These were the lines I began humming to uplift my sagging spirits after I read Abbas Nasir’s recent column titled ‘What a city to plunder’. My former boss and long-time friend was reminiscing about the tranquil and peaceful Karachi of his boyhood days while lamenting the horrific situations the once city of lights and amity plunges into off and on, with a very dim light at the end of the tunnel.

He also touched upon his weekend trips to Clifton beach. As a teenager in the mid-70s I also visited the beach on weekends.

Clifton’s manmade recreational spots included the Playland, the ‘dodgem cars’, a rusty rollercoaster, a creaky merry-go-round and of course the Kothari Parade and its promenade extending into the sand dunes. The ancient Hindu temple was so obscure then that hardly anybody was aware of its existence.

My favourite spot, however, was a wooden stage adjoining the ‘well of death’. I would sit on the sandstone wall of the promenade for hours and enjoy the dance performances. The performances were made on well-chosen songs mostly. The above mentioned comedic song was frequently played. I marvelled at the talent of the performer, a tall pile of bones from Lyari with thick sideburns, considered fashionable among the youth of the day.

As he performed, a few people ambling up and down the promenade would halt to enjoy his performance. Seeing a swelling crowd, he would pause and invite the picnickers to the ‘well of death’, wherein he would announce sat the daredevil motorcyclists ready to roar along the steep walls in the well-shaped structure put up with wooden planks.

I would often wonder why he wasted his talent at the well when really he should have joined the then booming film industry. One day to my pleasant surprise, I saw the Lyari man standing alongside popular film star Shabnam on a cinema publicity signboard. The dancer was cast in that film with a group of his community youths. The role they were given was that of a typical African tribe performing a dance in garb cobbled together from leaves and green grass.

Ibrahim Dada was one of the several singers and dancers from Lyari, who made their name at the Karachi commercial stage in the 1970s and formed their own music groups.

Singing and dancing seems to be running in the blood of this lively community of the city’s oldest area. But they also excel in many sports, including football, boxing and donkey-cart racing. Some people believe that football is not being patronised by the government because a meritorious national football team would be dominated by Lyariites.

Commenting on a recent photo published in the metropolitan section of Dawn in which a young man was seen hurling a petrol bomb at law-enforcement personnel, a colleague commented: "Look how high he has thrown a burning mass. Lyariites really excel in whatever field they are made to compete!"

With teargas shelling, shootouts and protest strikes having become frequent, the residents’ sufferings have grown proportionally. At such times, people run out of household goods of daily consumption; with no power supply, no water, no transport, nothing but the fumes of burning tyres, teargas and gunpowder to inhale. Gangsters and drug peddlers are also there to exploit the jobless youth and add to the hapless residents’ woes.

It is really lamentable that Lyari has over the years developed a negative image. Most reporters relish referring to the locality as ‘crime-infested’, where ‘gang warfares’ have now branched into ‘ethnic clashes’ also. When there is no other trouble, ‘creative’ authorities are eager to create one in the name of ‘operation against criminals’. And with what has been happening there over the years, any negative label can be slapped on the locality and its residents.

Even in the ongoing SSC examination in the area, board officials more keenly look for candidates cheating in the exam as if the menace has vanished elsewhere in the city.

Among the political labels, its denizens bear are the ‘diehard PPP supporters’. Has the party forgotten that Benazir Bhutto had chosen Lyari to be married off among those Jialas chants ‘Jeay Bhutto’?

It was the constituency of Lyari from where she had obtained a larger number of votes (almost 100,000) than from her home constituency of Larkana in the 1988 general election. Lyari was also home to the relentless and chivalrous struggle launched by the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy in 1983, when other parts of the city were lending support to the military dictator by maintaining a criminal silence and staying away from the agitation.

And is not this the locality which has returned numerous PPP candidates to the national and provincial assemblies? They include Asif Ali Zardari, the powerful incumbent president of Pakistan. And this is probably the constituency where PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is planning to launch his parliamentary career from.

No one contests the government’s measures against extortionists, gangsters and drug dealers in the area. But if such elements do exist there, they should be weeded out once and for all and the peace-loving residents be spared of repeated torments.

Saiyan toray payyan paroon, Ungli na maror, haye!