Life in an ‘edgy’ city is more a cause for dread than for wonder in our part of the world. The violent underside of ‘developing’ neo-colonial/globalizing urban spaces has had its share of steady gazes, for instance, Mumbai, Maximum City or even Calcutta: City of Joy. So, the immersive experience of Karachi that Samina Shackle offers us echoes and resonates with the subcontinental reader in a way that goes beyond exoticization of a culturally and economically distant land. The smartening up of cities across India has moved on from the picture she paints of Karachi around 2012, with metro-debris, flyover leavings and proposed connectivity across India’s ‘tier two’ cities, robbing them all of their history and ecosystems. But the ‘vice’ map of Karachi with direct living lines drawn from the national politics of terror sewn together with the control of fear and the rampant deployment of might by manipulating all hierarchies, is still familiar to an Indian reader.
December 2022, volume 46, No 12