AS I was recently searching for some old newspapers, I came across the article ‘Garden: not green anymore’ (March 31, 2013), which recalled that in the 1940s Garden West was as clean as a whistle. Stressing that if one visits the area now, meaning 2013, one will have the shock of one’s life. I actually got this shock over 30 years earlier, in 1981.

As a government servant, I was posted to Karachi in January 1981. One day I thought of going to Garden West to revisit my childhood residence where I had lived 40 years earlier. Even at that time, I found Garden West in a very bad shape, which naturally made me extremely sad.

I have a lot of memories of the period I spent in Garden West from 1942 to 1945. There were many notable personalities living in the neighbou-rhood, such as future provincial chief minister Pir Ilahi Buksh and future chief justice of the Sindh High Court Justice Abdul Hayee Qureshi, who was a law student back then. The clean and beautiful Lyari ‘naddi’ used to flow close to our street.

When it was school time for me, I was enrolled in Sindh Madressatul Islam, which is now a university. I had no conveyance problem as there was a tram, as seen in the accompanying photograph, going from what back then was called the Gandhi Garden, right up to Keamari with a few stops, including one at Bolton Market where I used to disembark the tram and would walk my way to the school which was just a short distance away. The same tram was taken on the return journey.

One day, I remember to date, I had to appear in the office of the general manager of the tram company, a British, to explain why I was travelling on the tram with a student pass on a weekend. He was a gentle person who let me go after I promised not to repeat the mistake.

As an octogenarian, I have a lot of stories and memories of the days gone by. I wonder, like many do, if we will be able to get those good old days back.

Salim Ahmed
Karachi

Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2023