So, Pakistan was once in possession of Lord Buddha’s hair! It is not hard to believe because this part of the world has seen many great civilisations come and go. It is likely that his hair was lying somewhere in our neck of the woods.

In the second last week of September 1964, a six-man Japanese Buddhist team visited Pakistan. The Pakistani government, as a gesture of goodwill, handed Buddha’s hair to the team. On Sept 22, Fumi Kojima, the leader of the delegation, speaking at the National Museum of Pakistan in Karachi, thanked our government for the gesture and iterated that the precious relic would be preserved in a special stupa built in Yomiuri land in a Tokyo suburb.

Come to think of it, apart from the goodwill effort, it could have been preserved in Pakistan as the country’s science-loving people were keen on having more infrastructural facilities for them to study and practise science. On Sept 21, a deputation of the Pakistan Medical Association (Karachi Zone) met West Pakistan Health Minister Begum Mahmooda Salim Khan and demanded that there should be one more medical college in Karachi. In those days students in that discipline were the most politically aware lot.

Every now and then they would come up with demand or another. And more often than not, those who called the shots did not disappoint them.

Speaking of politics, it was also the time when the presidential election was round the corner. On Sept 21the Awami League held a meeting. In a statement published in the newspapers on Sept 24 the league urged that the best way to pay tribute to those who sacrificed their lives for Pakistan was to strengthen democracy and strive to get Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah to the presidency. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.

It was in the ‘60s that Karachi’s population had begun to increase at an alarming rate. The trend seems to have continued in the course of 40 odd years. A news report published on Sept 26, 1964 indicated that in the last eight and a half months alone, Karachi had seen an addition of 29,953 people to its fast changing demographic landscape. The report termed it as a phenomenal rise in city population. In 2014, the word phenomenal, in that context, needs to be redefined.

Population or no population, the restaurant industry in the city has never been a small one. Karachiites have always been ardent foodies. But the restaurant owners at the time weren’t a sincere lot, which is why on Sept 25 the authorities asked 127 hotels to close their establishments on noncompliance of regulations. This means that even if the number of the eateries that were complying was equal to that of the noncompliant ones, the food industry was doing a booming business. No surprises then that the trend has carried on (at Hyderi, Zamzama, Saddar, Burnes Road and Tariq Road).

However, by this time an important establishment, namely the Steel Mills, hadn’t come into being. On Sept 25, a five-member US steel mission headed by L. A. Fugassi from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania arrived in Karachi in connection with the proposed steel mill. Two days later, on Sept 27, it was announced that work on the project might start in April 1965. Well, it happened much later.

Published in Dawn, September 22nd, 2014