The rain on your parade

kro thio bha? September 1, 2009

Posted by Mystic in food, history, karachi, lingo, people, social.
2 comments

Contributing writer, Mystic, writes about his community members.

okay so as suggested by abbas, here is an attempted post on the most influential business community of karachi, the memon community!!

yes i am a memon, but not quite. i do not speak the language, nor do i understand it. i do not follow the typical customs and traditions and usually i do not sound like a memon (awaiting comments where people cite examples of me sounding like a memon…go ahead, make my day!). but yes, i am a memon. an insult to the community because of the above factors but the fact remains that i am one of them.

so here goes a small history lesson on memons where i attempt to understand them and find myself somewhere along the way.

did you guys know that memons are defined as an ethnic group? how cool is that! i mean i’m not just a plain urdu speaking pakistani from karachi, i belong to a distinct group, though one that does not enjoy a very good reputation being the butt of plenty of jokes. but who cares, i’m different!

annyywayyy, memon is an adaptation of the arabic word “momin” meaning faithful. who knew that? i have to thank abbas for suggesting a post on this because am learning some new stuff here.

there are various theories in history as to the origins of memons but there are two that are the most common. one, that the memons were originally arabs and came to the sub-contitnent as part of Muhammad bin qasim’s army where they were known as “Maymenah”, meaning right wingers. over time, as is the habit of our people to ruin names, Maymenah became memon.

the second theory is that the inhabitants of thatta converted to islam and were banished by their hindu brothers and were invited by the then ruler of gujrat to come and settle there. note that this is 1548 that we are talking about. upon conversion they were called momin which was again modified to memon by the winds of time.

whichever theory u choose to believe, there is a rich history there including faith, spirituality and war and conflict.

i belong to a group of memons called “cutchi” memons who trace their ancestors to kutch in gujrat. then there are the “halai” memons who trace their origins to kathiawar, again in gujrat and then there is third group which stayed back in sindh.

the language is as foreign to me as is malayalam or tamil. it sounds weird though i do regret the fact not knowing the language because often there comes a time where u want to say something u do not wish for another person to understand. but oh well, ab nahin aati toh nahin aati.

interestingly enough, it is only the halai memons who speak the language called memoni. the cuthci group speaks a kutchi dialect while the group from sindh speaks sindhi and the memoni language is actually a combination of the two.

the word “jamat” is heard quite often when referring to memons. the role of the jamat is considered quite important within the various groups of the memon community. the jamat basically serves as a social welfare centre for the group and provides rules and guidelines and includes the issuance of marriage licenses and resolution of matrimonial disputes. i have to admit that i have only been to the jamat once in my life and that was also during ramadan to give alms. i have never attended a gathering there and so far that is not something i regret.

memons have had an important role to play in the development of not just the city of karachi but also the nation as a whole. however, sticking just to karachi, the memon’s  have contributed immensely to the growth of the city (i am choosing to ignore the corrupt factors). you can go to any gathering of your choice, any school or college or a place of work, and you are sure to run in to a few memons. the biggest players of the karachi stock exchange belong to the memon community, some of the biggest business groups such as the Adamjee Business Group and the Fecto Group of Indsutries to name a couple of long running groups and the JS Group and the Westbury Group of Companies to a name of couple of the more recent market forces.

did you guys know that iqbal qasim, former pakistani cricketer from the 1980′s was also a memon?

then there are Abdul Sattar Edhi and Mushtaq Chhapra, founders of the Edhi Welfare Trust Foundation and The Citizens Foundation respectively.

and to all those, including me, who consider memons kanjoos, here is a list of their social contributions:

Larkana college of commerce established by Late Abdul Fatah Memon (1920-2002), former MLA Sindh Assaebly (1952), Ambassador of Pakistan to Saudi Arabia and Somalia (1963) in early fifties.

The Jama Masjid of Durban built by the Memons, is the largest MASJID in the Southern Hemisphere.

Abdullah Haroon established Hajiyani Hanifabai Girls School in Karachi in 1914, which was the first girl’s school in Sindh for Muslim girls.

Hajiyani Khadija, although an illiterate widow, was the founder of Raunaq-eIslam chain of girls schools, colleges and industrial homes under the banner of the Pakistan Memon Women’s Educational society

well social contributions aside, i still consider them kanjoos now i guess i’m moving on to the fun/mean/rude part for a bit. i cannot help it. whereas i admit that i am part of the community and their contributions above, if they are the butt of jokes, then its not wrong because for most part of it, they deserve to be! u see a guy walking down the street with hair patted down with pints of oil and having a side parting and he’s got a paan ki laali on the corner of his mouth, you can rest assured that he is a memon! racist? no. stereotypical? maybe. fact? yes!

 the accent does not help them either. there is this certain twang most of them have not been able to hide when they speak a language other than memoni/kutchi/sindhi that easily separates the memons from the non. but what i realised is that they are oblivious to this fact and i am going to borrow something from russell peters here.

“i dont think that they know that they’re being made fun of. even when you say a memon joke to their face, they think that there is this one person somewhere on the face of this earth who is being made fun of. i seriously believe that is what they think the reality of it is!” poor bastards!

and well no post of mine is complete without a reference to food. some of the most amazing desi places in town have been setup by memons, such as meerat, noorani kabab house, memon food centre and baakra hotel. how can i forget the gola gandas in dhoraji going by the names of salim qadir ka uncle gole and qadir salim ka amla gola! but these are outside places and i know i do not appreciate and follow a lot of the traditional customs but i do enjoy a good plate of khowsay (a mix of a different sort of qeema with the traditional desi curry minus the pakoras and noodles topped with slims or any other sort of crispy garnish you like..sounds weird but dont knock it till you’ve tried it) and a few maal puras which i like to call pancake ka baap (small round sweet fried flour thingys, crispy on the edges, soft in the centre)! sorry but food excites me..

i guess this has been quite a lesson. hope i made some sense out of it. don’t think i got anywhere though. oh and as for the title of this post, it means “kya hua bhai?” or for some of the english, “wassup brother?”