The Nani Ami’s house turns dark and cold in Karachi’s winters. Back in childhood, I could not imagine that sunlight would ever go scarce in a house that had large open verandahs on its front and back. When we visited from South Punjab during summers, the image of white curtains and bedsheets fluttering in the seawind breezing through Nani Ami’s west-open house that lay before us drenched in a nice warm tinge always cast a spell on me and promised a summer filled with adventure.

Times have changed and Karachi’s uncontrollable Frankenstein of commercialization has successfully turned the diverse neighborhood of low-walled houses painted in sprightly colors and adorned with trees and leafy plants into ominous uniform megastructures whose bold edifices look cold and alien, and block all the sunlight from the sparse independent houses that still remain. Wrapped in blankets, trying to fight off the melancholic gloom that accompanies the cold darkness, we curse the tyrannical manifestations of capitalism at our doorstep and long for freedom. Someone said, ‘Hawkes Bay?’ and we all cried in unison, “Yes, please!”

Thanks to a rapidly piling list of epic adventures that our group of maternal cousins including their families had been logging lately, we were not afraid to pitch the idea to them first and see if it garnered interest. Their keen response sent us in a flurry of preparations necessary for a picnic on the beach. The night before, a Hiace had been rented, attires decided upon, a football packed in, and we were pretty much go for the day ahead. The cousins joined us the next morning with a cricket bat, badminton rackets and an assortment of indoor card and board games. Soon we piled up into the Hiace which, despite our doubts, proved spacious and sufficiently comfortable for our purposes. The formidable driver glided over the potholed roads of Karachi. A fateful turn towards the Turtle Beach proved disappointing with its nondescript beachfront and pocket breaking hut rents. We now turned to the Hawkes Bay, missed it once, almost barged into the French Beach but were fought off by the valiant guards protecting elite interests from commoners, returned once again to the Hawkes Bay and eventually found a budget-friendly hut with an exotic beachfront (after at least half a dozen hut evaluations). Without wasting a second, we offloaded, tiptoed over the round ocean stones and ran off in the warm sand to the shimmering blue calling waves.

The sun shone brightly and we were so deprived that the kids rolled on the sand and made sandcastles, couples walked hand-in-hand along the waves lapping up against their feet, then we all played cricket and dodge-the-ball, and juggled some football. The fair ladies shrugged off the looming threat of sunburn and turned the beach into a show of colors with their spectacular cricket performances. The Biryani from the nearby hotel shack tasted delicious and so did the evening tea with baqir khanis. From the beach, a long brown rock pier trailed away from the sand and the civilization behind it, into the majestic sea now reflecting a deeper shade of blue in the slanting rays of the sinking sun. As it began to cool off, we all headed to the rock pier to spend our final moments reflecting on the nature and capturing it in our camera frames.

Since Nani Ami believes in leaving a place better than one entered it which also strikes a chord with me, we did our bit in cleaning the beach and picked some 25 kg of plastics and fishing net out of the sea.

The city remained in turmoil that afternoon as more protests erupted due to mass killings of an ethnic minority last month. I reached home safely thanking God for being given another day and wondering if all Karachiites develop some sort of religious disposition and learn to be grateful for, what the first world may consider, ‘as little as’ merely survival. As I continue to reflect on where I want to settle and put down my roots, Karachi remains a formidable candidate in a list of international cities. May be I can live and thrive and escape harm my entire remaining life in a city fraught with violence as I did yesterday. Regardless of what the future holds, this fantastic trip has largely allayed my crippling fear of moving with the family in Karachi for now, not because the security situation has gotten any better but because I’m finding it home.