The night I discovered what a hardened Karachiite I am.

Recently, when I spoke to an old friend in the US, she sounded very concerned over the frequent bomb blasts in Karachi. I told her we had long got used to them. For instance, on the afternoon of October 16, when one of the parcel bombs exploded not far from the Karachi bureau of Daily Times, a colleague’s, “Oh, my God!” was all the reaction to the roar of the detonation. No panic, not even noticeable nervousness, just anxiety for family members or friends in nearby offices, or possibly out on the streets at that moment.

One night a couple of weeks before the elections, I discovered I’ve really come of age in the kind of Karachi in which we are living since the mid-1980s. Knocking off work after midnight, I was walking to a place about ten minutes from the office, where you’re almost certain to find a rickshaw or taxi at that hour. I was nearly there when I heard a vicious burst of bang-bang-bang very close by. I swear I even heard the “ping” that’s supposed to accompany a bullet whizzing past your head. It was election time, and I’d been editing too many copies about pre-election violence in Karachi, including deaths in shootings. The massacre of seven people at the Christian NGO had taken place only days ago. In any case, we’ve all become wise to the fact that, just as no point on earth is invulnerable to earthquakes, though some regions are more prone, you don’t necessarily have to be in an MQM or Haqiqi area for shooting to break out near you, particularly at night. So I retraced my steps. It did cross my mind, though, that the explosions might be firecrackers.

I’m no stranger to gunfire and the tension accompanying it. Not even to the sound of more lethal missiles than bullets. In July 1987 (I think it was just a few days before the two bombs ripped through Bohri Bazaar and left 72 people dead), I was woken just after dawn to unusual blasts. Couldn’t be lightening, I remember thinking drowsily. It turned out it had been a clash between pro- and anti-government Iranians a couple of miles away, in which rockets were exchanged. Some years later, when Karachi had begun to descend into a civil war-like situation, there was an intense burst of machinegun fire in the afternoon right behind my home; and I lived in a “safe” area not infested by MQM and Haqiqi. Then, there were the mid-1990s when hundreds of people were killed in political violence some months (278 in December 1994 and 334 the following June). But if you haven’t heard a fusillade of firearms, come to my present neighbourhood on the evening the Eid moon is sighted or at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, when celebrants usher the New Year in. On those occasions, I stay away from windows and the doors of the two little balconies of my home. And this district is also perfectly safe and peaceful otherwise (so safe, for me at least, that a top police official lives right across the street, with armed guards outside his home). With many people, however, like some residents of my area, the gun is becoming a status symbol, and what’s the use of having one if you don’t fire it off in celebration? That night before the elections, though, was the first time I experienced gunfire at close range, or thought so.

People complain of things not being genuine. My grumble is that many things are getting too genuine, like the increasingly realistic portrayal of violence in English films. But, speaking of “genuineness,” how about this? If you take the bus in Karachi nowadays, you can’t escape the tinny Urdu “pop music” blaring from the speaker above every other window. I usually request the driver to turn the volume down a bit, or try to endure the cacophony if he doesn’t agree. Some drivers still play what I call real music: Indian and Pakistani film songs from the ’50s, ’60s and the mid-decade of the ’70s (barring a few exceptions a little later); until, shall we say, the death of Mukesh in 1976. But very often a chink, jingle or some other form of electronic “jhankar” keeps time with the beat, drowning out the tabla. The jhankar makes even my favourite melody grate on my ears. And you know what the noise is billed as on the cover of the audiocassette? “Hi-fi (i.e., high-fidelity) jhankar.” Lately, it seems, firecrackers have been similarly “genuinized” (my word).

I have exploded a lot of firecrackers in my boyhood. There was this little ball (covered with red or purple tissue paper), which you held tightly in your fist, blew on it for heat and hurled it with all your might. (I’m glad I still hear it now and then.) There were several others; like those used in toy pistols. But the new “realistic” kind seem to be meant less to thrill than to make you jump out of your skin. One such monster, as a young colleague who later filled me in on the subject told me, is popularly known as “kalashan-patti”—”kalashan,” from “kalashnikov”; that’s Pakistan’s “kalashnikov culture” for you. Another, for some reason, is called “China bomb.” (The colleague seems to know a lot about firecrackers because he gets a regular supply, from a policeman friend. Where does the cop get them? He impounds them for “illegal possession,” and then takes them home to his children or hands them out to friends.)

Well, I kept walking back towards the office until I came to the roundabout near it. Some young people were having the time of their life electioneering there—illegally pasting Haqiqi posters on the futuristic-looking dry fountains that are shaped somewhat like boxes set one on top of the other. (Two posters are on that “public place” to this day, although the area is miles away from Haqiqi’s turf.)

“Were you exploding firecrackers?” I asked them, since firecrackers are an almost essential part of the hurly-burly of elections, never mind the strict official ban on them during election campaigns. “No, they’ve been going off at the wedding at the gymkhana there,” said one of the boys, pointing in the direction from where I’d come. Stupid question. But it isn’t that I was shaken, and therefore disoriented and couldn’t think straight. It’s only that, since the matter was serious, I wanted to exclude any outside chance of the sound I’d heard not being gunfire. The “gunfire” (most probably kalashan-patti) didn’t send me into a panic, or give me a galloping heartbeat or clammy hands. And I didn’t run, because I thought it a bad idea to become an eye-catching target for whoever was doing the shooting.

Still, although I’d gladly stand in for an absent reporter and go to the former Haqiqi “no-go areas” for a story, I’d be more than reluctant if the bureau chief asked me to visit Landhi, Korangi, Malir or the Lines Area after nightfall.

By Our Guest Writer Asim Ghani.
First published in Daily Times- http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_4-12-2002_pg3_5