PART-3: NED NOSTALGIA (1978-83)

Katchery Road, Karachi

Katchery Road is comparatively short commercial stretch of about 300-400 meters connecting two important and busy and commercial arteries of downtown Karachi i.e. M. A. Jinnah Road on one end and Shahrah-e-Liaquat on other. It used to have shops selling tricycles and bicycles for children. In South direction, on M. A. Jinnah Road, was located a famous “Lighthouse” Cinema (must’ve been demolished and replaced by commercial plaza by now). Behind it was (is) famous Lunda Bazaar for secondhand clothing and other household stuff and equipment. Along Lunda Bazaar was (is!) a “Paper Market” from where we used to buy (in weight, units) imported computer paper rolls (available for dot matrix printers) for our classwork notes etc. It was cheaper and its quality was superior to local paper for preparing assignments and class notes. In North direction, just across Shahrah-e-Liaquat lies famous Pakistan Chowk. Old NED Campus, Mitha Ram Hostel and famous & historic D.J. Science College are all located in the vicinity of Pakistan Chowk.

Our flat was situated almost at a corner of Shahrah-e-Liaquat and Katchery Road, therefore, it suited us to catch a point bus to and from NED at any hour. The flat was kind of an office whose two rooms were interconnected in series i.e. one room opening into another, while small kitchen and a washroom were located on a side wing of building separately from the flat. On M. A. Jinnah Road, in the left direction towards Tower/ Kaemari, and just opposite the grand KMC building was located an old Hindu Temple named Sri Swaminarayan Temple. While in right direction on M. A. Jinnah Road, beyond Dow Medical College, Jinnah Cloth Market/ Urdu Bazar and Radio Pakistan buildings, near Tibat Center was our main attraction for opting to live at Katchery Road: Cinemas, a lot of cinema houses. All newly released Pakistani Urdu and Hollywood English films were shown in these cinema houses. We watched plenty of new movies during our one-month long stay at Katchery Road, especially last late-night shows on weekends. The interesting thing to share is that we would always split while reaching at Tibat Center, would go to our respective cinema houses for watching our favorite films (I preferred English action movies, Ashok was fond of Urdu films). After watching films we would gather at some predefined meeting point and return back to our residence.

During our first week of stay at Katchery Road in August 1978 the monsoon played havoc with Karachi one night. The downpour was so heavy and unprecedented that it made devastating effects with huge lives and property losses. While at Katchery Road, the fasting month of Ramazan just begun. Living with a non-fasting Bengali and Ashok, and with no arrangements for Sehr and Iftaar I didn’t find it convincing and convenient to perform fasting.

So what we usually did during Ramazan was; after returning from NED everyday in the afternoon we would run to the Temple where a small restaurant was set for fulfilling and serving the vegetarian Hindu visitors. Ashok would ask me not to identify my religion and stay silent in the queue. He would do all the talking with them and that way we used to fill our tummies at lunch. Somehow owner of the restaurant observed that he was feeding more Muslims than Hindus at lunch hours. He therefore, one day, placed a staff member on checking the identities of customers who would ask for the name of customers before allowing them to buy food. I was caught red-handed and removed from the queue. Embarrassed and shameful I returned from the Temple, more starving. Nevertheless, an hour later I was enjoying omelet with bread at the flat that I prepared myself, first time ever in my life, after buying the food items from the bakery downstairs. I never tried to visit the temple at lunchtime in Ramazan anymore. Nevertheless, I continued to have supper there after Iftaar, normally Daal Chaawal with PapaR.

We would take some time to study in the afternoons and evenings doing our class assignments, however, it was hard to comprehend and complete the homework on our own. Hence, we would often catch an afternoon point bus and visit NED hostels to learn from classmates who used to reside there. In doing so we would also have had dinner in the hostel mess as guests. Eventually we would be coming back to Katchery Road in the last point bus that used to ply at 10 pm from NED to Pakistan Chowk and it would return to NED again at 1130 pm.

As our weekend nights were fixed for watching cinemas, we used to return home at midnight. On return, we would find one of the rooms of flat occupied with Bengali boy’s friends (all hailing from Memon business community residing in the vicinity, chewing Paan and Gutka in abundance) who would play cards and make noise till wee hours of next morning.

During the first semester we found Engineering Drawings as one of the tough subjects because like our other classmates we did not learn it during our early education. Since we joined late we also missed initial classes of it, thereby basic concepts like how to draw elevations, plans and especially cutting and drawing their sections. Similarly, we missed getting information about types of drawing lines, and use of different pencils and their grades according to the hardness or softness.

We bought drawing boards, T-squares, Set Squares and other pertinent drawing related equipment from Shamsi Store located near Habib Bank Plaza and started making drawings’ assignment. My first sketch was a disaster. I drew sidelines/ boundaries of an object as centerline (combination of hyphens plus dots instead of continuous dark line). Our teacher named Mr. Iqbal Khatri (as I vaguely recall) put a big cross over my drawing with blue ballpoint pen and said: Drawing is language of an engineer. If you can’t understand ABC of drawings, you can’t move ahead in civil engineering. 

Continued in Part 4: Section C ….

PART-2: NED NOSTALGIA (1978-83)

Enter NED

Just how did it happen that I made it into NED?

NED and Mehran had an arrangement between two institutions that both would reciprocate 30 students upon admission every year. Logically, all top students from the interior Sindh (sans if any opted otherwise) and all bottom students would go (sent forcibly, perhaps) to NED. But, what happened till 1977 was that 30 influential (politically or other means) and desiring students from interior Sindh would manage to get themselves transferred to NED, and similar number of desiring (if any) students from NED would be sent to Mehran. Generally cursed but lucky for us that General Ziaul Haque imposed martial law in the country in 1977 toppling the democratic but troubled Bhutto government. And it paved the way for 30 students from the interior Sindh to make an entry at NED. These 30 seats were distributed to all districts of interior Sindh. From Larkana I, Ashok and Aslam Khan had the honours of going to NED. Don’t remember all 30 names but some top students were: Mukesh (topped in the entire Hyderabad Board) and Iqbal from Nawabshah, Abdul Ahad, Sharafat Ali and Ishrat Hussain (late), Suleman Khoja and Asif Tajik from Hyderabad, Aslam Ansari, Tariq Panhwar and Sheraz Memon from Dadu, Mumtaz Memon and Aleem Soomro from Moro, Mukesh and Indar Lal (late) from Jacobabad, Abdullah Rajar (late), Nasir Jaleel and Aziz Memon from Mirpurkhas, Asghar Ali (late) from Khairpur and Mohammad Ali from Badin, etc., who made it into NED in 1978.

Ashok’s father was in the film distribution business and therefore he used to travel frequently between Larkana and Karachi. He had a rented small 2-room office cum apartment for this purpose on Kachehry Road (linking Liaquat Road near Pakistan Chowk on one end and M. A. Jinnah Road near Lighthouse Cinema on other end). A Bengali young boy employed by Ashok’s father used to take care of this flat. We landed in the afternoon directly from visiting the Registrar office Mehran University Jamshoro. We already had gathered information that a point bus runs from Old Campus of NED at about 0700 am in the morning for the new campus located on University Road.

Next morning we were sitting in the bus silently and sheepishly lacking even a shred of confidence and wearing formal dress; shirts that were not tucked into bell-bottom pants. Karachiites sitting around us were informal with most of them wearing colourful T-shirts and jeans. They looked brimming with confidence while chatting with each other about homework, assignments, cricket, etc. They were carrying engineering textbooks, folded drawing sheets, and T-square. This made us under pressure since we knew that our session had already started about a month ago. Very few students used to carry shoulder bags or backpacks during 1978. Almost all would carry textbooks, notebooks and copies weighing 5 to 10 kg in their hands. Some would wrap a strand around them to prevent from falling/ slipping down and scattering on the ground.

The first sight of NED was unforgettable and romancing. I was awestruck with the architectural design of the campus. It looked like an “oasis in the desert”. Huge open spaces all around the small cluster of beautiful buildings looked enchanting. The arrangement of classes, departments (Civil, Electrical and Mechanical only), a gigantic auditorium, a centrally located fountain surrounded by square-shaped large open area made NED a beautiful campus. Similarly, impressive Admn block, workshops & laboratories, a canteen, and most importantly, a centrally located “Girls Common Room” are also worth mentioning. The location and design of J-shaped four hostels (J-1 to J-4) with large green areas around and within were immaculate too. Perhaps it was mid August of 1978 when we alighted from the point bus and set our feet on the campus. Everything in and around NED campus looked beautiful and enchanting in a perfect cloudy weather with cool sea breeze blowing at a high velocity. It was so windy that boys had to control flying long hair with their respective palms and girls would be grabbing their dupattas tightly on their chests as well as trying unsuccessfully to pull down their shirts flying up to their waists.

Decades later, while celebrating Silver Jubilee reunion of our batch in 2008 we gathered again at NED and took a bus ride in and around the campus. It was indeed a heartbreaking moment; additional construction for creating more departments, classes, facilities, etc., had ruined beauty of the campus. Expansion is good but it should have been properly designed. The essence of campus’ beauty should have been kept intact.

Our admission process completed in a day; processing done in the haunted-like Mohammad Bin Qasim (MBQ)-2 hostel whose ground floor was used for admission office whereas two top floors remained deserted or sparsely occupied. MBQ-1 was however fully occupied with boarders. We were advised to attend the classes immediately. Out of 30 applicants coming from the interior Sindh, each of the 10 students bunch was admitted to Civil, Electrical and Mechanical disciplines respectively. We, I and Ashok went to Civil Department on our choice. I was assigned 163 Roll Number and Ashok, 164 according to alphabetical order. We were advised to attend Section C class.

We also got enrolled for hostel accommodation. We both were allotted room # 13 on sharing basis on ground floor in the long wing in J-1. (Living in this long wing was exciting and fun too. I would explain about it in some other ensuing “Part”). However, Mr. Nauman (Elect Deptt), the Warden of the hostel informed us that the out-going senior batch was in the process of vacating the hostels therefore, it would take a month to get possession of your room. Alternatively, he recommended that if we wished to shift in the hostel immediately we could share a big study room on top floor of the hostel where 10 or so other hostel accommodation aspirants were already perched in. We opted to live rather at Katchery Road, Karachi city for a month, for reasons other than studies. Continued….