If you read one magazine this week, read
AAJ (QUARTERLY)
The magazine has come out with a double issue entitled Karachi ki Kahani in two parts priced at Rs 100 each. “Understanding the city needs sci- vig and vice versa…”, the issue opens with this quote from an expert on urban issues who speaks of the lost art of reading the city, loving and understand- ing the city. Karachi forms the background of the special number which focuses on the city as its cosmopolitan vari- ety. Drawing on sources in English, Urdu and Sindhi, it includes historical narratives, reports, interviews, descriptive features, analytical as well as imaginative essays, autobio- graphical pieces and reminiscences of times and people the city has seen. Naeem and John Brunton narrate the British colonial era when transformed a sleepy backwater town into a bustling commercial and cultural centre. A section on the city father Jamshed Nassanvanji focuses on the kind of figure which Karachi still needs. Pir Ali Mohammed Rashdi narrates a fascinating account of pre-partition Karachi. Mohan Kalpana and Sheikh Ayaz speak of the city at the time of partition. A.J. Hassan provides the developmental and analytical framework for the rapidly changing city scenario. In a satirical piece, there is a justa ‘pade ‘Miss Karachi’, a Sindhi girl involved with a Lucknow-set- tled ‘who-is-who’. Is she debat- ed whether she belongs to ‘us’ or to ‘them’ and ‘Greater Kar- kari’ is “the final solution.” Writers Ahsan Mortaza and Asad Mohammad Khan give glimpses of the city which formed the back- ground for their lives. Challenging fact and fic- tion, Fahmida Riaz has created a moving portrait of Karachi’s ‘killing fields.’ Writer Hameed Khan speaks of the residents of a large white residents of one ‘kacchi abadi’. Nasim Iqbal has prepared an oral history of their locality. Educationist Anita Ghulam Ali, journalist Zubeida Mustafa and Mohammad Hanif speak of their Karachi in a plu- rality of voices and in different modes with shifting points of view, a complex file and fas- cinating picture of Karachi emerges. The pain, the anguish, the joy, the rich- ness of knowing and loving Karachi. If you are not fin- ished with more than 800 pages written in K’s Pothi this week, then it is defi- nitely recommended for carrying over to the next week. KHANDAR JISM AIN SEHAT by Attiya Dawood. The book in Sindhi, is a debut venture by WADA, Women’s Publisher’s house in Sindhi. To be published in Urdu soon, the book tackles semi-literate women, both in the urban and rural areas. The writer has provided crucial information in simple language about subjects ranging from puberty to menopause. Based on exclusive interviews of Dr Shah Shah, a gynecologist, Attiya Dawood explodes the myths and taboos by explain
