St. Francis' Grammar High School Quetta: Class of '83

"Our ignorance of the few things that matter is as prodigious as our knowledge of trivialities."                   Charles le Gai Eaton

"Tum tata log bilkul isstudy nahi karta hai!" thundered Ms. Nathaniel at Manzoor and Jaffer, two of the several Hazara boys in her class. It was either 1978 or 1979. Years later, after I had graduated from St. Francis' High, whenever I thought of her she reminded me of the many colorful, and at times devilishly conspiratorial, Anglo-Indian characters in the short stories of Saadat Hassan Manto, probably the greatest of short story writers that the Sub-continent has produced. The boys at the receiving end of Sylvia Nathaniel’s trademark rage on that day had not done their homework and were getting a dressing down by her.

The word “tata” was often used for Hazara students at the school and most of the time it was more of a marker than anything else, with not much special meaning, either positive or negative, attached to it or implied by it. As is the case with all such words and labels, the contexts in which it was used-----the people, the relationships, situations, the tone of language used, gestures etc.-----were more important than anything else. Change the context, or the parameters that inform that context, and what was once a term of endearment will quickly become a poisonous insult, a vicious slur on identity, an odious gibe about some weakness or disability and so on. Imagine a man calling a stranger a monkey (bizzo or bandar), a grasshopper (malakh, tidda), a kitten (pisho or billo), a puppy, a gorilla, a pony or even a donkey (khar, kharro or gadha), motay, chotay, thothay and lamboo etc., terms that he uses daily for his children at home. Ever wonder why many best friends use the most abusive of terms for one another? They do it not because one wants to insult or degrade the other, or even the other’s mother or sister in some cases, but because of the great love that they have for each other. Among Hazaras themselves “tata” can mean any of the following: a tradition-bound old man, an elder; an ordinary, no-frills dude; an honest, hard-working fellow who minds his own business and does not care much about the world around him, somewhat like the takari of the Baloch and the Brahvis.

Wikipedia tells me that St. Francis Grammar High School “was established in 1946 to provide education to the elite of Baluchistan and Sindh.”  A Roman Catholic missionary school situated on the famous Zarghoon Road (formerly Lytton Road), it is one of the oldest educational institutions of Quetta and has produced many luminaries from a former prime minister to army officers, politicians, writers and ambassadors. There is not much available online on the history of the school and I will not dwell on it since that is not the subject of this blog post anyway. Christian missionary schools were everywhere in Pakistan in those days and there were at least six or seven of them in Quetta at the time we matriculated---in 1983. The “we” here refers to my class-fellows (classmates), some of whom I clearly remember and will introduce them to the readers in the following paragraphs of this post. 

A lot has been written about the sins of Christian missions and missionaries in the global South, or in the “darker” world, dark in both senses of skin color and as opposed to “light”-----the "light" of modern (Western) “civilization” or that of Christian “salvation” that would pull the “heathens” out of the darkness of their false customs and traditions; I say "or" because the one is always difficult to separate from the other especially after the dawn of secular modernity in the West some centuries ago. Most of this critical scholarship has been carried out by the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist historians of the global South-----the anti-racist intellectuals of the non-Western world. So much so that the Nobel Laureate bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa who was also, alongside Nelson Mandela and others, on the forefront of the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid movements in colonized Africa once said this of the Western (white) missionaries:

“When the white missionaries came to Africa, they all had the Holy Book (the Bible) in their hands and not much else. To the black Africans who did not have that Holy Book but who owned everything on the continent----the land, the animals, the resources, the riches-----the missionaries said: ‘Let us close our eyes and pray to the Lord.’ We Africans did so; we closed our eyes and we prayed to the Lord. And when we opened our eyes, we saw that the Africans had the Holy Book in their hands and nothing else; the white missionaries now had everything that once belonged to us: the land, the animals, the resources, the riches of the continent.”

I think this is an apt evaluation, given the tainted history and the many ignoble activities of the Western Christian missionaries in the peripheral Asiatic and African worlds. The missionary educational institutions, for example, may have done a lot of good in the colonized lands but one of their main aims was to produce a clerical class of natives----the ”babu” class----to serve the empire. The function of this class was clearly described by that champion of colonialism, the racist Lord McCauley, in his notorious  “Minute on Education” of 1835.  But just as the wise Tutu pronounced his verdict as a Christian clergyman-----conveying to the world that he and millions of others like him had embraced the sacred message of an authentic, revealed religion while identifying the profane and ugly interests that used that original message for worldly material gains as it was being transported to the far-off lands-------let us also acknowledge, even if we don't go though the process of conversion like Bishop Tutu did, some of the good things that have resulted in our part of the world, thanks to the long presence of the missionaries there.

In short, the fault did not lay with the divinely revealed message of Christianity-----a sister religion of Islam in the monotheistic family of faiths----- but with the imperfect world in which it was received and especially with the ways in which it was, and still is in many places, often preached and propagated by its less-than-perfect followers. Perhaps we should also heed the words of another twentieth century sage, M.K. Gandhi, himself influenced by Christianity (especially by the sermon on the mount) and who once said about it that, “Christianity was a good religion before it went to Europe!”. Just as we Muslims are quick to differentiate between Islam as a revealed religion, as a deen and a sacred worldview, and Muslims as its imperfect followers (as to what they say and do, their words and deeds that often do not live up to the standards and ideals of their religion), it is only fair to accept the same kind of reasoning offered by our Christian neighbors. What the late American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said about religion that “Religion is good for good people and bad for bad people”, can be modified to read, “Good people who see the truth, goodness and beauty of religion are always mindful of the consistency of means and ends, while bad people will always abuse religion, will use it instrumentally, as a means to their own evil designs and ends.”

Fr. Joshua, Sister Cecilia, Sir Sultan and the boys

So, missionary warts aside-------the proselytizing, the bringing of “civilization” to the barbarians, “light” and “salvation” to the heathens and all------ institutions like St. Francis Grammar High School in Quetta have been significantly beneficial to the locals, providing quality English medium education for decades now. It was, after all, the top school in the entire province of Balochistan around the time we were there and for many more years after that. During the early years, the principals and some teachers, too, especially those teaching English, came from European countries. For example, there was Fr. Joshua who, I think, was an Irishman. There was Peter, a pipe puffing eccentric Dutch man, who used to ride his old Norton motorbike all the way to the assembly area and park it next to the old gymnasium. During the later years, just before we graduated, the principals and also many teachers either came from places like Sri Lanka and Southern India or from the bigger cities within the country, places like Karachi and Hyderabad. 

The school staff with Sister Cecilia

Of the teachers that I still remember clearly the following must be mentioned: The Hon. Sir Sultan, our PTI or PE instructor for many, many years; Mrs. (Sylvia) Nathaniel, Mrs. Rehana, Sir Behram, Sir Allahyar, Mrs. Rauf, Sir Munir, Sir Naveed (Asghar) and Sir James (both PTIs), Moulvi Sahib (Islamiat), Mrs. Roshan, Mrs. Jawad and Ms. Mary.  A tall and stout man with an upright posture, Sultan was (then) a traditional disciplinarian (what we now call 'old school') with a booming voice that scared the crap out of the boys, especially the ones who were lazy on the field. He was also the boy-scout master of not only the school but of the entire province at one time, if my memory is not failing me. During PT or hockey and soccer game breaks he would show us some of his magic tricks. For a long time (grade 4 or 5) I was mesmerized by this thumb trick that he used to pull on us kids. Facing us, he would put his closed fists together with the thumbs tucked in. While keeping the half bent left thumb covered with the four fingers of that hand, he would open the four fingers of the right fist so that the half bent right thumb would become visible to us boys in such a way that it would look like an extension of the half hidden left thumb. He would then slowly move the right fist away from the left creating an illusion of the left thumb coming off at its mid joint without any blood! Eventually, he showed us how to do it. I do the same trick for my kids now, but they are more skeptical and less patient than the kids back then. Sir Sultan’s assistants were Sir Naveed and then Sir James. Naveed left after only a few years to take up a full PTI position somewhere in Loralai, I think. James remained and eventually took over from Sir Sultan when the latter retired.

Fr. Joshua, Sir Sultan, Imran Achakzai, Shuja Kasi and others

Sir Behram, the Parsi teacher and the brother of the former Chief Secretary of Balochistan, Mr. Poonigar, was another long serving, popular teacher. He loved to knit and as a class prefect, I and another fellow student often carried his knitting gear to the staff room during recess. Behram was a tall man with a big smile and often talked with a repetitious intonation, in a sing---song, sing---song manner. Mrs. Rehana (Rehman) taught us in fifth and/or sixth grades. A woman with deep eyes set on a face with a permanently serious expression, she was one of the best dressed teachers in the school. She was a strict instructor and once slapped me on the cheek, for what I do not recall. But I am sure it was the reward for some mischief on my part.

It was a different time and place, really. Words and concepts like “harassment’, “abuse ”, “violence” and so on had not yet entered the social and pedagogical lexicons. Education had not yet morphed into a mere “service” and students were not pampered and mollycoddled in those days like they are nowadays. Teaching was still a proper vocation, a calling, and not just a "job" then and because of which schools did not over-indulge the students and their hypersensitive, helicopter parents, treating them like spoiled “customers”. In other words, the “customer” was NOT always right then. Teachers were teachers first, and only then “facilitators”, “communicative” or “participant" observers etc. Effective reprimand in those days meant both persuading verbally AND disciplining physically. It was punishment that was realistic and an effective way of initiating the child into the hard realities of that terrible thing called life! After all, it is through pain that we often come to see the authenticity of life, as many sages have said. Great human achievements often come from the love of difficulties and through struggles and the overcoming of hardships. Our unhealthy obsession with convenience and comfort nowadays is the negation of all these time tested principles and virtues and we can clearly see what it has done to us, especially to the young. God knows what hells many of those kids of the 70s and 80s would be in now were it not for those slaps, pinches, those finger twisters and knuckle knocks on the head, caning and even punches and kicks that they used to receive from their teachers! You see, it was the intention behind all that “violence” that mattered most.  

Sir Behram

Moulvi Sahib with principal J.J. Edward

Then there was the perennial Moulvi Sahib, our Islamiat teacher. I don't think anybody knew his name or even if some did, they never mentioned it. To us, he was just Moulvi Sahib. Islamiat used to be a separate, stand-alone subject until 1978-1979 after which it became Islamiat and Pakistan Studies for a while. That happened because of the “Islamization” policies of the military dictator Zia ul Haq who seized power after declaring martial law in 1977 and whose politics have done big time damage to every aspect of Pakistani society from which it has yet to recover. That politics can best be described, to modify Henry Adam's observation, as "the systematic organization of prejudices and hatreds on ethnic and sectarian lines". Moulvi Sahib was a quiet and humble man who taught his subject (who practiced his faith, we might as well say) equally quietly and humbly. I don’t think it was because of the fact that he was an Islamiat teacher in a Christian missionary school, but was partly because of his personality that had the beauty and perfume of spirituality which always implies wisdom ("Beauty is the splendor of Truth" as Plato tells us) and partly because religion, mainstream Islam as understood and practiced by the average believer, had not yet taken the strong literalist and sectarian color that it would in the following years, with tragic consequences for many. That unfortunate reductive process started in the mid-1980s, again thanks mostly to the divisive policies and manipulative politics of the dictator mentioned above, something about which I have written elsewhere, in some of my other blog posts. 

Mrs. Jawad

Mrs. Rehana

During our final years at Grammar School-----classes 8th, 9th and 10th-------we were taught, among others, by Mrs. Jawad, our English teacher. Mrs. Jawad made us write and write, made us do grammar drills, and gave us loads of homework. I still have some of the light brown notebooks (with the school logo on the front cover) filled cover-to-cover with English drills of grammar points and composition pieces. Some of the finer points of language use in formal writing that she taught us, such as the use of the passive voice and the different clause types, have stayed with me and have benefitted me all these years. She used to sign our report cards and notebooks with a huge “I. Jawad” often scrawled across the page at an angle. What that initial “I” stood for, I never found out.

Of all the principals that we had, Fr. J.B. Todd was one that needs special mention here. He was someone that I will never forget and I am sure that feeling is shared with me by many of my class-fellows. In fact, our time at Grammar School coincided with the tenures of three principals: Fr. Joshua, Fr. Todd and Sister Cecilia. Fr. John Baptist Todd arrived at Grammar High School in the late 1970s or maybe early 1980s. He was a well-known figure of the Christian community in Pakistan, especially in Karachi and in other big cities in Sindh province. At St. Patrick’s High School Karachi, he was even teacher to the former military-dictator-turned- president Pervez Musharraf in the late 1950s. According to Pervez Musharraf, Todd used to give him a good caning whenever he misbehaved in school. Obviously, Principal Todd did not cane and discipline this particular pupil of his enough, for years later he (Pervaiz Musharraf, the murderous goon, the yet another uniformed dunce!) ended up as a nuisance to the nation, and who is now, and will be forever, remembered as the murderer of a Baloch elder and senior political figure of Balochistan, Nawab Akbar Bugti.

A word about Fr. Todd and his legendary cane. Meticulously dressed in his formal grey suit and with neatly combed hair soaked in a liter or two of the finest hair tonic available then, he would make hourly rounds of the corridors with his trademark flexible cane in hand. Upon seeing a victim, a potential prey, a punished student asked to wait outside the classroom by his teacher for some mischief or bad conduct, Todd’s pace would pick up, become brisk, and an impish smile would appear on his face, an expression that could be interpreted in only one way: “Aha! Gotcha!”  But during his time as principal, the school did see many improvements, especially in the disciplinary department and in the overall quality of education. And then tragedy befell him. He was shot in the leg but luckily survived. Suspicion fell on one of our class fellows, a boy named Taufeeq or Tanveer (and I think he was originally from Karachi?). I don’t remember much else about that incident. Soon after that, Todd left and was replaced by Sister Ceclia. After Todd, everything changed; things were never the same again. Having taught, tutored and disciplined thousands of pupils over a period of six decades, Fr. John Baptist Todd-----the man with the cane----left this world on December 4, 2017. RIP.

No mention of Grammar School is complete without recalling Haji. Haji was the bell guy, the postman, the assistant, the helper, the peon, the security guy and so on. Always in a waistcoat and with a turban on his head, this handyman was an institution within an institution; he even lived on the school premises, in a small house on the far side of the lower playground, next to the school carpenter’s workshop. The carpenter, whose main job was to repair broken desks and chairs, was another permanent fixture at the school. Already an old man, he was there when I entered Grammar School in 1972 and had not changed a bit when I graduated in 1983. People like him and Haji seemed to be time-resistant! Haji's sidekick, Meeru (or Khairu??), was a different character, mainly because he was of a different generation: younger, ambitious and embodying all the new tastes, desires and values of his generation, many of which were antithetical to the old virtues of which Haji and the carpenter were the prime examples. Of course, I say this now with the benefit of hindsight. On the opposite side of that playground, across from Haji’s quarters, was the canteen which stood like a large sized gazebo under the shade of the huge berry tree. That canteen served cream buns, cream rolls, qeema and aloo patties through the holes on all but one side of the structure to hordes of rowdy, hungry boys during recess.

Class of  '83

Of  my class-fellows (then the word was always class-fellows and not class-mates) I can recall the following with some clarity (getting old!): Aamir Raza, Kamal Hashim, Shahid Malik, Saadullah, Sikander, Shabbir, Manzoor, Jaffer, Arshad Ali, Arshad Zubair, Mir Javed, Akram Lodhi (of Malik Autos), Wahid Achakzai, Wasim Baran, Goshi, Jahanzeb, Wajid Ali, Farooq Faiz, Suleman Lodhi, Furqan, Iftikhar Ahmed, Ejaz ul Hassan, Tariq, Janan, Raja, Fazal, Nisar Dogar, Athar and Azhar (twins), Nasir and Asghar (the syed Shah brothers, also twins), Dawood Almas, Ibrahim Afridi, Maroof, Hassan, Jahangir, Liang, Khurram Shehzad, Ataullah. There were others, friends who were either junior or senior to us, for example, Adil (Sir Sultan’s son), Khalid Sultan, Shujauddin Kasi, Joshua (Dawood’s cousin), Imran Achakzai, Godfrey (the runner). With only few of them I am still in touch, though. Some of the boys went to Sixth Standard for their University of Cambridge GSCE/A-levels after class 8th. Some lived in the same ward of the city as I did, in the different mohallas along Toghi Road: Goshi, Jahanzeb, Shahid, Kamal, Sikander and Ejaz. 

Class of '83 (Sr. Cambridge students)

Athar and Azhar, the twins, lived close to the school, near or inside the T&T residential colony. With them, and their younger brother Sarwar, I shared another common acquaintance in the person of Mr. P.K. Ali who was my private tutor for some years. Mr. Ali was a retired T&T employee who used to teach me math and science after school. Fazal and Nisar Dogar (of Nisar Electronics) were close friends, always together. Fazal was the top sprinter of the school for a while. He was a short guy with fast legs and he even talked as he ran, very fast! Nisar was his opposite, often quiet and soft spoken. Goshi, who was thin and all legs, was also a good athlete. And so was Maroof. Maroof was everywhere on the field on annual sports days. Liang Usark (?) was the local Chinese guy and, if I am not wrong, he was good friends with Shabbir and Sikander. His parents had a shoe store on Jinnah Road. Raja was the one with long hair and green eyes. I think something happened to him in a big accident after we graduated, or maybe it was in our final year, class 10th. Tariq, Saifullah’s younger brother, was close friends with Janan and Wasim and was one of the more active and cheeky boys, sometimes playing tricks on others. Ejaz ul Hassan, my neighbor on Toghi Road, was once obsessed with body building. I wonder if he is still lifting those heavy dumbbells! 

Iftikhar Ahmed used to live on Fatima Jinnah Road and whose house I visited often. His father (uncle?) was a lawyer and my grandfather----and later on my father-----was his business client, if I am not wrong. I think Iftikhar also became a lawyer later on. And there was also another Ejaz, Ejaz Akbar. He was often with Imran (Memon?) and the twins, Athar and Azhar. Imran was also close friends with Mir Javed. I also recall Arshad Ali, the scrawny guy with loads of curly hair, as someone with the sharpest wit and always ready with a humorous quip.  Farooq Faiz, the son of a high ranking police officer (SP? DIG?) in the city, was the big guy with hearty laughs. There was also another Farooq (Farooq Ahmed?) who used to live on Patel Road, and was my neighbor for some years when we were also living there. He disappeared just before we entered class 9. I think he moved to some other city with his parents. Some from the batch of 1983 were with me at college and university as well: Amir, Saadullah, Shahid and Dawood. These are some of the sketchy memories of the old days in St. Francis Grammar High, Quetta, a past that I carry around with me in my head, and especially in my heart, and which I try to preserve, however imperfectly, by talking about it, often with old friends and relatives.  It's a battle, I know---I hope not a losing one!---a battle against cruel time that never fails to put holes in a man's memory. So, like the rest, I will also just say,  "those were the days, my friend those were the days...." as the old song reminds us!

Note: In these musings on the past, I have mentioned many people, places and events; I have also quoted some of those people. Given what time does to man, and especially to his memory, it is very likely that I have gotten many things wrong, have omitted certain names, dates and other important facts or have committed many mistakes in recalling and writing about things past. I accept the mistakes, take responsibility for the omissions and the commissions, and offer an apology in advance to all those readers who may feel discomfort by the partially correct or factually incorrect information. 

For more on similar topics, please click: Regal Cinema, Qta

Quetta: The cars in the 1970s and 1980s

Quetta: The City of Karezes

On Books: The demise of the rental libraries of Quetta

Hussainabad: the people and their values

Simplicity and simple people

Quetta: Then and now

Dervaish's Quetta Youtube Channel (click)

Quetta in the 1970s-1980s: The Cars

Toyota Corona Mark II (1974)

Dedication: This one is for the two car fanatics, Asim and Ameer.

(Note: short video at the end)
"A car is like a mother-in-law - if you let it, it will rule your life."     Jaime Lerner

“Pardey mein rehne do, parda na uttawo” sang Asha Bhosle through the dashboard speaker connected to the portable car vinyl player as we, my uncle Samad Ali driving, cruised along Zamzama lane (Chiltan road?) in the direction of Pani Taqseem in the cantonment area of Quetta City. I think it was the spring of 1971. The car we were in was an off-white 1968 Toyota Corona. This is one of the few memories that I have of my late uncle, a pilot in the first fighter squadron---the No. 9---of The Pakistan Air Force, and especially of his car. I was barely five then! And this was also the last time I was with him: he was martyred a few months later, in the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971. His Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was shot down in Indian airspace in the middle of his eleventh mission. That story I will explore in a future blog post, Inshallah (God willing). For now, let’s turn to the cars of the old days, to the decades of 1970s and 1980s.

Two Japanese brands ruled the car landscape of Quetta, or of Pakistan in general, during the 70s and part of the 80s, too: Toyota and Datsun. The latter had not yet evolved, or morphed, into Nissan. That happened towards the end of 1980s or early 1990s, as we also witnessed another Japanese manufacturing giant, the home appliance maker National, transform itself into Panasonic. There was, of course, Mazda, the third big automobile maker from Japan. Suzuki also had some presence, mostly in the form of its ubiquitous mini-truck, the small Carry “pick-up” which came in one color only, white. Japanese truck manufacturers like Hino and Isuzu had not yet entered the Pakistani market which was dominated by Bedford Lorries, the commercial vehicle wing of the British manufacturer Vauxhall Motors. Nobody used the brand name for the lorries; they were universally called “Rockets” by their local owners and drivers.

My first car ride was not in my uncle’s 1968 Toyota. It was in my grandfather’s 1958 Chevrolet Impala. A pistachio-green Chevy with huge whitewall tires and tons of chrome, it looked so huge to us kids. We loved it because it was perfect for our game of teelo teelo, a local version of hide-and-seek. The car did not so much offer nooks and crannies to hide in, but was perfect for running around, escaping from and tiring down the seeker in the hide-and-run-when-found game. And then there was the old Willys Jeep which my grandfather and his younger brother used to drive to the coal mines in Mach-Bolan.  Both were in the coal business.

Most of the cars that I still remember can be now safely categorized as classics. In addition to the four headlamp ’68 Corona, there were the Datsun Sunny series cars, the Toyota Mark 1, the Mazda Luce 1500 and 1800 and the Corollas, especially the ’73-74 models which people were driving well into the late 1990s. There were also some non-Japanese models, such as the Italian made Fiat 124 (1968-72 models ) and the Opel Rekord, both tough mules. The noisy Fiat resembled the ’68 Corona in design, especially the front lamps and the grille. My friend Farooq’s father owned one (Farooq was also close friends with my cousin Misbah). He, the father, was a not-so-noisy man with piercing eyes, a man that I could not imagine behind the steering wheel of any other car: the Fiat fitted his personality like a glove. Farooq used to live next to Tata’s general store on Toghi Road. That Fiat was often parked on the street outside his house five days a week and on the other two days, especially in winters, people had to give it a push for ignition to happen. Jumper cables were not common then and also because there were not many cars around.

The Datsun Sunny, especially the humpy 120Y, was another mule of a car that equally resisted visits to the garage and the gas station. Although not good in the design department, it was simply the best car when it came to fuel economy and durability, and that is why the B110 Sunny 1200 model (1970-73) earned the label “Karachi Taxi”. Exclusively in black with yellow rooftop, they were ubiquitous on the roads of Karachi. Even now, they can be seen in some parts of the port city. 

The Toyota to rival the Sunny in toughness and durability, if not in fuel economy, was the Corona Mark 1 (1973). Slightly bigger in size, this car also lasted forever. They were still around, as late as 2007, when I visited Quetta. The most popular color was beige. Arbab Asif Hazara (a NAP politician) and my school friend Ejaz ul Hassan’s uncle in Tel Gudam (a Toghi Road mohalla or neighborhood) were proud owners of this hardy perennial machine. With simple, solid body lines, this car had a beautiful front grille and it looked muscular when equipped wide radial tires.

The Mazda cars in the Quetta of '70s were not so much about fuel economy as about design and comfort. Mazda had a good reputation for suspension and design. It made some of the sexiest cars then. The Luce 1500 and 1800 (also called Mazda DeLuxe) were real beauties of the day. The sleekness in car design that became synonymous with brand Mazda some years later, thanks mostly to its legendary sports car the RX-7, could already be seen in the Luce models. The proportions, the body lines, the cool grille and headlamps, and the slim Alfa Romeo style tail lights—everything was perfect about the Luce. And to top it all, it had the most beautiful wood paneled dashboard that I have ever seen in a Japanese car. The car sat low, lower than all the other Japanese models available then. I had a special affection for the metallic blue Luce 1800 that my uncle Sadiq owned. We would spend hours on Sundays washing and waxing it with the finest car wax , the softest of yellow waxing cloth in combination with silky white sootar (soft cotton waste from the textile mills) that were sold at the auto spare parts shops on Wafa Road.  Every time I see an RX-7 here in Japan (where I live now), a Mazda icon that I have always loved, I cannot help thinking about the Mazda Luce in the Quetta of ‘70s.

Mazda also made some really tough cars to match the Datsuns and the Toyotas. One such car was the Mazda 808 Station Wagon, the little sibling of the more powerful Mazda RX3 Sports Wagon, another beautiful Mazda (the RX3, that is). Nobody is in a better position to confirm that claim than my childhood friend Sikander, whose father owned one. It was a red wagon and if I remember correctly, the car stayed with the family for more than a decade, maybe two decades. Sikander used to race around that car like some stunt car driver, but always out of sight of his observant father. Sikander was an excellent driver, no doubt about that, but he was rather harsh on that car. Any other car would have long ended up as scrap metal in the city's only kabari (Quetta's main scrap metal market) but that red Mazda survived Sikander’s brutalities with grace. He could not be blamed too much, anyway. Movies like The Moving Violation, and before that, The Italian Job and later the hit David Hasselhoff TV series, Knight Rider, were all the rage then. (All Fast and Furious movie fans reading this, you have got to watch that movie, The Moving Violation. Guys, that’s where it all started!)

Now let me come to the machine that I think defined the ‘70s of Quetta and its real car enthusiasts. I think none of the cars mentioned so far, not even the much admired Luce/Deluxe, can ever be compared in any meaningful sense with this classic. In fact, it would be outright disrespectful to talk about this car in the same breath as all the others that were around then. And the car is…the Toyota Mark II (1974).  It was actually Toyota Corona Mark II but the “Corona” bit was always left out: Mark II, just like that. Now, think for a moment of a Porsche 911 Turbo, a Lamborghini Aventador, a Ferrari  Enzo or F40, or even of a McLaren, a Koenigsegg or a Bugatti, imagine what these cars mean to their admirers and owners, and you can get an idea of what the Mark II meant to its owners and admirers then. This is not an exaggeration at all; I am saying all this from experience, real lived experiences, if I may say that to make my point about the Mark II. My uncle Sikander (or maybe it was his friend) actually drove one all the way from Germany to Quetta! He just wanted his Toyota Mark II in Quetta, not any German car which he could have easily bought and driven to Pakistan upon his eventual return from that European technological powerhouse best known for its superb cars. That’s the kind of following the car had then. The car meant power and comfort, first and foremost. It was a heavy, muscular gas guzzler, and it definitely had the lines and the elegant form to rival any other car in those departments then. The interior was plush: all leather and wood paneling in the GL and coupe models. The coupe, with the wide Good Year radials with white lettering, was a real killer. It may well be one of the most beautiful two-door cars to have come out of Japan, as some car connoisseurs have also claimed. 

The 1980s arrived with the beautiful Toyota Corolla 1980, a car that looked like the re-incarnation of the ‘68 Corona, with four headlamps and a plain grille. With it was introduced such goodies as power windows and hydraulic steering and bumpers. A year later, the Corolla 1981 was released with tiny, square headlamps. It was an ugly, Ladaesque thing: a stupid attempt to improve upon the 1980 model. The makers soon realized their blunder and a year later released the Corolla 1982 with wide, rectangular head lamps and beautiful tail lights. That model was a big success. It was also the 1980s when Honda properly launched its line of cars in Pakistan, or maybe they arrived earlier but that is when they started to become visible In Quetta, especially the Civic and the Accord models. Both went on to become success stories in Pakistan, just like elsewhere in the world. The Civic continues to compete with Corolla for market share in the compact car category in Pakistan. Honda cars may have been success stories everywhere, but for yours truly they have no appeal. I have never liked the brand. I guess part of the reason is because they were not around when we were growing up in the Quetta of 1970s and so I cannot connect with the cars in any meaningful way, the way I can with Toyotas and Datsuns (Nissan). The company’s motorcycles are another matter, though: I love Honda bikes. Another important thing that happened in the 1980s was the launch of diesel engine SUVs, especially the Mitsubishi Pajero (always called "Pijaro" in Pakistan) and the Toyota Land Cruiser. That story is for another day.

I have skipped over two Toyota models of the 1970s: The ’74 and the 1978-79 Corollas. The story of the ‘74 will need a full, separate blog post. Called by different names---some good and some rather obscene that cannot be mentioned on this PG rated blog, but all implying durability and good re-sale value---it was not just a car, but an institution in its own right. The 1978-79 Corollas were in an altogether different class. They were the exact opposite of the ’74 Corolla. With poor re-sale value, they were---especially the ’79--- the cars of choice for car junkies, the fanatics who are deep into customization and remodeling. With minimal body fittings and big, wide tires with white lettering (always called radial tires by the locals) the plain looking ’79 could be transformed into a mean-looking machine. The ’79 Corolla had a stylish grille.

Cars used to be simple then. They were, first and foremost, mechanical contraptions, devoid of all the “smart” electronic aids and wizardry that one sees in today’s cars. The only electronics under the hood and inside the cabin were the ignition system, lighting and things like radio, heating (no A/C), wiper and indicator switches etc. all dependent on one 12V hard rubber lead plate battery. No EFIs, just the old style carburetors mechanically connected to the camshaft and the governors that controlled the air-fuel ratio for desired combustion rates.  Concepts like “hydraulic” and “power”—power this and hydraulic that---had not yet entered the vocabulary of car sellers and buyers. It was usually the radio, the upholstery, and in some cases the car vinyl player, that would turn a standard, no-frills model into a GL which stood for grand luxury. In short, cars were cars first than anything else; they were definitely not your personal drawing room stuffed with all the entertainment gizmos. And driving used to be a real experience of man-machine interface---real synergy, pure symbiosis----requiring different skills, physical strength and a full-time, 360 degree awareness of what was going on around you, all with the help of a tiny rear view and two fixed side view mirrors. Sorry, no rear view monitors or navigation system then.

James May, the co-presenter---alongside the loud-mouthed Jeremy Clarkson---of the well-known TV motoring show Top Gear once said, “a car isn’t a classic just because it’s old. To be a classic, a car has to tell us something of its time”. And tell they did a lot, those Quetta cars of the 1970s---the 120Y, the Luce, the 70s Corollas, the Mark I and the Mark II. Built to last, and not planned for obsolescence, all of them embodied the ethos of their time, which could be seen in their simple yet elegant designs, in their durability and individuality, in the craftsmanship that had gone into their making and in the rewarding experiences of driving (minus the cruise control) on the open roads of the time that they offered to car enthusiasts. No wonder, they are still around and much loved!

For more, please click:

Regal Cinema, Quetta

The Battle of the Kawasakis

On Fasting

St. Francis" Grammar High

Dervaish's Quetta Youtube Channel (Click)

Regal Cinema, Quetta: The Old Turkey Buzzard

Sonay ki Talaash starring "Gary Gory Pack" and Omar Sharif

(Dedication: In the memory of my late uncles Samad Ali, Muhammad Hussain Mamo, Sadiq Ali and Sikander Ali, all of whom were great movie lovers and dedicated patrons of Regal Cinema Quetta in particular)

Quetta now has its own brand new multiplex cinema, the Weplex Pak Forces, equipped with state-of-the-art facilities, including top of the range Dolby Digital Acoustics System 7.1. It is said that this multiplex boasts one of the largest curved screens, if not the largest, in the entire country. Shopping malls are popping up everywhere in the city, many of them equipped with multi-screen theatres showing the latest on offer from Hollywood, Bollywood and Lollywood. Just last year, one of the oldest cinemas on Toghi Road where we used to live, Delight Cinema, was demolished to make way for a brand new, multi-storied shopping mall. But it is not the new multiplex theatre or the iconic Delight Cinema of Quetta that is the focus of this blog; here, I will focus on an equally, if not more, historical landmark of the city, the king of cinemas in Quetta: Regal Cinema.

It must have been one of those lazy, late afternoons in the autumn of early 1970s when the skies of Quetta turn into magnificent blue and the shadows grow longer and longer with each passing day as the crisp and dry breeze brush against the skin. My late uncle, Sadiq Ali, was getting ready as I watched him run his comb through his oil and water soaked hair followed by the fingers of his other hand, trim his moustache in the style of the day and wash and wipe his face in front of the old corridor sink. Looking sideways at me, he said, “Ready?”. “Yes”, I replied. And so, we stepped out of the house to meet up with his waiting friends outside. There were Ishaq, Faqir, Arbab, and if my memory is not failing me, Sgt. Idrees and some other friends, too. It was movie night. And movies, especially English "cowboy" movies (westerns), almost always meant going to the famous Regal Cinema.

Regal Cinema was behind the main Jinnah Road, at the corner of Shahra e Adalat---I think that is what the street was called then---across the street from Hotel Metropole and in front of the old taxi stand. The adjacent intersection on Jinnah Road was called Regal Chowk, named after the cinema. I am not sure if it was an official designation or not, but that was how it was known by the Quetta waal. The cinema was one of the old-style, single screen movie houses with differentially priced seating and separate areas for families and the ladies. The stall tickets were the cheapest, right in front of the screen which usually put a strain on the neck because of continuously looking up at the screen and where sometimes benches were also placed, while the gallery seats (enclosures for families and the ladies) were pricey. This was way before the shopping mall housed multiplexes with airplane style business class luxury seats and high quality, high-definition (HD ) visuals and sound. No popcorns or ice-bars were sold then, but steaming hot chai, peanuts, shinay, paan, pakora and samosa usually hawked by boys inside the main theatre hall during the interval.  In summers, there were cold drinks—cola, soda pop or simply bothal, as they were called. The choice was limited to Coca Cola, 7-UP, Fanta and sometimes the local brand Apple Sidra, my favorite. The drinks, served in thick glass bottles and not in aluminum cans, were sold by hawkers who did not hawk their goods by the usual hollering, but who used to announce their presence inside the theatre hall by making a rattling sound with their metal lid openers against the bottles they carried in front of them in the sling supported wooden crates. Nowadays, like everything else, cinemas have also become “egalitarian” with uniformly priced tickets and with no gender segregation. Progress, taraqqee!

The cinemas in Quetta were grouped, or hierarchized one might say, according to the movies they showed. While Imdad Cinema showed both quality Urdu and English movies, Regal was exclusively English. Rahat, Prince and Ismat Cinemas were mostly for Pakistani Urdu movies and Delight and Paradise were the bastions of Pushto and Punjabi movies with huge, colorful wall posters carrying the pictures of such perennial stars as Badar Munir, Musarrat Shaheen, Sultan Rahi, Mustafa Qureshi, Ali Ejaz, Anjuman and Mumtaz. The plot-less, cheap production Pushto, and often Punjabi movies, too, were almost always house-full shows, mainly because they showed a lot of sexually suggestive scenes, like song and dance scenes in pouring rain in which the heroine would wear a white or a light colored dress! The hoi polloi loved those movies. What else was there to entertain them? No VCRs and no Internet then. This is why I have used the word hierarchized above: people with a more refined taste or artistic sensibility and the education and learning that went with it, or it implied, would usually prefer to be entertained at Regal Cinema or Imdad Cinema.

It was a totally different time then, and like everything else that carried the ethos of that era----some of which I have explored in my previous blog posts (Here and Here)----going to the movies was not just for killing time, or for time-pass; it was not just a mere visual and auditory feast, but a holistic, existential experience, meaning that the movies were savored and consumed with all of one’s senses and faculties; like good food, the movies too---and the movies were always good!---would leave a pleasant after taste in one’s being, long  after the watching experience. Going to the movies was, above all, a social event, even a periodic religious one I would say, like some eagerly awaited pilgrimage to a sacred site.

And so it was on that autumn evening for my uncle Sadiq and his buddies---and for me. The movie that we were going to watch on that day was one that would remain etched in my memory forever. In a sense, it would become part of the historical legacy of Regal Cinema; it would define an era, an entire generation of cinema goers in Quetta, in the same way that years later the Bollywood blockbuster Sholay (starring Amitabh Bachan, Amjad Khan, Heema Mailini and Dharmendra) would define another era, the age of the VCR and the VHS video tape. It was a “cowboy” movie, a western movie, titled MacKenna’s Gold, or Sonay ki Talaash in Urdu. Starring “Gary Gory Pack” (Gregory Peck), Omar Sharif, Telly Savalas (of TV series Kojak fame), Eli Wallach, Julie Newmar and Camilla Sparv, the movie’s plot revolved around the main characters, all bickering and fighting with each other while looking for a hidden trove of gold and the Indians or the Apaches (the “Jungalees”) trying to prevent them from accessing the treasure buried on their sacred land. The movie starts with a Jose Feliciano title song called “Old turkey buzzard” that shows the big winged North American scavenger flying over the beautifully cinematographed barren lands down below (Utah valley? Arizona?). For many years after the movie was first shown at Regal Cinema, that particular “buzzard” song would be sung with many different accents and tonal variations by movie lovers of the “cowboy” variety which was the most popular genre of Hollywood movies then.

Gary Cooper in The High Noon

Regal Cinema had the honor of showing such great movies as The High Noon (starring Gary Cooper), Shane (Alan Ladd), The Drumbeat (Alan Ladd), Guns of Navarone ("Gary Gory Pack", Anthony Quinn, David Niven) The Great Escape (Steve  McQueen), The Magnificent Seven (Yul Brynner and Charles Bronson) and The Dirty Dozen (starting the great Charles Bronson). Before the rise of action heroes like Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood in the 1980s, there were the gun slingers John Wayne, Gary Cooper, “Gary Gory Pack”, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Charles Bronson. The last, “Char-luss Braansun”, was especially loved by the fans, so much so that his large sized posters and locally drawn portraits could be seen on the back hood of many an auto-rickshaw and on trucks, too, in Quetta city.

"Char-luss Braansun" aka Charles Bronson

Charles Bronson may have been an actor of B-Grade movies in Hollywood, but he surely was the hero of heroes in Quetta of the 70s and the 80s.

Regal is no more. I am not sure about the exact year, but my guess is that it was torn down in the early 1990s. On its site now sits a huge concrete and glass block with offices and shops inside, I believe. I have not been inside the building but from outside it’s a sad, dull looking structure, like a gravestone to the buried corpse of the iconic Regal Cinema, the Old Turkey Buzzard of Quetta. 

For more, click: Quetta, City of Karezes

St. Francis' Grammar High, Uncle Marx

Hussainabad, the place, the people and their values

The Rental Libraries of Quetta

The Battle of the Kawasakis

On Simplicity

Loss of symbolism

On Bandagi

                                                 Old Turkey Buzzard (Mackenna's Gold, YouTube)

Dervaish's Quetta Youtube Channel (Click)

Verse 'N Voice: Quetta, City of Karezes

The City of Karezes (Quetta)

By Dr. Javed Iqbal Sayyid  
(translated from the original Urdu  by the poet, with slight modifications by this blogger)

Oh, the city of hundreds of beautiful faces[1]!

You may remember
How this land basin of yours
Was ever filled with love.
And the people
of all the colors of roses
used to live here.
Some had grown from your soil
along with the pine trees.
Others who came to this land
were molded
into the same clay,
their ancestors
buried under the same clay
of your water and soil.

Oh, the city of “shinas”[2]

you know it very well
that like the snow-clad
tops of Mt. Zarghoon
whatever they were or not
your people
were loyal to you.
They were never ungrateful
unlike the shrieking cranes
flocks of which always flew
over your vale at sunset
and which the children
always longed to see
perched on one of your blossoming almond trees.

Oh, the city of my friends,

You must not have forgotten
that all our residents
knew each other
as if they were
the members of the same clan.
Like the frozen lashes
of icicles
hung from your
roof tops

They lived,
And died together.

Like those cracking sheets of ice

on which my friends strolled
and melted with
the slightest warmth of love!

True and pure of heart as they were,

they harbored no ill-will against any one.

Oh, the city of six tongues,

please note that
despite this diversity
every one spoke in the same dialect,
the distinct dialect of Quetta.

Free of any grammatical restraints
this common dialect of your people
was authentic and unpretentious
words flowed out naturally,
growing like wild flowers
and the abuses of friends in it were like those
intoxicating vines of grapes
which forced them to call for more and more
and they got more in return.

Oh, the city of my beloved ones

I still remember
with hearts being generous
city lanes also seemed spacious
when the buildings were not high
the sky always accompanied us
it would descend on the far end of the road
over the gigantic pine trees
just to be with you.

But oh

The city of karezes!
Today,  with this old map of yours,
when I went out to look for you,
I saw that all the spots and sites
of my childhood memory had been erased,

Those sky high pine trees

had been cut down,
And those rose vines that covered
the walls of the houses were
replaced with steel-nails.

When young, where we used to

pluck delicate wild flowers in the open,
there instead I saw solid, colored bricks
displayed over
the same walls.

Seeing all this

made me feel as if
this was done just a day before,
as if someone with a piece of coal
had drawn a cross on my bare chest;
as if all the titles and the sub-titles
of my childhood tale
were instantly washed away.

As if someone

had suddenly fallen into a deep karez!

But oh! The city of my loved ones

the only consolation is
that my friends
with their hard work
have installed new plants of silver and gold,
have elevated their old tin-roof huts
to multi-story market places
and fortresses of their own!

Oh, the city of Dokani Baba[3]!

may God bless you still more
with your abundance.

I pray that each of your abodes

gets filled with wealth.

I pay my compliments for the fame

you have earned.
I congratulate you for your unprecedented growth.

And now that I am leaving,

I make a humble request:

Before it is too late

please take good care of yourself,
and take good care of my friends,
lest their hearts
which are like the
fragile mirrors of white ice,
one day become hardened
like your tiles of marble!

(Javed Iqbal Sayyid, July 1996, Quetta)

P.S. Prof. Dr. Javed Iqbal Sayyid, former Vice Chancellor of Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), a friend of friends, a man of many talents (from boxing to poetry!) and, above all, an illustrious son of Quetta passed away in January 2019. Allah Bakhshay. May he rest in peace.

---

[1] In the original Urdu version, these faces are compared with the light pink color of rubarb ( called rawaash in the vernacular), a local sweet and sour vegetable suitable for salads.

[2] Shinay are small,  green dried berries with oily rind sold in heaps at dry fruit shops or hawked on carts on the streets of Quetta.

[3] Dokani Baba’s real name was Abdul Qudus. He was one of the Sufi elders of the city who used to wander around on the streets of Quetta, always wearing the same clothes all year long. People used to offer him food and money, but he always refused. It is narrated that one day he asked for some paisas from a shop keeper. The shop keeper, showing him his empty cash box, said that he did not have any and that baba should wait for a while till he gets some customers. The baba asked the shopkeeper to open his cash box again and when he did he found the box full of crisp bills, of currency notes! From that day onward the old malang became known as Dokani Baba.

Quetta, City of Karezes by Javed Iqbal Sayyid (on YouTube)