The Patience of Turnip Kebabs

Every Sunday, I’d go with Mummy and Daddy to my paternal grandparents’ house. Dada and Dadi lived in Nazimabad, an area of Karachi where many of the Muhajirs (Muslim immigrants from India) settled following partition in 1947. This was some distance from where we lived, and the traffic between our place and theirs was notorious. We’d encounter buses driving at high speed and motorbikes with burst exhausts that rattled our brains. Although children and grandparents crossed the wide roads with no fear, there was no sense of road rules or pedestrian priority, and Mummy would close her eyes as Daddy navigated his way through this barrage of chaos.