20.05.12

From the 17th floor of Avari towers you get a bird's eye view of Karachi, and Dinshaw Avari, director of the hotel, knows his city well. In the hazy distance he points out Jinnah's tomb and down below the red tiled roof of what was once Ruttie Jinnah's house, now a museum. A disused racecourse speaks volumes for the present times and the city sprawls up to the distant hills and the orderly slum of Orangi beyond. Dinshaw's parents won the gold in the Enterprise class sailing in the 1982 Asian Games for Pakistan and his brother Xerxes represents the country in sailing. The Avaris are part of a small Parsi community in Karachi which has lost much of its cosmopolitan flavour over the years. Like the Goans, many of them have migrated to Canada and other places.  

“Karachi today is a raw new postmodern city,” says Karachi Megacity of our Times edited by Hamida Khuhro and Anwer Mooraj. What would happen if 300,000 people came into Mumbai every year, asks a Karachi resident. Not difficult to imagine for a Mumbaikar. From a city predominantly of Hindus, Karachi became a refuge to migrants from India, mostly Muslim. Later came the Afghans, and other communities and the existing Goan, Hindu, Parsi population found themselves out of depth. The “Gora” cemetery still exists (“No pictures please,” says an old caretaker) there is a small space for Kerala Muslims in a burial ground and Jinnah's white tomb stands tall on a hillock, ghostly white among the low grey buildings. Designed by an architect from Mumbai, a ceremonial guard in blue keeps vigil over the founder of Pakistan.

Source: The Hindu