Jamshoro
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Jamshoro
A beautiful city
By Mohammad Ali Mahar
Moving aimlessly like a herd of lost cows in Jamshoro, my friend and I were cursing our stars as well as the fellow, my cousin, whose advice, unfortunately, we had decided to pay heed to.
It was a gentle cold afternoon in the month of January. We had arrived in Jamshoro late in the morning. My cousin had advised us that we should arrive one day ahead of the commencement of classes to familiarise ourselves with the campus. Yes, we were here to study.
And now the sprawling view in front of us of Sindh and the Mehran University wore a deserted look. The only person who greeted us at the hostel was Allah Bachayo (may his soul rest in peace) who himself looked like a genie from a bottle – albeit a famished, smaller version. And the desolate Sir Syed Hostel where we had been allotted a room, from the cracks in the walls and the ceiling, looked like more of a haunted house than a college dormitory.
The sun was about to set behind the eucalyptus trees and distant hillocks and no one from our class or senior students had so far arrived. Neither my friend nor I had been on our own before. We suddenly felt homesick and the cool but the pleasant Jamshoro breeze carrying all the fragrance of the nearby sesame trees lost all its charm for us. We seriously started thinking of taking the next available train to Rohri and not return until we were assured that the university had returned to life. Then suddenly a white car stopped in front of us. The person who got off the car would be known for the next four years as Riddha (lamb) Shah. So we were three now.
As dusk fell, the hostel and its surroundings started to have some semblance of life with students arriving in small groups.
Jamshoro had always been my dream destination right from my childhood days when I had come here for the first time to see my mother’s ailing aunt who was undergoing a surgery at the LMC. I had fallen in love with the town. I remember that upon seeing those glowing, gleeful faces of young students and a very nice weather, I had solemnly prayed to God Almighty to bring me here one day as one of the students.
Jamshoro has always had a great romantic value for the people who love Sindh. I had read a lot about Jamshoro’s role in the Sindhi rights movements. And its students’ valiant and defiant resistance campaigns against every tyrant had always been an inspiration for a romantic like me.
Later on, when the time came to choose between pre-medical and pre-engineering subjects, I chose pre-engineering. Not only because I hated the smell of medicines but also because all those selected from our area to study medicine had to go to the CMC, Larkana, and I wanted to go to Jamshoro.
Jamshoro of our time, however, was a lot different from the Jamshoro of the days of yore. Gone were the days of idealism and student activism. The government’s agencies having realised students’ potential might have had already emasculated the activist groups of our time through different strategies. All that was left in the name of nationalist leadership was freeloaders who enjoyed beating hapless chowkidars and bus drivers as well as having free lunches in the university cafeteria. The biggest favour that they could get from the university administration was to control the university ambulance for a few hours and have a ride to Jamshoro phatak or Hyderabad.
In a systematic way, the genuine student leadership was replaced by the hoodlums and goons of the agencies. And a certain air of distrust was prevalent where everybody was suspicious of everybody.
One very funny incident took place on our forth or fifth day at the university. As we were returning from our usual evening walk, we found the hostel completely surrounded by police vehicles. Nobody was being permitted to enter or leave the dorm. While his team was inside the hostel doing its work, the Subedar Sahib sat in a comfortable chair outside, smoking his cigarette. I walked up to him and inquired what was going on. “You are asking me?” He said. “You students harbour terrorist and criminals, cause all the trouble and ask me what’s going on?”
They had a tip-off. We were informed that a terrorist group had brought a large supply of arms to the hostel and it had been hidden in a couple of rooms allotted to some criminals. He knew it, whispered one of my roommates in my ear, these universities were a den of criminals and if the police had been there, they must have got solid information. I completely agreed with him.
Finally, after a few hours, the police allowed us to go in. And lo and behold, one of the two rooms that the police had broken into was nobody else’s, but ours! The other room belonged to an equally ‘hardened criminal’ freshman from Dadu. So much about police efficiency!
But those were fun days. Being away from home for the first time, one loved the test of independence and enjoyed every bit of it.
