The Impressive Little World of Empress Market

Mohammed Ammar Bin Yaser

From the last 40 years, every day, at 8 in the morning, Ahmed Motiwala enters Empress Market from the main gate with a heavy bag on his shoulder. He settles at a corner not far from the entrance, unpacks the bag and opens his makeshift crockery shop.

“Yes, it has been 40 years. My late father came from India in the 30s and bought that shop over there,” he points to a small store that now sells dry fruits, which his father sold in his lifetime owing to some financial crisis.

The grey-haired, sixty -something Ahmed sat near the entrance of Empress Market for four decades, and witnessed the evolution of Karachi from a unique vantage point.

Like him, most of the shopkeepers of his age-group spent their lives cloistered within the ageless Victorian walls. Listening to their stories makes one feel there existed a time when everything was just fine.

“Back then, it was different. Empress Market was the heart of Karachi, people from all over the city and beyond would visit on weekly or monthly basis to shop in bulk, since it was one of the largest and most popular super markets of the country, but the charm is gone!” says Saleem Qureshi, a 75 years old meat seller.

But for an urban Karachiite, who grew up on the rim of the city, oblivious of the ways of old Karachi, Empress market still holds some bewildering surprises. The thick concrete walls may have lost their luster but they have somehow managed to cage its enduring culture. An early morning walk through the market offers flashes of a bygone era that now exists only in nostalgic anecdotes. You find Chinese women clad in skin-hugging clothes meandering around without inviting stares; old Christian women in knee-length skirts bickering with vegetable vendors; general stores run by bearded Muslim men selling alcoholic beverages. The seamless functionality of it all catches an urbanite, who grew up at the break of the millennium, off-guard.

“The Bechat Bazaar culture that sprouted a decade ago, broke our back” laments Ahmed, “until the late nineties, families from Clifton, Tariq road and other posh localities would come and buy car loads of stuff, but not anymore, now they get it in their neighborhood itwarbazars, why would they take the trouble to come here?”

Battered by inflation and the ever-shrinking profit margins, Ahmed seemed to have given up. “My son his doing MBA from Islamabad” he brags with a proud smile. “I want him to go abroad, there is nothing left in this country” he declares with a sigh.

The meat vendors of Empress Market occupy a vast auditorium that reeks of rotten flesh. The floor is greasy with filth and the white titles that makes up the raised-area is blotched with blood and shreds of meat that flew off the choppers.

Saleem Qureshi spent the last 50 years of his life at this place. When asked what has changed since his heydays, he simply blew up: “what hasn’t? look up there” he points to the ceiling, which is taken over by a thick cloud of cobweb. “During Ayub Khan’s regime, this place use to be cleaned twice a day with hot water and bleach and today, nobody cares. The British government sends fund for the up-keep of this market, but your politicians, they gobble it up with respite, nobody cares” he pauses for a breath.

“I am working here since I was a teenager, now I am 73. I was born in Larkana and studied in Karachi, this is our family business.” Basically, I am Sindhi, but Karachi is where I grew up.” He introduced himself and abruptly left when a customer arrived.

The Empress market is largely run by the likes of Ahmeds and Saleems who are harassed by inflation, nauseated by the filth around them, attacked by bouts of pessimism but cocooned in the comfort of decades-old family businesses. Secured in the knowledge that they are comparatively better off than those struggling to eke out a living beyond the thick walls. This relative prosperity coupled with the collective nostalgia for “good old days” has made Empress Market a sanctuary that can still nurture the heritage of old Karachi which, for the present generation, lives only in the folklores from an impressive world that was once there.