The heavy downpour of July 18 in Karachi flooded the entire city falsifying the claims by the City Nazim Mustafa Kamal about grandiose development projects.

In the middle class locality of Gulistan-e-Johar a couple, riding a motor bike along with an infant, was stranded in water. The pressure slipped the baby out of the mother's lap into the gushing water. She was lucky that the child touched the feet of a boy bathing in rainwater who took the baby out alive.

At I.I.Chundrigar Road, also called the Wall Street of Pakistan because the head offices of almost all business companies and banks are located there, thousands of people could not go home because the transport system collapsed completely. A leading English daily suffered losses worth tens of millions of rupees because rainwater entered its basement and destroyed newsprint. Similarly, thousands of warehouses, shops and houses were destroyed. At least 53 people died of electrocution, drowned and roof and walls of houses collapsed. The power system also collapsed followed by unavailability of drinking water.

Ruqiya Khaskheli, a union councillor of Bin Qasim Town, complained at the City Council meeting on Wednesday that stagnant water is still present in her town despite a passage of more than 10 days of rains and the employees of City District Government Karachi (CDGK) have not even bothered to visit the area.

The question arises why did all the underpasses constructed with much fanfare transform into pools after the downpour? And why did the city planners fail to visualise the scenario despite spending billions of rupees in developmental projects? "There has to be a vision for the city. City Nazim's vision is that Karachi should be a world class city. Our vision is that it should be a commuter and pedestrian-friendly city," noted architect and town planner Arif Hasan told TNS.

"With approximately 15 million residents, the metropolis is one of the largest cities in the world and continues to grow rapidly. According to estimates, the population will double by 2025 if this trend is sustained," says a report by Siemens, a multinational company. "Only the city district of Karachi has a road network, which encompasses about 5,000 kilometres. Approximately 1.5 million automobile drivers are officially registered. The traffic density increases by ten percent annually," the report adds. The CDGK officials estimate that city's population has already touched 18 million mark.

However, there is no research organisation to help planners take informed decisions. There are no autonomous, well-staffed planning institutions and it seems the entire "developmental" work is being undertaken in haste and without any accountability to the people. Outfalls have been encroached upon; therefore, rainwater goes into the sea gradually.

The roads act as drains, according to Hasan. "Then there are inherent defects for instance on densification issues. Areas of low density need to be densified; there is need to densify new projects and that does not mean building flats," says Hasan.  He says zoning regulations in the city are "anti-street" "anti-pedestrian" "anti mixed use" and anti everything that creates an environment-friendly city.

Hasan points out that Karachi's infrastructure is not mapped or documented, are the scale and directions of the growth of the city. Hence effective planning is next to impossible even if funds are available.

The haphazard development depicts delusion of grandeur amongst many of our politicians and an urge to outclass rival organisations in the next elections. There is also a tendency of overspending irrespective of the fact that citizens have to pay borrowed money through their nose.

Between 1976 and 2003, the government of Pakistan has taken loans from International Financial Institutions (IFIs) for urban development projects to the tune of $1,472.44 million and most of them are for water and sanitation projects. Of the $1,472.44 million, $653.89 million 44 percent were taken for various projects in Karachi. As a result of these loans, the Karachi Water & Sewerage Board (KW&SB) owes to Asian Development Bank more than Rs42 billion, according to Hasan. Despite massive funding, the ailing organization has failed to ensure constant supply of water to the citizens and as far as the sewage system is concerned, less said the better.

The CDGK does undertake de-silting exercises but usually it is done ahead of monsoon while it is needed round the year because drains remain clogged and hamper flow of water. According to Hasan in many places the natural nullahs are higher than the sewage lines and because of this, and because of their reduced capacity, there is back wash and flooding after the downpour.

Furthermore, there are no drains along the curbs of even major roads and rainwater flows through the roads to the nearest nullah. No wonder roads are constructed with much fanfare but are washed away after the rains. I. I. Churdrigar Road, for instance, was "beautified" by CDGK but now portrays a horrible picture with broken pavements and open manholes.

Since the city is divided between the CDGK and as many as 13 cantonments, there is always an in-fight amongst them as to who is responsible for clearing the road after downpour. For instance, Pakistan naval officers were adamant to damage Sharae Faisal by throwing rainwater accumulated in Naval Officers Residential Estate-2(NORE-2) on the street instead of diverting it to the drain, thereby making it prone to accidents. Amazingly police had been deployed to ensure that nobody objects to blatant violation of law. City Nazim Mustafa Kamal was quick to adopt measures to drain the water accumulated on many streets but he seemed helpless to restrict naval officers not to throw water on Sharae Faisal. Tens of thousands of cars, cabs, mini-buses and motorbikes ply on the prestigious road that connects Karachi Airport to the heart of the city.

"The area comes under the jurisdiction of Cantonment Board and the District Coordination Officer has talked to relevant officers in the Board but they have shown their inability to check pumping of rainwater on Sharae Faisal by naval authorities and said they have referred the case to Corps Commander," Mustafa Kamal told this correspondent.

Then there is indifference regarding how climate change and changing weather patterns would affect Karachi. "The west and east coasts of Karachi are already low-lying and the slightest sea level rise will very adversely impact the local population of these areas," says Tahir Qureshi, Director, Coastal Ecosystem, the World Conservation Union-Pakistan (IUCN-P). Dr Shahid Amjad, an eminent scientist concurs. "The highest high tide of south of Karachi and Indus' deltaic region is very close to the astronomical high tide. Any increase in sea level as a result of climate change will inundate large areas of coastal locations," according to Professor Amjad, Dean, Faculty of Marine Sciences, Lasbella University of Agriculture, Water and Marine Science.

However, instead of showing farsightedness, city planners are adamant to close the mouths of creeks that would ultimately lead to flooding of the mega city and the worst affected areas would be posh localities like Defence Housing Authority (DHA) and Clifton.

The News on Sunday: How did you end up in this part of the world all the way from Australia?

Michal Glikson: My interest in this part of the world began when I was studying politics as a secondary degree to my fine arts degree and I became really fascinated by imperialism, colonisation, and particularly the links between the colonisation of Australia and the exploitation of the subcontinent by the British Raj. So it was following the trail of the British and their empire that I first went to India.

Then in 2006, I was really interested in the connections between the kinds of news coverage that we got about the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan and the links between that kind of media coverage and the old history of British exploitation. It was some kind of fascination with wanting to understand why the news coverage would be so skewed, linked historically to the old patterns of exploitation. That's why I really wanted see for myself what was really happening at the scene of the earthquake or what had really happened to people on the day that it caused the kinds of media coverage that we got in Australia which presented the Kashmiri people in a very bad light. I was quite sceptical and was interested in finding the root of that feeling people's stories.

TNS: You exhibited at Rohtas a few weeks back, how did that go?

MG: There was not a large turnout but the people that were there seemed to really enjoy the work and I got some very nice feedback particularly in the guest book. People really seemed to grasp where I was coming from, which was a place of not just compassion but more a place of wanting to make connections, to actually step into the shoes of people.

TNS: What made you choose children as a primary audience?

MG: The works are done for children and adults but I hoped to engage children's attention, to capture the other end of what the media wasn't presenting -- media was presenting a sophisticated kind of view that you get from the lens of the camera and the flashy sensation. I was hoping to present the kind of story that you get upon reflection and that speaks to children in terms of the language that they speak when they are beginning to draw. In making the works I felt like a child a lot of the time.

The style is one of a childlike simplicity. I don't attempt to mimic the way children draw but I do comment in the style of the drawing in ways the things that stand out to children, which are colour and a sensitivity of line. At this stage I didn't want to present this view as an exquisitely controlled experience but to be one much closer to the surface of the skin.

TNS: Do you believe in the bourgeois and humanitarian divisions of art?

MG: I think it is a reality and I wish it wasn't there. Many people are in denial of that and we have to ask whose interest it serves that they continue to deny that schism. There is a lot of money to be made out of denying certain schisms in our society -- there is a lot of money to be made by denying that chocolate makes you fat.

TNS: How do you feel about the local art scene, especially in relation with the socio-political challenges that this region is going through?

MG: This is going to sound kind of tough, but it's hard to believe that people can even make art the way things are in Pakistan, similarly in India or Australia for that matter. And this is because there is such an enormous distance between the people making works and the people suffering the issues. There are people making works who are trying to reach down into the issues, but there is such a great socio-economic and political distance between the makers of the works and the sufferers; and then again a distance between the makers whose works get seen and the makers whose works don't get seen. It's kind of like an enormous beast not going anywhere and tripping over itself, because the thing is who is enjoying or reading the works.

It's not that I think that things are much better in Australia, where we don't have a huge gallery-going audience. But the gap between the gallery-going audience and the non-gallery-going audience is a little smaller than it is here. Here it's like people are making out whilst riding a serpent. And you can see the serpent of the country waving around and these little artists on top almost sucking their thumbs but trying to look at the serpent and make-work.

The role of the artist has largely become of someone who sits on the periphery of society and sucks their thumbs. And sometimes they make a lot of money by doing so, and they come into the centre and then go out again. But they are not regarded as a writer of books; they are regarded as somebody who is in some kind of basket or rocking chair.

TNS: What is the alternative to sucking thumbs?

MG: There is a wonderful book that really attacks this kind of predicament and that's the The Reenchantment of Art by Suzi Gablik, in which she talks about how a whole new epoch of the way we regard and make art has to begin and has begun and it really sets a challenge that everybody who is making anything ought to really a look at.

I am grappling with it myself and not succeeding but we must grapple with it. And that is, that people who make things should be putting themselves right on the street in the face of the things that needs to be re-made. It's a literal agenda that she proposes; it's as literal as a new architecture that is efficient, and in its efficiency beautiful, and in its beauty democratic. It's about a new way of recycling and organizing our garbage and not just making art out of garbage but actually programming into the very way that society is operating. It's difficult to describe in words but the process or the product has to really be something that people can use.

For me that was the most rewarding aspect of the whole earthquake story thing, the process of actually sitting down in some field with some people who had lost so much and doing a portrait of them as beautifully and truthfully as I could in the given circumstances.

Their stories weren't really getting out there. Journalists had come and gone, snapped pictures and left. One of the things that every creature really thrives on is energy. In the end, for me, it was not about making pictures, although the end product was something that people could see, but the actual experience.

Traditionally in the monsoons malhaars are sung and there are a great many varieties of malhaars, the most celebrated of course being 'mian ki malhaar,' accredited to Mian Tansen. But then megh and malhaar are also sung together as one raag with tremendous appeal. Some of the greatest names in our music like Ramdas and Surdas have crafted their own malhaars and of Mirabai, who sang to douse the fire that scalded Tansen after he had sung dipak to prove to Akbar that his music had the power to move nature. There are other malhaars like gaur malhaar and many more, which in recent times have been the creative innovations of musicians who wanted to enlarge the scope of their creative expression.

Of the musicians who created these most famous malhaars very little is known. The greatest attraction has been Tansen whom Abul Fazl credited as being the most outstanding musician produced in India in the last one thousand years. But Tansen too is glorified in many sheaths of legends and it is very difficult to separate history from fiction. Actually his person had attracted too much attention and it recounts as being a much- rarified existence, but of the other two great musicians who too created their own versions of malhaars, and who have been mentioned by Abul Fazl, Ramdas and Surdas very little is known.

The problem with the history of music is that it is too much information that gravitates towards legend or there is none whatsoever. About these two musicians we know so little that the temptation is always present to create a legend to fill the yawning gap of vital information. They must have been truly outstanding musicians to reach the imperial court of Akbar who along with his courtiers took great pride in being the patron of everything in music that was exceptional and of high quality. During the course of the century many films have been made on musicians including Surdas that have indemnified the fictional aspect of the character and the effects that music has on humans and nature.

Despite the legend there is a great possibility that Mira Bai's and Tansen's paths never crossed. According to some sources Mira was born in 1473 and probably died in 1546, which could be the period that just preceded the rise of the great Tansen. But then all this information and the dates should be treated with a great deal of suspicion. Similarly the oft-claimed coexistence of two great musicians Tansen and Baiju Bawra too does not stand the test of close scrutiny, only for the sake of a dramatic rendering of history, so close to the spirit of music, been generally accepted as artistically viable.

Mira Bai was probably born in Medeta in Jodhpur. She was married to Kunwar Bhojaraja of Mewar but he died a few years after the marriage. Mira Bai being a great devotee of Krishna hosted the devotees when they came to pay their homage. But her husband's brother did not like this very much. The family harassed her and probably there was an attempt on her life as well. She let Mewar and passed the rest of her life in Brindraban singing the glory of Lord Krishna and then in Dvarika where she passed away in 1546.

About two hundred and fifty songs of Mira are available. She wrote her songs mostly in Rajisthani and Brijbhasa and at times used Gujrati. She utilised seventy-five raags for her compositions and according to Parasurama Chaturvedi rare raags like hamsa narayana, chaya tori and sukha soratha but her most enduring has been the merabai ki malhaar.

Ramdas was from Gwalior, was initially at the court of Islam Shah Suri, then with Bairam Khan during his rebellion, and later was employed at the court of Akbar. His son Surdas probably created the Surdas Malhaar but there was another Surdas also at the court of Akbar who was a poet and a musician. He was blind and was from Delhi. He is said to have written twenty-four books of poetry, mostly lost to history, and used seventy-five raags. He eventually made it to the court of Akbar who greatly appreciated his singing.

It is commonly believed that the malhaars have the capacity to influence the elements to such an extent that it begins to respond to its tune. This assumption that tonal structure of malhaar is expected to bring rain is challenged in this day and age of rationality. This relationship of nature with sound unless scientifically spelled out remains a myth or at best a commonly held belief. Our musical system and its legends are all related to the worldview that it is one large whole where the spheres of individual activities do not operate individually but at some level are linked in a way that we are still unaware of.

Most of these legends should be treated as they flow from a common fund of mythology where the world was viewed not from the analytical dissective eye of a scientist but from the integrative vision of a sage.

Now the raags have been unhinged from their emotional source they are sung as an independent entity not necessarily following the rules that had established their ambience. This started the dissociation of the composition from the aesthetic emotion of the raag.

Now singing the malhaar in monsoon is an attempt of creating that mood and establishing that organic bond that existed between man and nature. It is no longer the reflection of a given state where the integral relationship already exists -- only an attempt at finding a local habitation and a name for the disinherited and displaced souls.