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:
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?”
let bygones be bygones August 27, 2009
Posted by Halai in food, history, karachi, landmarks, places.3 comments
so we’re past the glory days of living in karachi when parents told us stories of yore and tales of liberal partying and fun days when karachi had trams running through it’s arteries. now comes the time for me to tell the next generation about what we used to enjoy which they never will.
let’s try and cover food first, because, as i mentioned before, i love to eat, and i always have. now let’s get one thing clear, i grew up in clifton. most of the exposure to major landmarks and institutions have been in this region. feel free to add your own institutions from your locale in the comments below.
there were a bunch of eateries in clifton which aren’t around anymore, and eating in clifton has historically been synonymous with boating basin. this was when people actually used to take their boats within the basin from the karachi boat club. this was when we used to take long walks along it’s shores and get scared of the big crabs coming out of the rockery and not the hooligans down at the other end of the park, and when pink flamingos could be seen flying in the horizon. nowadays all you get is a road named after a woman who may or may not have been the lady the city is named after, and a sorry excuse of mangroves which have been hacked away by land reclamation killing a thriving shrimp industry and loss of migration of swarms of migratory bird populations.
boat basin is very different today than it used to be about 20 years ago. first of all, as kids the only cool place really was Mr. Burger. they used to have a very fun orange theme which isn’t around anymore, but they’ve expanded and changed it to a pinky purply look. they used to hand out stickers and colouring penciles and have cool posters and pictures of characters famously stolen from mcdonaldland. now mr. burger is still around and hopefully remains so for a long time to come but the KFC right next to it, used to be a restaurant called Red Carpet. that’s gone. used to have atypical pakistani bbq and nothing much else, but used to be a staple landmark of boat basin.
if you kept walking along the footpath towards the other end of boat basin, coming next was Sagar video game arcade. all the goonda’s of the area would reside there. if your parents found out the kind of people you hung out with at Sagar, they wouldn’t really let you go back there. but arcade games were 5 Rs. for ten tokens so entertainment was cheap. But what came right after was another restaurant, this one with VERY dark tinted windows was Seagull. i know absolutely NOBODY who ever went in there, though it remained there for the longest time.
a few stores over you come across mezban. it’s the proud standing store that’s been around ever since i can remember, and always been the go to place for the best kabab rolls and chaat this side of (insert favourite bridge here).
and of course the hidden prize of boat basin ended it up with kings and queens, the only pizza in town at the time. (claims arise that jacana in PECHS on tipu sultan road was there prior and better but thats purely a debate up for another time).
another wonderful restaurant at the time was a bit further down the shoreline called Dolphin’s located on 26th street. i still remember the amazing beef stroganoff. too bad since it got replaced by a petrol station.
if you were interested in dessert, the only ice cream parlour in town worth going to was baloch ice cream, and the only reason i say this, is because theres nothing funnier than a mallu waiter trying to pronounce pistachio. if you were a bit more uppity in the social ladder, you may ended up having a few ventures over at Carvel’s parlour too but it wasn’t as fun there (people on the other side of the bridge would say kaybees but it doesn’t count since it’s still around).
there’s a whole bunch of other places that i used to hang out at, places that just aren’t around anymore. places that people still fondly remember and talk about, but those days are long gone. they are just memories. there are many other such landmarks that people talk about today and refer to by name which aren’t around…places like submarine roundabout where a submarine used to hang out at, lighthouse (though not really a lighthouse, but the fact that the cinema there was lighthouse cinema), and many other locales, but i suppose that will have to wait for another post.
feel free to mention other fun places below in the comments or anything in the clifton area that you remember that i missed out on. actually i think i only really spoke about boat basin. oh well. *shrug*
rain rain go away..no wait, don’t go! July 24, 2009
Posted by Mystic in food, history, places.2 comments
contributing writer mystic writes about the recent lashings of rain in our city of lights.
thera hua pani aur mari hui nani, dono bohat yaad aatay hain – batla bhai.
well now we don’t have to miss the thera hua pani atleast..there is plenty of it, out in the streets, on the roof tops and inside the houses! forget spending hundreds of thousands of rupees and going to venice, we got our own canals right outside the house gate! woohoo!
but rain in karachi has always been an experience..one of the things that made rain special in karachi, was the beach..all it needed was one cloud and a few drops of rain to send scores of peaple heading to the shore line and i have to admit, at times, i would be included in that (though at the same time i would be complaining about how these people have nothing else to do)..the rain would bring out all the thelay walas with the gol guppas and the gola gundas and the buttas and the wandering chai walas out in the open..rain in karachi as not just a source of relief from the heat, it was an opportunity to have fun and break away from the boring daily routineof life! and how can i not mention the pakoras and samosas that rain brings along with it..even those who stay away from pakoras and claim never to have enjoyed them are suddenly in the mood for some..
rain in khi has always had its fair share of problems but one cannot deny the joy it brings when u head out to the beach in cloudy cool rainy weather with friends in tow or if you sit outside with a plate of samosas/pakoras in ure hand..oh and not to forget, it often got u days off from school! nobody wants it not to rain!
abcd khatoon : amreeka main barish hoti hai, pani foran saaf hojaata hai. yaha dekho, kitna pani jama hojaata hai.
karachiite: haan toh shanaakht hai barish ki! pata toh chale barish hui hai..
now for all those hard liners who will come out and claim that oh that rain causes abc or xyz problems, you’re right cuz it does but it doesnt rain everyday so enjoy it.. i know the problems and the issues and the faults within our government and its policies..it pisses me off to but for once, just for a little while, i would not like to be bogged down by those thought..
like they say drink responsibly, in khi when raining, bathe responsibly!
“please sir, may i have some more” – oliver twist July 16, 2009
Posted by Halai in food.17 comments
i like to eat. more specifically i love to eat. eating is one of those fundamentally glorious objectives our supreme creator has given humanity. and we get to do it three times a day, every day. the best part is with the diversity in the indo-subcontinent, we get to eat foods that no other culture on the planet could even dream about. forget bobby flay and gordon ramsay, they ain’t got nothing on chef zakir.
pakistani food in it’s various forms is an art, almost. there’s different ways of cooking each dish. even a simplistic breakfast can overturn into a lavish feast of paya, nihari, lassan anda, goat cheese spreads, maal-poora’s, malai and some halwa puri and channa. the advantage we have is that the diversity in the history of our cultures is so rich, we have inherited all of the diaspora of food and are now getting to enjoy it. feel like food from lucknow, or delhi, or hyderabad or peshawar, it’s all available within a fifteen minute drive usually.
historically the reason for our foods being so diverse are generally geographic. with such a vast climate across the sub-continent, preparation of foods have different requirements. for example, the further south you get, karachi, delhi etc., the spicier foods get because spices were used as a preservative to prevent spoilage in warmer climates. the further north and west you get, you have a drier, cooler climate with a hotter sun and you have drier palates and ease of cooking things like sajji’s and other such delicacies which are generally a bit blander with more garnishings.
come today, ask a karachiite where the best bbq in town is. any of the kids in clifton and defence will scream out bbq tonight without giving a second thought. too bad they will never experience going to bundoo khan’s and sharing a meal with stray cats. too bad they will never get to go to al-hamra’s. too bad they will never go to billy’s. too bad they will never go to meerath. too bad they will never go to usmania. too bad they will never go to noorani kebab house. too bad they will never go to kaybee’s. it’s just too bad. all these locations are institutions now. there are hundreds more out there.
but anyway since we’re talking about bbq food, i just remembered a fundamental difference between karachiite’s eating bbq and everyone else eating bbq food (lahori’s to be specific because they like to think they’re everyone else). take something as simple as a kebab or a chicken tikka. ask a karachiite how he’ll eat it, and 99 times out of 100 he’ll ask for a paratha. ask a lahori how he’ll eat it, and 100 times out of 100, he’ll ask for a naan. i don’t get it. why do lahori’s deprive themselves of the fine delicacy that is a paratha. (another thing i don’t get, what’s up with not eating kebab roll’s? why is it such an alien concept?)
since i’m rambling incoherently now without any sort of structure to this post, might as well add, no one family or person makes a dish the same. something like haleem for example can be made out of daal for one family, only meat for another, only gayhoon for another and a mixture of all of the above for another.
one thing is for sure, pakistani food is diverse and as exotic as it gets. don’t take it for granted. just the fact that we have some of the best forms of bread in the world makes for good conversation with your gora buddies. nothing like eating an ultay tavay ki roti or a makai ki roti or a sheermaal or a taaftaan or a patra of karak roti or some wonderful meetha bun from the local bakery. by the way, the kids who’ve never gone out to buy bread in their life aside from dawn bread from agha’s really need to step in and browse the selection at their local bakery. ask your dad/driver where it is.
Xill-e-Ilahi
Halai
cymarizwankhan
Mystic
