Burns Garden where I sometimes went to play together with other children, and which houses the National Museum. On Burns Road, Sonia quickly noticed the profusion of old balconies projecting over the lanes, bearing witness to another era of craftsmanship. I pointed out Fresco, the famous mithai shop on the corner, while recalling the neighbourhood that had once been so familiar to me.

I told her about the route I walked every day from our home to school on Robson Road, from kindergarten until Class 10, and later to Karachi College for Women, where I completed my Intermediate in Science. Streets that had once seemed so ordinary to a schoolgirl now appeared charged with memory.

And then, inevitably, I wanted to show her the house where I had grown up.

Standing at a corner, it had once seemed to occupy the centre of my universe. From one balcony we could see Burns Road; from another, Pakistan Chowk; while from the front it overlooked Frere Road towards the right. I remembered our terracotta-tiled sloping roof that had long since disappeared, replaced by alterations that rendered the façade almost unrecognisable. Yet despite all the changes, it was still standing.

The ground floor, once residential, had given way to shops, as had so many buildings in old Karachi. Looking up, I tried to imagine the house as it had been when we moved there, shortly before my fourth birthday, and where we lived until I was sixteen.

Memories arrived unbidden. The Effendi family, who lived across the side street. Zarina Khala, my mother’s friend from Jabalpur, whose house was barely a minute away. I remember her as extraordinarily graceful and beautiful. Dr Chishti across the road who gave those horrid mixtures in glass bottles with a paper strip glued on them indicating the dosage. The place seemed to hold echoes of neighbours, conversations and childhood routines that no longer existed except in memory.

Directly opposite my house stood the Sikh Gurdwara, exactly where it had always been. I stepped inside its entrance, hoping to speak with the gentleman seated near the doorway, but he was engrossed in a phone conversation. After waiting for a few minutes, I quietly walked back outside.

Instead, I struck up a conversation with the shopkeeper, and asked him about the old ration shop that had stood beside the Gurdwara for decades.

“It closed about four years ago,” he replied.

Then he replied to my query that delighted me.

People still knew the house as Mohan Building.

And the road, despite all the official renaming over the years, was still called Roop Chand Bela Ram Road.

Some names, like memories, refuse to disappear.

There was so much I wanted to tell Sonia, but how does one compress twelve years of childhood into a few minutes on a footpath? The stories remained largely unspoken, existing instead in the spaces between the buildings we were looking at.

- Continued as Part Two under the same heading

In February, at the Amin Gulgee Museum, I participated in a performance art event marking ten years of the Karachi Biennale. Portraying Hammu Bai, a woman I had first encountered while researching for my book Karachiwala: A Subcontinent Within a City - brought back memories of the extraordinary people I had met while conducting more than sixty interviews across Karachi.

Speaking with men and women of different ethnicities, faiths and backgrounds taught me that the city’s greatest inheritance lies not in its buildings alone but in the rich tapestry of cultures its communities have preserved, often quietly, for generations.

Since her husband died in 2005, Hammu Bai’s closest companions have been her friends and neighbours. Most afternoons, seven or eight widows, all between seventy and eighty-five, gather in her modest home to exchange gossip, laughter and memories.

Like many of them, Hammu Bai migrated to Karachi from Kathiawad in present-day Gujarat, India, as a child during Partition. Following the accession of Junagadh to Pakistan and the unrest that ensued, many Kathiawadi Muslims settled in Karachi. Their descendants now live largely in Korangi No. 5, in neighbourhoods known as Junagadh Gali, though earlier generations had first made homes in Kharadar and Muslimabad. While several languages were once spoken in Kathiawad, the community today mainly speaks Memoni and Urdu.

Hammu Bai’s lane is remarkably clean and orderly. Her seventy-two-year-old nephew, Aziz Jam, estimates that around three hundred Kathiawadi families from Junagadh live in Korangi, about a third of them in this sector. Families were originally allotted 120-yard plots with single-room katcha houses. Hammu Bai’s home has since grown into a modest but well-kept pucca house. Terracotta matkas filled with drinking water and her meticulously maintained kitchen reflect a quiet pride in home and tradition.

She has seven children. Her sons work as drivers, while her daughters represent different paths: Farzana, separated from her husband, lives independently with her three daughters; Fehmida works in a factory in the Korangi Industrial Area; and Firoza, who married outside the community, manages her household. Such marriages remain uncommon in this strongly endogamous society.

Marriage customs, however, are changing. Girls who once married in their teens increasingly aspire to education and employment, although opportunities remain limited. One elderly woman tells me that both her daughter and daughter-in-law hold Master’s degrees yet earn meagre salaries as schoolteachers. Hammu Bai’s granddaughter left school after Matric because her family worried about her daily commute.

Hammu Bai supplements the family’s income by working as a domestic helper for a family in DHA, who have also helped relatives find employment.

Most men in Junagadh Gali work as drivers, clerks, peons, factory workers or small shopkeepers. Economic mobility has been slow, while among some younger men a stricter religious outlook has replaced many older cultural practices.

Among the women, however, one tradition survives: the annual urs of Mai Abida. It is this legend that explains why older Kathiawadi women such as Hammu Bai still wear the plain red cotton garment known as Mai jo Ghaggo. According to Zainab Bai, who recounts the story to me, the dress must be torn—not cut—and stitched in a single sitting.

The younger generation has largely abandoned the custom, preferring to blend into the wider urban culture.

According to community tradition, Mai Abida was a beautiful shepherdess living near Madina in Arabia. When a raja sought to marry her, her brother Musa Pir refused, insisting that she marry within their own community. The enraged ruler exiled them and pursued the siblings across lands that today encompass Balochistan, Kutch and Kathiawad.

After days of travelling on a she-camel, without food or water, Mai Abida struck the ground, and a spring miraculously appeared - a place still remembered as Mai Abida ki Thadri. Eventually, exhausted and cornered, the siblings prayed that the earth would swallow them. Before disappearing, Mai Abida wished that no girl of her community would be born so beautiful that she suffers because of her beauty.

The earth opened. Only a fragment of her red dress remained.

In remembrance, married women vowed to wear a simple red garment in her honour. Today that custom survives only among the oldest Kathiawadi women, and with their passing, another thread in Karachi’s remarkable cultural fabric may quietly disappear.

What makes a Gadwal saree unique is its exquisite combination: a pure cotton body, a silk border, and a richly woven silk or zari pallu. The craftsmanship is so fine and lightweight that, as legend has it, an entire saree can be folded and tucked into a matchbox.

In 2019, my dear friend Charu - whom I have yet to meet in person - carried this saree from Delhi, where she lives, to the United States, and mailed it to my son’s address there. She had obtained his address on the pretext that she and her husband might be able to visit him on their holiday in USA.

My husband and I live in Karachi, Pakistan. That same year in August, we were to fly to Dubai to meet our son, daughter-in-law, and two granddaughters at the airport there. The six of us were travelling to Cape Town, South Africa.

My son did not mention the package he was carrying until two or three days later, when we had arrived at the Kapama Safari Resort in the Greater Kruger National Park. There, quite unexpectedly, he presented it to me.

And so, in the heart of the wild, I received this beautiful saree, after it had travelled a remarkable journey of thousands of miles: from Gadwal to Delhi, to the United States, to Dubai, to Cape Town, and finally to Kapama.

Now consider this: the direct distance between Karachi and Delhi is approximately 1,070 kilometres (664 miles). Karachi to Lahore in Pakistan is about 1,200 kilometres (745 miles). And yet, this Gadwal saree had to cross oceans, mountains, and continents, passing through multiple countries, before it could reach me. Such is the reality shaped by history.

For nearly eight decades, unresolved differences and animosities between our governments have turned what might have been simple, friendly visits into long, circuitous journeys. Families remain divided, friendships stretched across borders, and what could have been ordinary meetings are instead made extraordinary by distance. This saree, then, is not just a garment. It is a quiet witness to separation, and to the enduring threads of connection that persist despite it.

The last time we saw each other, we were 12. By then, we had already shared eight solid years of friendship - from the age of four - the kind where separation feels like a minor tragedy. We were inseparable. In today’s language, she was the “nerd,” and I…well, not that I lagged behind academically - I did quite well in everything except one small, stubborn subject: Mathematics. My ambition in life, at that point, was modest - scrape together 33 marks and avoid that humiliating red line on the report card.

So how did we let six decades slip by?

Maths. Naturally.

After Class 8, we both sat for entrance exams to other schools because ours did not offer the science subjects required for pre-medical studies. Shakira was clear-eyed and determined: medicine was her calling. I, on the other hand, was “destined” for medicine by a family full of doctors - a destiny I pursued with all the enthusiasm of someone being gently pushed toward a cliff.

My own inclinations were quite visible: I was everywhere except mentally present in the Maths class - in dramas, dances, debates, fancy dress shows, milads… you name it. I was Vice President of the Student Union (our principal, Mrs Riffat Faridi was its President), and Editor of our school’s first wall-paper magazine (a grand title for something stuck on a wall, but we took it very seriously).

( Kausar Saleem and I sing and dance “Main tau Dilli say dulhan laya re o Babuji… Mera Bumbai se balam aya re o Babuji…” And in the bottom picture, wearing my VP, Student Union badge, I am the one with the big mouth, while my friend Nasreen Saeedi, nee Ahmed, shuts hers tightly!)

Our school, Model Girls Secondary School, was indeed a ‘model’ school in more ways than one. It was a private institution founded by Begum Fazlur Rahman - Syeda Fatina Rahman (1917–2003) - the wife of an East Pakistani politician who also served as Pakistan’s first Commerce and later Education Minister. She had established the Model Nursery and Primary School on Robson Road in Karachi in 1954. We had the good fortune of extraordinary teachers. I guess the first principal of the school, Mrs Haqqani (a British lady, married to a Pakistani Muslim) put the school on a track from which it was hard to stray, at least for many years to come. I have fond memories of her.

(Begum Fazlur Rahman is seated in the middle, with our principal, Mrs. Riffat Faridi, on the left. This photo is courtesy of my classmate Nasreen Zuberi, whose arm is touching Mrs Faridi’s. The other picture is of me as a crazy woman in a school fancy dress.)

By the time we reached Class 5, a separate building for the secondary section had been constructed, and, in a gradual and rather unceremonious transition, the boys were eased out year by year, until it became Model Secondary Girls School.

Then came the entrance tests. At St. Lawrence’s Convent School, I sailed through English and Urdu… and sank spectacularly in Maths. “Dabba gol,” as we say - a complete wipeout. Shakira, meanwhile, secured admission at St. Joseph’s Convent School. And just like that, our daily companionship came to an abrupt end.

We did stay in touch for a while. We lived within walking distance - my home on Roop Chand Bela Ram Road, with its red-tiled roof opposite Sri Guru Nanak Satsang Sabha Gurdwara Arambagh, and balconies overlooking Burns Road on one side and Pakistan Chowk. Our terrace was a world unto itself: perfect for flying kites, and for watching the synchronised movements of men offering namaz-e-Eid at the Arambagh mosque. It even had two rooms, and a chambeli creeper entwined itself lovingly around the wooden jafree, peering down the staircase into a courtyard overflowing with potted plants - my sister’s pride and joy. Shakira lived across Frere Road, equally close, yet over time life stretched that small distance into something much larger.

(Posing with our favourite teacher, Ms Haseena Moin)

Her father worked at Radio Pakistan, which, to me, was nothing short of magical. I desperately wanted to audition for Naunehal, the beloved children’s programme. My ever-supportive father took me there, and I auditioned with “Bhaijan,” the actor Zafar Siddiqui, the show’s much loved host. His most memorable role, of course, was as the quack doctor in the classic PTV drama Khuda Ki Basti. I also recall actor Mahmood Ali being present in the studio - a detail that meant little then but would return years later with delightful irony.

The audition went well - I was even asked to come back. But when my parents discussed this with Shakira’s father, he discouraged the idea. My mother, already sceptical of my “frivolous” pursuits, seized the moment. And that was the end of my brief brush with radio fame.

Years later, life came full circle. I had the opportunity to interview Mahmood Ali for Dawn’s Images, for which I regularly spoke with personalities from television, theatre, and film. As a child, I had also listened to him faithfully every Sunday morning as Ehsaan in the radio serial Hamid Mian Kay Haan - one of those comforting rituals that anchored family life. It seems I did return to that world after all - just through a different door.

Shakira, meanwhile, marched steadily toward her goal, gaining admission to Fatima Jinnah Medical College in Lahore. Between her textbooks - which I imagine were thicker than my resolve ever was - we lost touch. This was, after all, the pre-everything era: pre-internet, pre-smartphones, pre-effortless reconnections. Postcards came and went occasionally, and then, eventually, stopped.

As for me, my family refused to give up on their dream of producing yet another doctor. I gave science another valiant (and somewhat misguided) attempt, gaining admission to Karachi College for Women located on Chand Bibi Road near the Civil Hospital and Lady Dufferin Hospital area. A senior faculty member, Mrs Farooqui, who taught Zoology, interviewed me. She was understandably curious as to why, after studying Humanities, I wanted to switch to Science. Upon hearing of the formidable line-up of doctors in my family, she relented - perhaps out of sympathy, perhaps out of curiosity - and admitted me.

Those two years were not easy. My relationship with Physics and Chemistry remained strained at best. But there were consolations. I made a dear friend, Iqbal - bright, perceptive - whom I met again after half a century in the United States, where she has lived for decades under a completely different name. Time, it seems, edits identities as efficiently as it erases addresses.

I enjoyed other parts of my time there - Zoology, Botany, even dissecting frogs, cockroaches and earthworms – even though Physics and Chemistry remained determined adversaries.

There were also inspiring teachers. Mrs Aziz taught English and sang on the radio; I can still hear her rendering of Abdul Hameed Adam’s ghazal, “ab do alam se sada-e-saaz aati hai mujhe…” in her melodious voice. Then there was Ms Tajwar, our Urdu teacher - unassuming, precise, and quietly transformative. She convinced me, with impeccable logic, to change the spelling and pronunciation of my name from “Rummana” to “Rumana,” a decision I duly announced at home. My sister’s name Rukhsana before me, and then mine, were suggested by my late aunt, my phuppi Dr Banoo Malik. Both versions share the same Arabic root -pomegranate - but “Rumana,” in South Asian usage, carries a softer cadence. It also, I was informed, signifies charm and grace. (I have, naturally, chosen to believe this interpretation.)

There was also music. Along with four other girls from the whole college, I was selected for an inter-college singing competition to be broadcast live from the Theosophical Hall situated opposite Radio Pakistan on Bunder Road. Before the final performance, Mrs Aziz took us to Ustad Bundu Khan at the Radio Station. He was a legendary sarangi virtuoso serving as a staff musician for Radio Pakistan. He made us practice a bandish or two of Raag Aiman. We won first prize - proof that while science rejected me, the arts were quietly opening their doors.

Eventually, I stopped resisting the obvious, and after learning about the four-year programme at the Central Institute of Arts & Crafts (CIAC), located at the Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi, I decided to apply. I had my heart set on going to Lahore to the National College of Arts (NCA), but my mother would not hear of it. In the end, I enrolled at CIAC - and there, I finally found my calling.

And Shakira? She became exactly what she had always intended to be: a doctor.

Then, decades later - through the unlikely detective work of her younger brother, who recognised me from a photograph - we found each other again. A small miracle, really, considering how many of us changed names after marriage and disappeared into different versions of ourselves.

When we finally met, it was as though time folded in on itself. We rummaged through memories, piecing together teachers, classrooms, fragments of childhood. She remembered some things vividly, others not at all. She remembered me - which warmed me - but not many of our classmates or all the teachers, which left a faint, inexplicable sadness.

For example, she remembered the Russian Madam Elsinger very clearly, who used to play the piano when we were in Kindergarten. We were mortally afraid of her, as she had a notoriously bad temper. She was huge, and her sheer size and strict demeanour were enough to make us try to sing in unison, almost in self-defence.

(Above is an illustration by Naila Ahmed for “Sheema Kermani”, my graphic storybook. I learned that Madam Elsinger gave Sheema private piano lessons in the evenings.)

Unfortunately, Shakira did not remember our wonderful, comely first art teacher, Ms Naz Ikramullah (daughter of Begum Shaista Ikramullah, a diplomat and author, and Pakistan’s first female civil servant, as well as the first Muslim woman to earn a PhD from the University of London), who taught us in classes 1 and 2. I, however, kept in touch with her after unexpectedly running into her on the ramp of the CIAC. I recognised her instantly, though she did not at first recognise me. But when I told her my first name, she immediately called out my surname. I was over the moon.

(Ms Naz Ikramullah speaking at the launch of my husband, architect Mukhtar Husain’s book, ‘100+1 Pakistani Architects and Their Own Houses’)

She lives in Ottawa now, but before her health declined in recent years, she used to visit Karachi annually and would invite me and my husband to her open house, where we would meet other guests and share delicious snacks.

Shakira, however, did remember our other art teacher, Ms Haseena Moin - the one who taught us art from class 5 to class 8, after which I remained her History student for the next two years. Legendary, known across the country for her popular television plays, at a time when the streets would wear a deserted look because everyone was glued to their television sets. She began writing radio dramas after she joined our school as a teacher. She was my inspiration. Shakira recalled that after completing her MBBS, she went back to meet her at school.

(Haseena Apa and I at the launch of Shazaf Haider’s first novel 'How It Happened'.)

Memory, it seems, is as selective as it is stubborn.

But there we were, after 62 years - two girls who once walked to each other’s homes, now sitting together again, marvelling at the distance between then and now.

(Shakira!)

And all because, perhaps, one of us passed Maths… and the other very emphatically did not.

Karachi, of course, is used to being misunderstood. It rarely corrects people, as it is too busy surviving traffic, politics, weather, and its own temperament.

It is called many things: chaotic, messy, impossible. All true. And yet it still functions, more or less, like a stubborn engine that refuses to switch off.

Those who don’t live here often mistake volume for breakdown. Karachi calls it normal life.

And so it continues: arguing, absorbing, reinventing itself daily, and refusing, absolutely refusing, to die.

It is with deep confusion, and mild irritation, that I announce that Karachi has not passed away.

Despite repeated predictions, dramatic sighs, and WhatsApp forwards declaring its imminent demise every other week, the city continues to wake up each morning, stretch its creaking limbs, and demand chai. Strong. Extra doodh. Elaichi welcome.

Karachi was reportedly on its deathbed several times these past few decades, somewhere between Saddar and Clifton, wheezing faintly near Liaquatabad, only to be declared miraculously stable in Defence Housing Authority, and, importantly, refusing to give up somewhere in Lyari, where football, music, and defiance have long outlived every prediction of decline.

Causes of death included:

Two hours of uninterrupted electricity

Three consecutive days without political drama

Roads briefly free of potholes

A bus actually stopping in an orderly fashion near Numaish Chowrangi

Yet, against all logic, Karachi persists.

Its residents had given up hope many times. “Bas, ab gaya,” they said solemnly, stranded somewhere between a water tanker, three buses, and a goat with strong opinions. And then, somehow, the signal turned green, only for everyone to surge forward in eight directions at once, proving once again that Karachi is less a city and more a contact sport.

Karachi leaves behind:

Millions of people who loudly complain about it but will fight anyone who criticises it

Bankers on I. I. Chundrigar Road who measure life in interest rates and espresso shots

Fisherfolk from Ibrahim Hyderi who read the tides like others read headlines

Factory workers from SITE Area, mechanics, dhobis, drivers, guards, hawkers…each keeping some invisible gear of the city turning

Designers, influencers, and dinner-table theorists holding forth over existential urbanism in Zamzama

Several unfinished buildings and flyovers that have achieved heritage status

A crowd that gathers instantly wherever anything happens

Crows and kites (the cheel - birds - not paper ones) that circle above the city like perpetual witnesses to its chaos

Stray dogs who patrol the streets with authority

Heaps of garbage that neither the Defence Housing Authority nor the Cantonment Board Clifton nor the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation quite claims, quite owns, or quite removes are loyal, unmoving witnesses to the city’s ongoing negotiations with itself

An emotional support system consisting entirely of bun-kabab and chai

In lieu of flowers on its grave, Karachi requests:

That you please learn how to drive in a straight line

That you stop asking “Burger ya bun-kabab?” as if it’s a real question

That you accept that “light chali gayi”, “gas chali gayi”, or “tanki may pani nahi hay” are not events, but a lifestyle

The funeral procession was planned, naturally, but got delayed due to traffic on Shahrah-e-Faisal, rerouted at Teen Talwar, and eventually abandoned when the entire gathering wandered into what had, without formal announcement, become a full-fledged bakra mandi ahead of Eid al-Azha.

Eyewitnesses confirm that goats had taken over balconies on Burns Road, Lalukhet and Gulshan-e-Iqbal, cows, bulls and camels were asserting right of way in North Nazimabad, and negotiations of startling intensity were underway across the city. By morning, the streets told their own story: briefly chaotic, faintly tragic, unmistakably Karachi, before being hosed down in time for evening barbecues and philosophical reflection.

Karachi, meanwhile, was last seen very much alive - arguing, laughing, honking, improvising - its pulse erratic but unmistakable.

Authorities have issued a final statement:

“Karachi cannot die. It simply refuses. Also, who would handle the chaos if it did?”

Karachi is survived by its own stubbornness. And, like every good Karachiite knows, it may collapse, combust, complain, and confuse…but it will never shut up long enough to die.

Reposting from DAWN

March 06, 2008

He lashes out at those who have made theatre expensive and only for the elite, but agrees that the state’s support to supplement and sustain such activities is a must. “I am living off the money I got from selling my house in Lahore. There is no hope of receiving any subsidy from the government”, he says ruefully, citing the Pride of Performance award as a Tauq-e-Nidamat that he regrets accepting. In the mid 1960s Pakistan’s irate young men began appearing with increasing frequency on radio and stage, and Kamal Ahmed Rizvi was the perfect writer-actor to embody the aggressive, underprivileged character that everyone loved to hate. His appeal – a wicked liveliness and roguish looks – enabled him to personify the angry young-man-turned-swindler with fabulous accomplishment.

With Rizvi himself posing as a conman called Allan, and Rafi Khawar as his naive front man, Nannha, the series written by Rizvi earned him a success so colourful in the days of black and white television that it is almost unparalleled in Pakistan’s entertainment history. First telecast in 1965, the 100-episode series has been repeated several times. Few people would know the duo’s real names. They are merely Allan and Nannha of the immortal comedy series Alif Noon, packed with hefty social punches. The landmark series has been a forerunner in winning television audiences across the country.I go to meet the writer-actor-director at his apartment in Karachi, where he has been living with his wife for several years. Dressed in a blood-red shirt with charcoal-black hair, Rizvi hardly looks like a man in his seventies. I expect him to live up to his Allan image, pulling out a trick from his sleeve any minute…

Surrounded by paintings of Pakistani artists Ali Imam, Mansur Aye, Mansur Rahi and others, with a pencil sketch of himself and the famous Noon –Nannha – by Iqbal Mehdi, he leads a life that is somewhat reclusive. I wonder aloud how he spends his time now, after having had scores of admirers and fans, fame and money during the years of his comedy series. “Unfortunately, we seem to disregard those who were once a favourite but are now no more in the limelight,” he replies.

He says he keeps busy writing plays and just depositing them in the drawer of his writing desk, hoping that someday someone will stage them. “I belong to the world of theatre,” he announces as clarification. His career in theatre began in 1958, and his famous play Bala ki Badzaat was staged sometime in the early 1960s.More recently, it was performed in Lahore, in January 2005, on the occasion of the 12-day Ibsen National Drama Festival. Rizvi, perhaps, has the distinction of performing on every stage in Karachi, including those which have been long razed to the ground, such as the Katrak Hall. He also has the distinction of having acted in all the plays that he has written. He has also acted in Khwabaun kay Musafir, written by Intizar Husain, and Aadhi Baat by Bano Qudsia, and has acted in the television version of these plays as well.I ask him if he remembers the total number of stage and television plays that he has written/acted and/or directed. “I must have done more than 20 stage plays (performed several times over in different cities), however, I cannot remember the number and all the names of my television plays, but Khoya Huwa Aadmi with Khalida Riyasat was one of them,” he says, and adds, “It was a well-received long play. So were the comedies Chor Machae Shor, Aap ka Mukhlis, etc.”According to Rizvi, his penchant for social justice was kindled at a very young age. His father was in the police department in Gaya, Bihar (close to Bodhgaya of Gautama Buddha’s Bodhi Tree fame – one of the most sacred pilgrimages for Buddhists), and later became a landowner. The son denounced the way the poor were treated or forced to live, “although my father did not treat them badly, I saw the plight of the poor all around me.”

In 1951, at the age of 21, he decided to migrate to Pakistan. He narrates how, on Bunder Road, in those initial days in Karachi, he came upon a red flag with a hammer and sickle sign, announcing the Communist Party of Pakistan’s office. Intrigued and excited, he went inside to inquire if he could join the party. He met the party secretary who asked him what he did. Upon learning that the young man had literary leanings, he advised him to go over to the Pakistan Writers’ Association (PWA). “Some of our members, like Sajjad Zaheer, are underground right now. Moreover, you are too young to join the party. The PWA is a better place for you,” the secretary recommended.

Rizvi became acquainted with most of the eminent writers and scholars connected to PWA in Karachi, and later with others in Lahore. “I was extremely happy to be with them. In Karachi, there was Minhas Barna, Mumtaz Hasan, Mujtaba Husain and Ibrahim Jalees…” I tell him that I remember how Jalees’s popular column Waghaira Waghaira was my father’s staple for many years, and he used to read it to me.“Do you know that there were CID (intelligence agency) personnel shadowing each of these writers? I encountered one of them one day and he confirmed this himself. He warned me that a young lad like me could get into a lot of trouble if I continued to associate with people at the PWA. ‘Why don’t you do something else?’ the man inquired. During my ‘interrogation’ I had told him that I had a stepbrother in Lahore. He asked me to leave Karachi immediately, and find a job in Lahore instead of wasting my time with the writers. I told him that I had no money to undertake the travel,” Rizvi pauses to serve me a samosa and some tea that his wife has discreetly left for us.“Would you believe that the man actually pulled out money from his pocket for my train fare as well as some extra rupees and thrust these in my palm!”

I am listening to the story of his life with rapt attention.“So did you leave for Lahore then?” I ask.Rizvi went over to Lahore for sure, but neither did he adopt another vocation nor could he stay with his brother for too long, due to his rebellious ways. He moved over to his stepsister’s place. “During those days Faiz Ahmed Faiz was behind bars in the famous Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, and my brother-in-law, on learning that this was the man I admired and rubbed shoulders with, threw me out,” he discloses.Rizvi reminisces how life became more and more difficult. However, he continued to write and associate with other writers of the Progressive Writers’ Movement; spending time with luminaries such as Manto, Rafi Peer, Nasir Kazmi, Habib Jalib, among others. He read their works as well as those of Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen and says, “I was a great admirer of those writers.”I ask him about his favourite playwrights and he says there are several: “Sartre, Brecht, Shakespeare… in fact the English have so many great writers besides Shakespeare, that it is difficult to recount all. I am inspired and influenced by several.”Rizvi then relates the problems and hurdles faced by him as he engaged in theatre and tried to make it an affordable activity for people to come and watch. He lashes out at those who have made theatre expensive and only for the elite, but agrees that the state’s support to supplement and sustain such activities is a must.“I am living off the money I got from selling my house in Lahore. There is no hope of receiving any subsidy from the government”, he says ruefully, citing the Pride of Performance award as a Tauq-e-Nidamat (noose of mortification) that he regrets accepting.

“Tell me something about your personal life,” I ask rather cautiously, not too sure if I would receive an answer. However, Rizvi surprises me with his candid disclosure. He has a sad look in his eyes when he states that he has been unlucky as far as relationships go. His first marriage, to a lady from Lahore, was rather brief. His only offspring is a son – a lawyer – who lives in the US, brought up by his first wife. “I met my second wife in London when I was there for a stint with the BBC Urdu Service. She was an Indian citizen from Delhi. After we had been together for sometime, she came to Karachi, accompanied by her parents, and we got married here… but once again things didn’t work out and that marriage did not last too long either.” He hastens to add that his marriage to Ishrat Jahan - his current spouse – has lasted for no less than 24 years!I ask him about his most famous partner, Rafi Khawar - Nannha – who worked in hundreds of films besides the cherished Alif Noon series. Did Rizvi share an off-screen camaraderie with him? He replies in the negative. “Nannha was a fine man, sweet and innocent. However, we came from completely different backgrounds. We were a fantastic pair in Alif Noon, but that was that… off the sets there was no intellectual bond between us.”Rizvi then reminisces how, at times, Nannha would adlib during rehearsals and get reprimanded by him for doing so: Rizvi was a no-nonsense stickler for perfection, even for what might seem like nonsensical buffoonery in a comedy play. “But I let him make those ridiculous sounds in Alif Noon as Nannha maintained that the young audience – children - loved his antics accompanied by these sounds.”It is impossible not to feel distressed that the coveted vision of writers of defiance such as Kamal Ahmed Rizvi, to live in a country free of capitalism, corruption and feudalism, keeps evading them.

We have a unique vernacular urban heritage, and in this context, Karachi’s multi-ethnic, multi-cultural identity needs to be understood and appreciated for its diversity, richness, and pride in their living environment. Aesthetics is a universal trait of human culture that appears in all human societies around the globe, and I am attempting to explore the aesthetics through art and material culture of the underprivileged segment of this city’s citizens: their tastes, perceptions, interests, and activities.

In a Monograph by Michael Wesch, The Art of Being Human: A Textbook for Cultural Anthropology1 (Kansas State University, New Prairie Press), he writes about the ‘art of seeing’, and says, “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?” Wesch further says that we’re so immersed in our own ideas and assumptions that we can’t see others. “It can be useful to jump out of the water now and then. This is one of the great virtues of encountering someone or some place that is radically different from what we know. We see the contrast between how we do things and how they do things, and we can then see ourselves in a new light”, he says.

Poverty has a look. An aesthetic. During the decade of the 60s and 70s there was an Art Povera (art for the poor) movement across Europe. It was geared towards blurring the line between the aesthetic realm of art and the realities of living a life with perseverance. Through a handful of biographical interviews, I have tried to situate my subjects in the specific social context of this sprawling metropolis. This brings me to a slight deviation from the focus towards the aesthetics of Karachi’s urban poor to the ongoing misery faced by the climate catastrophe of 2022 in Pakistan, particularly in Balochistan and Sindh provinces in the shape of monstrous floods. The victims who were forced to leave their rural and semi-urban homes to move to the metropolis in order to cling to the savage game of survival, but despite death and disease, have their own aesthetic.

From clothes, accessories, decorative items, transport and housing, the aesthetic of the underprivileged is one that has to do with poverty. It is about making do with what is available, or something old and/or something used or even shabby. It is ironic as well as comical that there’s been an approach to fashion that plugs the more financially privileged world by making some things deliberately made to look old or worn. Like most trends, which come back into style every 20-or-so years, the ‘Homeless chic’ that became popular in the 1980s is back again in the West. Baggy clothes with unfinished hems, gaping holes in the tops and the lowers, and garbage bags that can double as waterproof boots when it rains (the poor aren’t trying to be fashionable though, they’re trying to survive), the style has been trending in Karachi as well, claiming its place under the sun by the wealthy and all those who want to be noticed. Poverty’s ‘homeless chic’, on the other hand, remains unnoticed.

Our most intimate bodily needs such as cooking, feeding, eating, dressing, cleaning, washing, resting, sleeping, etc. are a part of our everyday life. Loving as well.  These take place inside the four walls of the house, but one can equally see the makeshift walls, the vehicles used, the clothes worn, the accessories and more, outside the homes as well. They can make art through improvisation. For example, painting the walls of their homes with any bright color that they could find, or using old printed and colored bedsheets combined with keekar branches or palm leaves for creating a vibrant shelter for themselves. Basically, getting hold of whatever is available to make the most from it.

The danger of poverty aesthetics lies in the glamorization or romanticization of poverty. Often times one hears that there is a certain poetry to it, or that they are poor-but-happy. These comments are perhaps meant to justify the system of complete inequality instead of inquiring into it or questioning it. On the other hand, the poor are living life with few resources representing a more natural world.

A decorative arch for a residence in a loft of the Sheetala Mata temple complex. 2009

Religion too has a strong part to play in the aesthetics of the urban poor. Today Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam have the largest populations among world religions, and these three have made monumental contributions in shaping the visual arts of human civilization. Structural elements of the Hindu temples include the base, covered sanctum, and tower superstructure. Temples are elaborately carved with friezes of animals and vegetation as well as decorative arches and frames. A fraction of those elements are sometimes carried into people’s homes, such as a poor Maheshwari man’s abode at the Sheetala Mata Mandir complex in Bhimpura, a poor and old area of Karachi. The religion of the Maheshwari Hindus is known as Maheshpanth. Walking through the complex, where several families reside in their humble dwellings, I came upon this loft where a ladder takes one up to a cramped residence. However, the decorative arch, if seen in isolation, does not in the least present the predicament of the inhabitants living just under and behind it.

Entrance door with hearts, entrance to a house in Junagadh Gali, Korangi. 2008

The hearts on the entrance door of a house belonging to a Kathiawadi Muslim family, who migrated to Karachi and live in Korangi, have been painted red, while the rest of the patterned iron door is in white. This mohalla is known as Junagadh Gali – Junagadh being the name of the state in Kathiawad, India that most of the families living here originate from. The clean and well-organized lane has its own appeal. There are some three hundred houses in Korangi that belong to Kathiawadi families, and a third of these are located in this particular area. Each family was initially allotted a 120-yard plot with one room and a toilet. The structure, including the floor, was katcha at the time, improved and built upon later on as people got employed as either house-maids, labourers or small shop owners. Beautifying the entrance door or façade of the house is not uncommon anywhere, but these red hearts have a special appeal.

Another house, located right across the Commune Artist Colony in Miskeen Gali, off Old Queen’s Road is an eye-catching example, decorated incrementally over a period of time. Since the Commune opened in Sadiq Godown, I have visited it a number of times, and over my subsequent visits there, I saw the façade of this particular house being transformed. It was initially decorated with squares painted at its base in red, yellow and black, and later on more squares were added all over; painted in ivory, pink, blue and green colours. The owner/resident must be adding to the design whenever he or she acquired enough money to spare and buy paint. I have also wondered if the art activities of the Commune has had any impact on the decision or the design? This Gali or lane named as Miskeen (pauper or mendicant) is itself quite telling, with warehouses (or godowns as they are known in South Asia) lining one side of the lane, and a motley line-up of houses of the poor facing those.

Decorative pieces in a home in E.I. Lines. 2022

A Catholic Christian family live in E.I. Lines. There’s an elderly couple and their eight children. The head of the family has been living here for more than half a century. He works as a labourer and is employed by the government. He lays drainage pipes, and lifts and removes cement sacks and construction debris. The family attends the Filadelfia Church and the Awami Church as they are both in the vicinity. The house is located in an extremely narrow but relatively clean lane. It has two rooms on the ground floor with a small courtyard in the middle. The house has been freshly painted although there was no special event that necessitated it. The drawing room has a sofa and a fridge, and the floor has a linoleum covering. There are two entrances from the lane: one leading directly into the room, which is used as the baithak, and the second that leads into the courtyard. A badaam tree, yielding red juicy fruit, grows in the courtyard and has been allowed to break through the concrete floor of the terrace above, to rise into it. Besides the sparse furniture, there are trinkets sold at Christmas fairs that adorn the house here and there. A few bric-a-bracs such as heart-shaped glass baubles with a small-sized ceramic bride and a groom standing in one corner, and a flower basket in the other, are placed on a shelf that holds some crockery. Right above the two glass baubles are kept a ceramic mug and a small vase, and an image or two of Jesus Christ, printed on card-paper, peek out from behind the teacups.

Islam, on the other hand, is strictly aniconic, and images of the Prophet or his kin are prohibited, therefore the emphasis has been on surface decoration. Embellishment on textiles by all economic classes in Pakistan is done with fervour. The well-known Sindhi Rilli can be found in the homes of all economic, linguistic or political backgrounds. In their home the two transgenders offered me a prime place to sit on: a Rilli appliqued with big, bold motifs. This room, in their modest two-room flat in a narrow lane in Mahmoodabad, had one other piece of decoration in the shape of a large vase replete with paper flowers.

Rilli in a house in Mahmoodabad. 2007 (left) and an Iranian Baloch woman seen embroidering floral motifs to embellish clothes, Old Golimar. 2009 (right).

On the other hand, embroidered flowers adorn the dopatta of the Iranian Baloch lady I met, while she was busy embroidering yet another one for herself. She lives in a maze of narrow lanes behind a semi-open area in a low-income settlement called the Hasan Aulia Village in Old Golimar; a stone’s throw from Lyari River. This village is over two hundred years old. The Iranian Balochs who live here see themselves as heirs of an ancient and proud tradition, distinct from Iran’s ethnic Persian population and other groups that comprise the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iranian Baloch often identify with the larger Baloch community that resides in Pakistan and Afghanistan in what is referred to as ‘Greater Balochistan’ because tribal and family lines traverse all three countries. These women perform daily chores of cooking, washing, and cleaning, and in their free time, they either like to sleep or read the Quran, or watch television. Sewing and embroidery are their other pastimes.

A Vaghdi woman embroidering a patch for her torn shirt, Lalu Goth, Landhi. 2010

Likewise, even though they are the poorest of the poor, the Vaghdi women love to embroider too. I met them in Lalu Goth beyond the Quaidabad Bridge in Landhi. The community lives in dilapidated hutments surrounded by keekar trees. Their huts are also made of keekar branches, mats, and old bedsheets. The Vaghdis are considered by many to be the gypsies of the subcontinent. They are good mimics and bird trappers, and form part of the so-called ‘Untouchable’ or Dalit Hindu caste. The Vaghdi women dress in brightly coloured garments. They adorn themselves with metallic and bright beaded jewellery and a lot of silver-looking metal ones. Amulets are worn around the necks and karan-phool in the ears. Many Vaghdi women wear beautiful bangdi on their wrists (the name ‘bangle’ must have been derived from this Gujarati/Hindi word) made from ferrous metals and plastics. Toe rings and anklet kadas known as todas and also jhanjris are worn by all women, poverty notwithstanding.

Karachi is a major city centre for ‘Truck Art’ – a folk art, also known locally as Phool Patti, literally meaning flowers and leaves. These trucks, started in the 1920s with Bedford trucks that were imported from Great Britain, plying all over the country, carting goods. The art on the trucks represent the inspirations and imagination of the people at large, and they also show the close bond of the truck owner with his vehicle. A website on Truck Art2 states that the truck is “embellished from bumper to bumper with paint and colourful, sculpted metal is expressive and captivating in ways that few other artistic media can duplicate. Decorated Pakistani trucks declare a dazzling, exuberant artistry that is unmatched on vehicles anywhere else in the world”.

These ubiquitous trucks have given rise to similar decorations on mini buses, used mostly by the masses, and to a much lesser extent on rickshaws. Lately, however, the rich have taken to this form of art, and all kinds of products, ranging from kitsch to tasteful ones are being marketed at prices that are unaffordable to the poor.

In her paper The Aesthetics of Poverty and Social Order3 Julie McClure of the University of Warwick writes about the critical links between society and economy, and that aesthetics is an appropriate way to think about it. She states that “Aesthetics is a coming together of space, and experience and ideas. It is the right approach for poverty research, since poverty also exists at the interface of space, experience and ideas. Both are ways of thinking about the whole and the part, the quotidian and the ephemeral.”

The jigsaw puzzle of all manners of aesthetic elements interpret the urban and semi-urban place like Karachi, where all kinds of hints and traces of previous generations are evident. The amount of consistency and the proportion between the planned and inadvertent elements is not established, but varies according to the changing norms of the communities.

I would like to conclude by saying that there is need to further explore this particular topic, as the above is by no means all-inclusive or comprehensive. I would also like to end by quoting from a column by the Karachi-based artist Durriya Kazi, who in turn has quoted a beautiful Arab proverb: “If you have only two pennies, spend the first on bread and the other on hyacinths for your soul.” 4 The urban poor surely hold those hyacinths close to their hearts.

Images courtesy and copyright Rumana Husain 

1. The Art of Being Human: A Textbook for Cultural Anthropology by Michael Wesch, Kansas State University, USA, New Prairie Press: https://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=ebooks

2. Pakistan Truck Art: https://pakistantruckart.com/

3. The Aesthetics of Poverty and Social Order, Aesthetics of Poverty Workshop 2016, Julie McClure, University of Warwick, UK: https://www.academia.edu/27563422/The_Aesthetics_of_Poverty_and_Social_Order

4. The Aesthetics of Everyday by Durriya Kazi, Dawn newspaper, February 26, 2017

Published in THE KARACHI COLLECTIVE, November 19, 2022

Rumana Husain

Rumana Husain is a writer, artist and educator. She is the author of two coffee-table books on Karachi, and has authored and illustrated over 90 children’s books. Four of her books have won awards in Pakistan, Nepal and India. She has been a contributor to various newspapers and magazines, and written hundreds of articles, travelogues, art and book reviews, and has also conducted numerous interviews in the print and electronic media.

Originally published in The Karachi Collective in October 2024

It’s a curious twist of fate when you discover that not only do you share a name — with just a slight variation in spelling — with a renowned artist across the border, but you also share the same birth year!

I vividly remember two memorable instances from the 1980s and 1990s that highlighted this coincidence. In 1984, my husband and I entered the Taj Hotel in Mumbai with our two young children. To our surprise, a poster in the lobby announced an exhibition by artist Rummana Hussain (1952–1999). We exchanged amused glances and enjoyed her art, all the while savouring the peculiar synchronicity of it all.

In 1993, after my husband Mukhtar Husain penned an article for Inside Outside, a Mumbai-based design and architecture magazine, about Karachi’s new airport, the Jinnah Terminal, of which he was the Chief Architect, I found myself in Mumbai on a visit. Mukhtar had asked me to drop by the office of the magazine’s editor, Ms. Sheila Shahani, as a courtesy. As I arrived at her office in Nariman Point and gave my card to the receptionist, I overheard her excitedly announcing to the editor that “Rummana Hussain” was here. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I realised Ms. Shahani was in for a surprise — she was expecting the famed artist, but instead was greeted by me.

I was inspired to write this article after a recent encounter on LinkedIn, where an Indian artist reached out and asked, “Are you the same Rumana who worked at Lalit Kala Akademi, Keyatala, in 1984-85 alongside Paritosh Sen and Sambuddha Dutta Gupta?” This made me realize that many in India, let alone in Pakistan, particularly among the younger generation of artists, are not familiar with her work. My contact admitted that while he had heard rumors of her passing, he didn’t believe them until he came across “me” on LinkedIn! This interaction highlighted just how much her legacy needs to be remembered and shared.

Rummana Hussain made her entry into the art world in the 1980s, gaining early recognition for her allegorical figurative work in oil and watercolor. She ultimately turned to installations, sculptures, and performance art, through which she grappled with the complexities and privileges of her identity. As a Muslim living in a predominantly Hindu country, she used her body as a medium to engage with the broader socio-political landscape. This shift in her practice came about with the 1992 demolition of the 16th-century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya by right-wing Hindu militants and the subsequent communal violence in Bombay (now Mumbai), where she resided at the time. The destruction of the historic mosque sparked violent communal riots across India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Mumbai was one of the hardest-hit cities, with over 2,000 lives lost in the violence.

Hussain was provoked into activism by making a sharp departure from her painterly works. Despite using her identity to interrogate issues of secularism, gender, and privilege, she held firm to the belief that she was not the “other” in India. Instead, she saw herself as a custodian of the discourse on belonging, perpetually navigating the fluid and unsettled terrain of identity.

Ram Rahman, a photographer and close friend of Hussain, notes that while Islam was more of a cultural influence than a religious one in her life, it unexpectedly became central to both her personal journey and her artistic expression in later years. He has also described Hussain as “completely bohemian, a progressive thinker, and a strong feminist, with a very different persona to her partner.” Her husband, who worked for the major Indian corporation TATA, was transferred to the eastern state of Bihar in the early 1980s, but Hussain chose to move to Delhi, where she began a four-year stint at the Garhi Studios, an artists’ facility supported by the state-run Lalit Kala Akademi.

Hussain’s later works have direct Islamic references such as her installation ‘Home/Nation’ at Gallery Chemould in 1996, and ‘Tomb of Begum Hazrat Mahal’ in 1997 and later at Talwar Gallery and Institute of Arab and Islamic Art in New York.

In an article titled “Rummana Hussain“written by Jyoti Dhar1, published on the Talwar Gallery website in September/October 2014 (the gallery, owned by Deepak Talwar, has been representing Hussain’s estate and collection since 2008), she mentions that it was during her time at Garhi Studios that Hussain began connecting with prominent figures in the Indian contemporary art scene, including painter Manjit Bawa, renowned sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee, and fellow feminist artist Navjot Altaf. She was particularly influenced by the prevailing trend toward figuration in Indian contemporary art, a movement heavily driven by the ‘Baroda school of artists’ associated with the Faculty of Fine Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University. Mukherjee and Altaf, who worked in neighboring studios at Garhi, would often critique her neo-expressionist works. It was a lively studio environment of the 1980s India, where artists would gather to debate ideas, art, and literature for hours. Hussain herself drew heavily from the works of playwright Bertolt Brecht and painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder, as seen in pieces like When Evil Doing Comes Like Falling Rain, Nobody Calls Out Stop’ (c. 1989-90), which depicts a grim scene of human suffering, featuring a mountain of heads and bat-like figures soaring over a chaotic landscape. She masterfully blended myth, metaphor, and allegory with the harsh realities of contemporary life to convey powerful social critiques. In Big Fish Eat Little Fish-1 (1989), she offers a stark critique of India’s capitalist and caste systems. The painting features two indistinct figures rowing a small boat by moonlight across a murky, dangerous sea. Their fear is palpable as they witness a massive fish devour smaller ones, a striking metaphor for the exploitation inherent in social hierarchies. Similarly, The Angel and Colaba (1990) reflects her recurring concerns, set against another shadowy, aquatic backdrop — this time at the bustling Colaba fishing docks in Mumbai. Fishermen haul carts of goods while gaunt, nearly naked figures and stray animals occupy a nearby street. Overhead, a bronzed angel with radiant, fuchsia wings carries a woman’s shadowy form through the sky, seemingly whisking her away from the bleakness below. Both works encapsulate Hussain’s ability to intertwine symbolism with urgent social commentary.

It must be mentioned that before the Babri Masjid debacle, the explosive rise of Hindutva fundamentalism during the1970s and 1980s triggered a growing wave of communal unrest that left deep scars on Hussain’s personal life and eventually reshaped her entire artistic trajectory. Two key events during this period profoundly impacted her. The first was the savage, public assassination of Safdar Hashmi (1954-1989), a political activist, poet, actor and playwright. He was the founding member of the street theatre group Jana Natya Manch2.

Hashmi was Pakistan’s celebrated actor Sania Saeed’s uncle. His murder sent shockwaves through India’s creative and activist circles. Later, in 1990, Hussain’s first cousin was fatally stabbed by two Hindu men outside a mosque in Hyderabad after evening prayers — a blow that struck much closer to home.

In the aftermath, Rummana became part of the Sahmat Collective (The Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust), a vibrant group of artists, writers, and curators led by figures like Ram Rahman, Geeta Kapur, and Vivan Sundaram. Their mission was to champion secularism and pluralism through art. Sahmat organised numerous exhibitions, rallies, and protest performances throughout India, with one of their most influential campaigns, ‘Artists Against Communalism’, taking place in 1991.

All this had deeply affected Hussain on a personal level. Her Muslim identity, previously something she hadn’t openly grappled with, now left her feeling exposed and vulnerable. Her family was forced to leave their home in Colaba’s Somerset House, and even remove their nameplate to avoid being targeted. Eventually, they moved to a hotel. Hussain therefore emerged as a critical organiser for Sahmatin Mumbai, spearheading local events. Notable among her efforts were an exhibition where Mumbai taxi drivers painted slogans promoting communal harmony on their cabs, a concert at Shivaji Park, and mural projects with artists like M.F. Hussain.

Sahmat also held a 17-hour festival of Sufi and Bhakti music in January 1993, intended to foster tolerance and spiritual unity. The title of the event, “Anhad Garje,” was drawn from the poetry of the medieval Sufi Sant Kabir Das (1440-1518). The phrase translates to “the silence reverberates” and evokes the concept of the eternal, unstruck sound of the universe – Anhad Naad. In Kabir’s poetry, this sound is metaphorically housed within a clay pot, symbolizing the vessel of the cosmos and divinity. The gathering’s spiritual essence was underscored by the renowned Indian classical singer Shubha Mudgal, who opened and closed the event with a rendition of Anhad Garje, imbuing the occasion with profound cultural and spiritual resonance. Hussain was further moved by this event, which, besides poetry and music, also had academic discussions. The following month, she wrote in India’s newspaper, The Independent: “It’s necessary to emerge from our insular shells, to come together and try and develop symbols of secularism . . . a coming together of artists and viewers is a form of public participation, one that emphasises the commonality of all.”

Having grown up in a secular household where Hussain never wore a burqa or took a chadar, this sudden awareness of her religious identity shook her. Ram Rahman, her close friend and fellow Sahmat artist, remarked that this forced confrontation with her identity profoundly altered her work in an incredibly short period of time.

Hussain was born in 1952 to a highly privileged and politically active family from Lucknow, which shaped her understanding of politics and helped appreciate the idea of the freedom of thought and speech. Her mother was a Congress Member of Parliament while her father was a General in the Indian army, and was the first Commandant of the National Defence Academy in Pune. She studied Fine Art in Ravensborne College of Art and Design, England, and after she graduated in 1974, she returned to India to marry a businessman named Ishaat Hussain. In the mid-1980s, Rummana lived in Calcutta where she found a mentor in Paritosh Sen, working with him in his studio.

Striving to craft a more urgent feminist and conceptual language, she abandoned her sketchbook as she was disillusioned by the limitations of figurative painting, and turned to working with material objects and symbols. As she juggled the demands of finishing her Fine Arts degree at the University of Calcutta while caring for her young daughter, Shazmeen, she began to incorporate domestic objects into her practice. In a 1994 interview, she explained the shift, noting how necessity had pushed her to explore the political significance of everyday materials3.

In her article mentioned previously, Jyoti Dhar references a quote from Hussain’s friend, Pushpamala N. who is a performance artist. Pushpamala reflects on how Hussain’s family had been deeply influenced by various leftist cultural organizations that shaped their worldview and artistic sensibilities. She mentions that these awareness sprang “from the progressive movements of the 1930s onward, including the Indian People’s Theatre Association and the Progressive Writers’ Association, both of which were associated with the Communist Party of India. This cultural milieu provided the basis for many post-Independence artists’ political orientations, and Hussain’s close friendships with members of these semi-activist groups certainly contributed to her own progressive politics and activism. In contrast, her religious classification, as a Muslim, had never been a central part of her identity as she was growing up”.

Hussain’s early work, showcased in her solo exhibition Fragments/Multiples at Chemould Gallery in 1994, and at Talwar Gallery in 2010 and 2012 and at the India Pavilion at 58th Venice Biennale, illustrates her innovative use of broken terra-cotta pots. The installations, including Dissected Projection (1993) and Conflux (1993), emphasise themes of fragmentation and abstraction. These works will be on view at The Barbican Center in London in Fall 2024.

In Dissected Projection, a black, bisected pot juts out from the wall, resembling a pregnant belly. Its reflection, distorted by the shards of an earthy red clay vase below, is enclosed in a transparent rectangular box filled with rubble, highlighting the theme of disintegration. Similarly, Conflux features a halved terra-cotta pot balanced on its side on a black tile, spilling gheru, a red ochre pigment, onto the floor, further exploring the motif of fragmentation and the interplay between object and space.

Dhar describes in detail in her article Hussain’s inaugural performance, ‘Living on the Margins’ (1995), in these words:

“As she slowly walked around the open courtyard of the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai, with ghungroos, or ankle bells, on her feet, and a halved papaya in her outstretched hands, she seemed perfectly in her element, finally at ease with the form of her work. In contrast, many of those around her — some of whom later testified to never having witnessed anything like this in India before — watched with a mixture of rapture and bewilderment, uncertain as to what Hussain would do next.”

Apparently, she paced the room for half an hour, with her mouth wide open, yet no sound escaped, as if her voice had been forcibly stifled. Eventually, visibly drained, Hussain invited the small group around her to scatter red clay (gheru) and indigo powder across the floor. As they joined in, it was clear that not only had they embraced this act of participation, but they had also accepted the bold and unconventional nature of this work.

Hussain placed her own body at the heart of this piece, addressing both broader social issues, such as the increasing involvement of women in and victimization by violence, and more personal concerns. She had recently learned that one of her domestic staff members had ovarian cancer, while another had contracted AIDS. The severe condition of the latter, who could no longer close her mouth due to extensive ulceration from the infection, is believed to have directly influenced Hussain’s performance.

During this period, Hussain faced a profound personal crisis when she discovered several lumps in her body, a devastating revelation that marked the onset of breast cancer. At just 43, she was suddenly thrust into a battle that would test her resilience in ways she had never imagined. She was a very strong woman, but she was also vulnerable. She underwent a mastectomy in Mumbai, and as her treatment journey continued, she began a grueling routine of travelling back and forth to America for further care. In her vulnerability, she faced her illness with a courage that deeply marked her artistic and personal life.

Alongside her ongoing advocacy for laborer’s rights, environmental causes, and riot relief, Hussain emerged as one of the first artists to speak out against the persecution of modernist artist MF Husain, which began in 1996. After travelling with Ram Rahman to Ayodhya to document the aftermath of violence and the architectural remnants of the site, Hussain presented the exhibition Home/Nation at Chemould Gallery. This exhibition showcased her innovative approach, blending various elements and media into a semi-theatrical assemblage that created a partially immersive environment for viewers.

The texts below, about Hussain’s 1996 exhibition Home/Nation, and The Tomb of Begum Hazrat Mahal (1997) are derived from noted Indian art critic Geeta Kapur’s lecture: ‘Rummana’s Question: is it what you think?’ Sahmat, New Delhi, November 2009, Jyoti Dhar’s article of 2014, and Fiza Jha’s article of 2019, both of which have been cited before4.

Hussain explored the tension between the concepts of “home” and “nation,” revealing the deep contradictions within the promise of belonging. Her work aimed to challenge and deconstruct sectarian rhetoric, delving into its constructed narratives while resisting the pervasive influence of dominant ideologies. Until her passing in 1999, she grappled with a complex paradox: as an Indian citizen, she refused to accept the role of the ‘other,’ yet she pushed the boundaries of political belonging by embodying a destabilised identity within India’s ostensibly stable framework.

Her quest for identity was intertwined with her family’s aristocratic heritage. The Habibullahs, her paternal lineage, were part of the landed gentry from Barabanki in Awadh, an area known for its rich courtly culture and literary traditions until the late 19th century. Although Hussain visited her ancestral homes in Lucknow throughout her life, her engagement was not one of nostalgic longing but rather a nuanced exploration of her cultural roots. Her family, highly educated and progressive, had distanced themselves from aristocratic conventions. Like her mother, Hussain was passionate about girls’ education and found inspiration in the vibrant street culture of Lucknow. Her art drew from the city’s sophisticated decay, using it to interrogate the complexities of female subjectivity and the profound, often painful, realities it encompassed.

In her 1997 installation, The Tomb of Begum Hazrat Mahal, showcased in the “Telling Tales” group exhibition at the British Council in Bath, UK, Hussain masterfully engages with the life and legacy of the Begum. Named after her final resting place, she was a daring figure akin to Joan of Arc who valiantly resisted the British East India Company during the Indian Rebellion of 1857–58. The installation operates on multiple evocative levels. It is accompanied by an Urdu narration that recounts the tumultuous life of this overlooked heroine. It speaks of her estrangement from her husband, her defence of both Hindus and Muslims in Lucknow, and her eventual escape. This narration sets a poignant backdrop to the exhibit. The space is adorned with black-and-white archival images of palaces, swords, and paintings, seamlessly interwoven with fragments from Hussain’s performances, where she appears in black attire.

What might initially seem like calligraphic text on the walls is revealed to be a meticulously arranged collection of blackened household tools, creating a striking poetic effect. At one end of the room, dark drapes cascade from the ceiling, their overlapping triangles forming a dramatic, shadowy landscape. On the opposite side, sculptures of halved, whitened papayas, symbols of fertility and femininity, rest on a bed of bleached, uncooked rice at the centre. Their stark whiteness contrasting with the surrounding darkness. Black-and-white photographs of her limbs mirror the defiant gestures of the Begum, creating a living archive. Rusty iron tools form calligraphic inscriptions, evoking a votive prayer. By repeating these motifs, Hussain amplifies their symbolic resonance, imbuing the installation with a sense of both immediacy and fluidity. Despite the weight of its themes, the work exudes a quiet, poignant intensity rather than sinking into overt morbidity, leaving a lasting emotional impression on the viewer, who is left contemplating both the Begum’s and Hussain’s enduring legacies.

During this time, while regularly visiting New York for treatment, Hussain connected with art historian Moira Roth and artists Zarina Hashmi and Jamelie Hassan, engaging in discussions on performance, activism, and feminist theory. These conversations deeply influenced her work, fuelling her return to India with a renewed sense of purpose. Having already begun exploring what it meant to be a Muslim woman, she now boldly confronted and deconstructed sexual representation, exposing its constructed nature.

In her daring 1998 performance Is It What You Think? she shed inhibitions, confronting her identity as both an artist and a woman. Dressed in black lace underwear with a paranda, she partially revealed the scars from her mastectomy and prosthesis beneath a black veil. As images of armed young women flashed across her body, she slowly read from a cloth-covered book, almost chanting. Through this intense moment, she confronted external and internal battles, asking, “Where does she belong? Has she fought for her rights? Is she defined by others?” Blurring lines between gender, religion, revolution, and mortality, Hussain’s performance was both provocative and vulnerable, challenging societal norms and expectations.

In homage to this work, art critic Geeta Kapur wrote the following in Art India in 1999: “Perhaps I hang too much on Rummana Hussain’s frail body, but she risks herself in a way that makes me shudder and review the more sanguine forms of survival that we seek for ourselves.”

India is once again grappling with the resurgence of right-wing politics, making this a fitting moment to revisit Rummana Hussain’s profound exploration of identity politics and her unwavering belief in the power of art as a catalyst for social change. Her work, deeply personal yet universally resonant, speaks to the struggles of today as much as it did to the conflicts of her time.

Hussain’s battle with cancer ended on July 5, 1999, at the age of 47, in her Mumbai home. Her loss was immense, but her legacy endures. As one of India’s pioneering performance artists, she mastered the delicate art of weaving the personal into the political, turning her own experiences into a reflection of broader societal struggles. In her work, the personal was never just her own—it was a mirror held up to the world, forcing us to confront uncomfortable truths. Though she is gone, her impact remains alive, a reminder of the transformative power of art in turbulent times.

I am indebted to Talwar Gallery for all its support and in facilitating my request for the required images. All images are copyright of the Estate of Rummana Hussain; Courtesy Talwar Gallery, New York | New Delhi

References:

MAP Academy. The article ‘Rummana Hussain’ was first published in April 21, 2022  https://mapacademy.io/article/rummana-hussain/ ‘Rummana Hussain, 47, Indian Conceptual Artist,’ by Holland Cotter, July 18, 1999, The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/18/nyregion/rummana-hussain-47-indian-conceptual-artist.html ‘The heady art of Rummana Hussain’ by Sanjukta Sharma, 21 Mar 2015, Livemint https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/XEdaKQFzGwo1kjKVkwsOiO/The-heady-art-of-Rummana-Hussain.html

1. Art Asia Pacific, Talwar Gallery: Rummana Hussain, September/October 2014, by Jyoti Dhar https://www.talwargallery.com/news/art-asia-pacific9

2. ‘The Sahmat Collective: Art and Activism in India since 1989’ February 14 – June 9, 2013, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago https://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/exhibitions/the-sahmat-collective-art-and-activism-in-india-since-1989/

3. ‘Rumanna (sic) Hussain (1952-99)’ by Fiza Jha, published in Archiving Feminism, Apr 26, 2019  https://medium.com/elm-2019/rummana-hussain-draft-1-f49a3f44b7f8

4. ‘Rummana’s Question: Is it what you think?’ text from a talk delivered by by Geeta Kapur at Sahmat, New Delhi, November 2009 https://cdn.aaa.org.hk/_source/digital_collection/fedora_extracted/20832.pdf

Rumana Husain

Rumana Husain is a writer, artist and educator. She is the author of two coffee-table books on Karachi, and has authored and illustrated over 90 children’s books. Four of her books have won awards in Pakistan, Nepal and India. She has been a contributor to various newspapers and magazines, and written hundreds of articles, travelogues, art and book reviews, and has also conducted numerous interviews in the print and electronic media.

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