Karachi prior to the 1970s

How fascinating is the account of Business Recorder op-ed writer Farooq Hassan about Karachi: "In the late 1960s Karachi was a swinging city. Dubai was not yet born. Bombay, to the south east, was run by mobs. Kabul was also swinging. ...The Taliban were a distant nightmare. ...Now, under the aegis of the military, Karachi is limping back to normalcy. Speed Bird, Midway and De France have been decommissioned. Halcyon days are gone forever."
I was born in Karachi in the late 1970s when the country was in the midst of a profound political turmoil. Whatever was happening in the neighbourhood of the country was also quite alarming. The Red Army of the then Soviet Union had entered Afghanistan to help propel a beleaguered Communist government in Kabul. In Iran, the brute rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi had come to an end through a popular movement. I don't know whether or not those historic social and political developments in Iran and Afghanistan had caused any impact on the character of Karachi, the city of teeming millions. I was, however, told by my parents and other elders that it was in the late 1970s that Karachi began to lose its cosmopolitan gloss in a meaningful manner. Now Karachi is largely known for its history of ethnic-sectarian killings and bomb blasts.