There was only one place in Pindi worth spending time in, and now that's burned to the ground.
There were at least a hundred odd shops and businesses in Gakkhar Plaza, and many people that I used to see on a monthly if not weekly basis, like the bloke who would sell us a new stage play every week and promise to find the old NTM/STN comedy shows if he had to dig Rainbow Centre Karachi inside out and who found out that I had a counterfeit 500 bucks note and told me to go spend it somewhere else before anyone found out.
Cheap chinese shoes,occasionally a decent pair of denims and the Garden Grill on the top floor (which I'd been to only once) were all reasons to go to Gakkhar. But the one thing that made Pindi worth living in was on the 3rd floor and it was what they called "The largest DVD store in Asia". Sadaf CD was the centre of all my excursions and 3 or 4 days wouldn't pass without me taking a peek up there and leaving with a shopping bag full of (grossly overpriced) CDs or DVDs.I figure I've spent more than 60% of all my money in that one place.
The screwed up internet (a result of some undersea cables being cut, so they tell me) prevents me from waxing too lyrical about the place.Suffice to say that without everything I've bought from that place over the last 4.5 years, I don't know where I'd be...
I bought my first Dylan there. I bought my first Bergman there. First Kubrick. First Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. Hell, first of almost everything...my entire education. I'll end by going to my DVD rack and writing down everything I bought from Sadaf and sparing a moment to thank my lucky stars that I got here 5 years ahead of the game.
In no specific order,
Fantasia
Wild Strawberries
Smiles Of A Summer Night
The Bicycle Thief
Porridge (Season1)
Yes Minister,Yes Prime Minister
Red Dwarf
The Monty Python movies
Kind Hearts And Coronets,Passport To Pimlico
The Birth Of A Nation
Metropolis
Chori Chori
Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi
Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro
The Haunting
All Quiet On The Western Front
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
The Adventures Of Robin Hood
Citizen Kane
All About Eve
Sunset Boulevard
Stagecoach
Judgement At Nuremberg
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Maltese Falcon
North By Northwest
Strangers On A Train
Spellbound
A Clockwork Orange
Easy Rider
Blow Up
The Producers
Dr. Strangelove
Woody Allen's Sleeper
Being There
The Big Lebowski
Ed Wood
I'm Not There
Masked And Anonymous
Walk The Line
The LastWaltz .....................
I shudder to think what I'd be without any of these.
May God grant those who died eternal rest, and those who lost their loved ones or suffered monetary losses, the composure to overcome their grief and their loss.
I can so relate. 'It just hit home,' my sister upon being told ghakar plaza was the bulding which until recently housed Sadaf CDs.
ReplyDeleteExactly,that's what puts it into perspective.Plus the fact that Pindi's first proper fast food place, "Mr. Big" used to be there...
ReplyDeleteIn Karachi the place to get your kind of movies isn't Rainbow (though you can find anything there if you're able to spend weeks searching) it's Laraib at Boat basin.
ReplyDeleteYou have all my sympathies. My life would stop if Laraib or Khadda burned down.
Weeks browsing in a video store would be awesome,if slightly impractical.Thanks for the heads-up though,and the sympathy . . .
ReplyDeletestage plays ?
ReplyDeleteYeah,you know the ones I'm talking about.
ReplyDeleteCheap (in more ways than one) entertainment for the masses . . .