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Baboo town wears a deserted look

MEHMUD AHMED

ISLAMABAD: When foundations of the new capital were being made firm and the Capital Development Authority was hawking its wares for the asking but many were hesitant to own land and build for future.

"Who will live in a baboo town," was usually said as the future capital was described a baboo town more in ridicule than in jest then. There was no social or sports activity, just a jungle of concrete - secretariat blocks and baboo houses - row after row, the antagonists of Islamabad had said.

The more modern had a story to tell by comparing it to the Australian capital, Canberra. A Motorist heading for it stopped at a gas station and asked for directions to the capital only to be told that he had left it two villages behind. "So who will live in a secretarial village?" was general comment to discourage when someone was found seeking a parcel of land and intended to build.

The new Brazilian capital, Brasilia was far away and also in its early stages to become an example.

Most of the allotments were made over to the early settlers who of course were from various echelons of the bureaucracy. To own a plot in Islamabad was to demonstrate one's loyalty to Ayub Khan who had fathered the scheme.

But the description of Baboo (vernacular for a clerk but Bengali was more educated) was considered surely enough to discourage.

Many dilly-dallied in making up their minds on whether to go ahead and buy a plot for at the official rate of Rs 7.5 per square yard or look for a place elsewhere in Pakistan: Defence in Karachi, Latifabad in Hyderabad, in township near Thokher Niaz Beg at Lahore, Dhanmandi Extension Dakkah or in Jessore or Chittagong where private housing schemes had started emerging.

Places other than the proposed capital were better known, well populated and established over the centuries with modern amenities.

In a sequence of his memoirs, the TV and Radio professional, Agha Nasir writes of an interview with late W A Sheikh, the second Chairman of the Capital Development Authority who at the end of the recording offered him a plot as a reward in now a prized sector without a cash down payment of easy and extendedable instalments but he had declined the offer. Agha Nasir had spent his life time in bustling Karachi and compared to it then, Islamabad then was a ghost city still sprouting slowly from an uneven and inhospitable landscape.

And today at a cashdown price of Rs.30 to 40 thousand per square yard and equipped with all the modern planning and amenities, playgrounds, green zones, two Pakistani, one foreign and a mushroom of private universities, the city continues to be a "baboo town."

On the eve of the Eid, its population started thinning down, with the bureaucrats who dominate it slipping away quick and fast. By Saturday morning, the most active and bustling areas like the Fazlul Haq Road, Jinnah Avenue, the Lal Quarters and most of the Aabpara wore a look that the 1954's seismi jolts had given to the city of Quetta. The earthquake was of much lesser intensity than that of 1935 that had razed the city, but continued jolts from dawn to dusk had made people flee the town.

Islamabad is to remain a "baboo town" until the evening of Monday or morning following when the offices, public and so the private re-open but in what gear, is to be seen.