Morning comes with the arrival of sea shells. The breeze brushes lightly against the sand. Migratory birds take a last dip in the water before venturing out for long journeys ahead. The sunshine reflects on the sea surface to split into tiny rainbows that last only for a nano second. The fog slowly recedes into the horizon. The day at Sea View road, also called Clifton beach, has begun.
In this backdrop (which is not merely a romanticised visual from the past but an eyewitness account of a dawn from the last winter), the stinking black water and the trashy shore are still a good enough break for many from their daily chores; a breath of relief, and a novel offer of open space to residents of the jungle of filth that this metropolitan has become.
This stretch of a few miles still remains the best picnic spot for a large, or probably the largest, chunk of Karachi's population. It is safe, accessible and affordable.
The rich can go anywhere. If you're the Prado-owning type, your choice picnic spot could be Hawks Bay, or maybe further westwards toward Gwadar. In fact, why not Dubai? It is much safer than this godforsaken city, be it your life or your money.
But, for folks like my barber, Iqbal Hussein, the only option to put a smile on the faces of his family is to take them out on a visit to Sea View.
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Feel the generosity of this sea, the endpoint of all that we, our animals and our industries excrete day and night. If you happen to be on this shore some day at dawn, and the tide is low, any hazardous trash that all environmental syllabi have ever named, can be found here, and in abundance, side by side with dead fish and other dying marine fauna.
Also read: Grim tidings
Not to mention a subhumans searching food in this pile of garbage, along with some nightlong hungry cats and dogs, breaking their fast together.
Feel the generosity of this sea as it still feeds a few in whatever form it can.
You may also see fishermen, whose songs and stories make the stuff of poetic lore and legend; the culture of this very land. Yet, all I can see besides the burnt skins, the malnourished children, the sorrows on their sweating foreheads, the nets that get entangled on the sand as they pluck the fish they've caught out of the loops, is just enough of a catch for an evening meal.
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Strolling a couple of miles southwards on the same road, a multi-million dollar posh residential establishment is slowly rearing its head – it guarantees a private beach for its residents.
A few metres down stands the graveyard of our administrative and engineering expertise; an ambitious project which had promised to provide clean drinking water to the neighborhood of a few hundred thousand people, a decade ago. It is still not operational and its potential users are at the mercy of the not-that-unknown tanker mafia, like all the millions of other thirsty souls of the city by the sea.
Also read: The sea is not for the poor
Then come the eateries. A crazy few may be criticising the conversion of bookstores to bakeries and restaurants, but here, all these are genuine business ventures serving our undying appetite and our perennially ballooning bellies. Some of these will charge you for a family meal with a bill more than what Iqbal Hussein, my barber, probably earns during a whole month.
Turning back, and reaching the same crowded part of the beach, I see people of all ages, mostly from the lowest income groups, enjoying themselves against the backdrop of distant KPT buildings and an orange setting sun.
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If one could picnic in the stink of this area, the scatterings of camel dung and the silencer-less 'Made in Shersha' fancy quad bikes, it may be worth an evening...and probably worth anything for so many who get themselves transported here in open Suzuki vans, Qingqis or on rust-eaten motorbikes.
This is their Venice, their Brighton, their Bangkok. And for them, if the sands are not pristine white or the waters not cerulean blue, it is only due to the graying shadows of the evening, or the changing seasons of time.
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Tea stalls are numerous, and may offer you dhoodhpatti, often with the topping of a thin film of sand. The bhuttas may be tasteless in this damp surrounding, but rest assured, that millions of litres of fizzy drinks, tons of juice boxes of brands unheard of, and unsealed water bottles will always be there for you. And thank god the police seem to be allowing couples to come without a copy of their Nikahnama along...attested by a gazetted officer.
Eid makes it a hotspot. Hundreds, if not thousands, gather here for festivities along with their families in a city which indiscriminately starves all its inhabitants of any real entertainment.
There are a handful of parks, museums and other historical places to go to, but how many would be enough for a teeming populace of 25 million? Nobody, it appears, has the time to think about this. Everyone is too preoccupied with keeping this city running and at whatever minimum level humans can exist.
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Once on the beach, how careless and thankless these people become, causing a great inconvenience to those who, in the end, have to take responsibility of whatever happens in this great City of Lights. They mind no precautions and sometimes get themselves drowned only for the sake of a little fun.
Last year, during Eid vacations, almost two dozen lost their lives. Authorities reacted quickly and locked down the beach. It was off-limits for two months, till well after the summer season had passed. Bravo. What a great solution. Then, it was reopened with almost no change in the arrangements, no new facilities or safety and security measures in place.
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During those weeks, none could find a few hundred thousand rupees to put up some concrete benches, some new pavers, some guard railings, or a few more trash bins out of the Rs70 billion annual development budget for the province.
Also read: To swim or not to swim that is the question
Still, thank god for nature, and its generosity of water, breeze, sea shells, rainbows and graying-orange evenings.
A new Eid is a few weeks away now. So is the monsoon. But very little about the city has changed in this last one year.
The sea, too, has once again been locked down by authorities in a move to prevent loss of life. Instead of implementing new measures to keep the beach accessible for everyone; to make it safe for people to take a dip in the waters without getting carried away by the current, the government has shown once again just how far it can go to avoid actually solving a problem.
Where he will take his kids this Eid, I don't know, but I wish Iqbal Hussein and family a safe summer and joyous Eid holidays.
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