The rain on your parade

what’s in a name? – the british edition July 27, 2009

as far as naming conventions go, karachi roads and landmarks have a lot to improve upon. since our colonial brothers left us with a wonderful legacy of british architecture and engineering, we have done very little to better ourselves. abbas’ post and comments inspired me to write this up.

first of all, let’s get the simple ones out of the way.

bandar road: (today named m. a. jinnah road, and if i have to tell you what the initials stand for i’m gonna beat you up first and then tell you) let it be known publicly and widely there are no monkey’s on this road, there never have been, and hopefully the only monkey’s around that will remain are the ones perched on the shoulder of the guy who makes them re-enact the bangladesh war and aptly naming them aalloo master all to the beat of a hand drum and random shouts of attaaaaaanshun. the word bandar comes from farsi and literally means a port or haven, combining the words of band for enclosed and dar for doorway. bandar road stretches all the way from quaid’s mazaar till tower (more on tower later).

following suit from there, same deal with kharadar. khara meaning salty, is due to the sea port that karachi is and historically has been.  and similarly meetha dar. (there’s one in lahore too). meetha dar generally is a river port. they also refer to the old walled gates of the city of karachi which stood between the two modern neighborhoods at the time. the khara dar used to open it’s doors towards the arabian sea, and the meetha dar would open towards the grand liyari river.

behind zainab market (no clue who she was), is an area known usually and generally as elfy.  the name of the road here used to be elphinstone street and just got short changed and is now called elfy by the general populace. more than likely, named after lord elphinstone. (for the torontonian’s reading this, one of the little streets intersecting it is also called dundas street). today the same road starting at (or what used to be) star cinema and going all the way to avari towers is called prince aga khan iii road.

same deal with a lot of other colonial roads which today are named something else altogether. macleod road is i.i. chundrigar (by the way full name ibrahim ismail chundrigar and has been a prime minister of pakistan for a grand total of two whole months). drigh road is shahra-e-faisal. believe it or not, this one is named after king faisal from saudi. god knows why. burns road was named after a smart fellow dr james burnes. napier road for charles napier (also aptly nicknamed the butcher of sindh, go read your history to learn more about that. on capturing the  province of sindh in 1843, sir charles napier reported his triumph back to london with the single latin word “Peccavi”, meaning “I have sinned”. by the way, if you didn’t get that, that was a rather tasteless pun). today napier road recognizes him as hosting the red light district of the city.

so where were we. oh yeah, tower. for those not in the know, this is the mereweather tower memorial. and known to all bus drivers across the city as simply just tower. it’s essentially one of the focal points of the city where you have the intersection of bandar road, macleod road, kharadar, maulvi tamizuddin khan road, keamari road and mauripur road, and pretty much the starting and end point of the entire trucking industry of the entire country, i.e., the karachi port. (port qasim and gwadar have started taking a bit of the limelight lately, but this is the shining star of the lot).

many of the other historic area’s of karachi which were colonized generally remain in the core of the city, near or around saddar, garden, and clifton. reasons are fairly obvious, the further north you went, the city didn’t exist and urban sprawl didn’t get to the gulistan’s and north’s until much, much later (after the 60′s). the brits didn’t wander too far i suppose. you can see some fun photographs here if you’re bored enough. by the way, saddar is actually saddar town on paper. and is bordered by lyari town, jamshed town, keamari town, clifton cantonment, and the sea.

some of the fun buildings that the brits left us, the old kpt building, karachi grammar school (the school houses in kgs are named after charles napier, bartle frere and another two guys named streeton and papworth, but i got no what their first names are) , empress market, st. andrew’s church, frere hall (which by the way is the equivalent of sadequain’s sistine chapel, if you hadn’t heard of him prior to reading this, shame on you, oh and the building is named after this guy), and the sindh club.

for some of the most fascinating and in-depth research that i have found about the colonial history of the city you should go here. complete with images and wonderful writeups, the author has tried wonderfully to put together pieces of a puzzle which i’m sure people will be doing for a long time coming.