The Karachi experience in a nutshell

Karachi
Karachi isn’t just a city. It is an experience. Rather, it is a city that simultaneously offers experiences on so many levels that it excites one to the point where they feed off its nervous energy. In all this, Karachi is an experience which draws calm stoicism amid the frenzy.
This experience is what the students of Habib University’s Centre for Media and Design tried to replicate on Friday evening with "KarachiScape" when the campu's foyer was lined with your typical roadside vendors selling ice cream cones, 'gol gappay' and French fries as the corridor echoed with excited squeals from students riding a rickshaw or taking a round a colourful Vespa.
Crowded as the poor corridor was, there was also the occasional suppressed shout from a visitor when the mopeds just scraped just by him or her. At the end of the foyer stood a lone Marwat Coach seeming uncomfortably out of place without any passengers or any race to run along its circuitous route through the city.
In the midst of all this,
photographs, illustrations
and short films taken and made by the students of media and design were on display, revealing yet more aspects of Karachi.
Moreover, “Reading Karachi” — a drive-by documentary — was screened with live soundtrack by Nafees Ahmed Khan on the sitar and Ustad Bashir Khan on the tabla.
The soulful music was tied together, quite ironically as things often are in this city, by a breakdance group from Lyari, a neighbourhood that owes its infamy to a vicious cycle of gang violence.
The event itself kicked off with a reading of a chapter of “Karachi You're Killing Me”, a thriller written by journalist Saba Imtiaz. Talking to The News later, Saba said it was rare to find such events where people could be seen genuinely enjoying themselves. “Usually with such cultural events people are compelled to sit through the whole thing.
But I saw students having good fun on the street simulation of Karachi's real-life environment and this really was a joy to see,” she said.
However, a former IBA graduate now employed at the provincial education department, Nadeem Hussain, remarked that though the concept was novel, its execution could have been a little better.
“The organisers should have tried to include a little more diversity,” he said.
“Having said that, we must acknowledge that live performances from Nafees Ahmed Khan and Ustad Bashir are things that our younger generation needs to be familiarised with, so it was great to see them incorporated in the event.”