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 ….