Karachi's Toxic Romance

You know, it's funny; when you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags. Wanda the Owl

If you were born and bred in Karachi, today feels like a dream compared to the times we grew up in. Like most, my childhood school nights were mostly spent refreshing news websites hoping for the announcement of a strike so school would be called off. My prayers were seldom left unheard. The sound of firecrackers could easily be mistaken for gunshots- because it was more likely that they were in fact, gunshots. I had seen post bomb explosion blood painted facades, bullet riddled facades, imprinted memories of facades that had been. But I was lucky to never have visually witnessed such an incident- the television was (mostly)sure to blur such footage out.

Economic and political instability, unemployment and mass urbanization gave rise to corruption, crime and vigilantism. The number of paid criminals increased and for anyone to walk on the street- even in broad daylight was inviting trouble. Dare I say, Karachi was like Gotham but for the most bit we had no Batman and no Harvey. We had plenty of Luthers though.

The crux here is that Karachi was dangerous but I had belonged to the fortunate 2% who had not faced real desolation on a daily basis. 98% percent of the inhabitants of our subcontinental concrete jungle had it immeasurably worse; battling disease in slum dwellings, hunger as courtesy of poverty, drug addiction enabled by untreated trauma and the imminent threat of terrorism for dessert. The bottom line is that the 90`s and 00`s had not been an easy time to inhabit the city- here I insert an anecdote. SITE town was literally renamed to GoliMaar.

I went through the trouble to set this premise to provide a contrast for today- 2020 when the narrative about my city is finally changing from `hub of terror, sin and chaos` to;

"Beautiful skies, beaches and the best food in the world. Paradise on earth if one looks closely enough. My heart, my soul, my oxygen...."

My heart leaps with joy when I read captions of jolly sunbathers at French beach, foodies at Xanders cafe and cruisers of phase 8; surely this is because I am one of them and have had the privilege to see the city through this lens. But I have a secondary lens- that popular to contrary belief un-filters what the naked eye sees. This new lens is my magic wand that I fixate at my own whims and fancy to capture the striking, magical and mundane. It helps me clear up the fog and also removes the rose colored tint. My lens has enabled me to pinch into the cityscape that prior- I ignored or was too afraid to look at.

I may be treacherous to my city when I say that the Romanticisation of Karachi is premature. Wanda Pierce from Bojack Horseman says "You know, it's funny; when you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags," and I fear that by looking at our home through tinted shades we are making it difficult for ourselves to hope for better. We are holding ourselves and the city unaccountable for the noise it will reveal when the music fades away, the horrors that unveil when the dust settles. To find beauty in the most unimaginable places is a beautiful thing, but to be romanticize atrocities that just may not apply to us- is blinding privilege. Photographers such as myself have been known to play a part in this unnecessary romanticisation which is why I am going through the trouble to elucidate what I intend to do with my magic wand.

With my wand, when I capture rusted iron bars or Billennium like dwellings, I would like to invite you to think of my images the way I think of them. Showcasing a reservoir of room for improvement. A complaint well expressed. Visual accountability.

And if they seem like a celebration celebration of human resilience, in impossible circumstances.

Karachi is my heart and soul, and it will always be, but to call it heaven today would be throwing in the towel without giving her a real fighting chance.