Last Sunday, a day-long festival was held at the recently renovated Khaliqdina Hall in the heart of the old city of Karachi.

While Karachi’s public spaces are coming back to life — as seen with the attendances at the Arts Council’s World Culture Festival, the performances at the National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) and the All Pakistan Music Conference, and new fringe cultural spaces such as Nani Ghar, Mehr Ghar and Kitab Ghar — seeing an abandoned heritage building once again milling with people of all ages from across Karachi, was a moving experience. The handsome portals of the Palladium building, for many years dark and silent, were filled with light and life, as in the past.

Architect and urban planner Arif Hasan, in his article ‘The Changing Face of Karachi’, explains in great detail the circumstances that ‘orphaned’ the inner city. Karachi has awakened after three decades of fear. Much has changed in these decades. The culture of cinema, which started with Star Cinema on Bunder Road in 1917, has vanished as, one by one, the 136 cinema houses in Karachi have been converted to shopping malls or offices, and the once-bustling........

© Dawn (Magazines)