DOES it rain in the month of December in Karachi? Very seldom. Well, on Dec 2, 1974, early morning rain caused by the shallow low pressure waves that had moved from Iran to Balochistan and Sindh lasted for more than three hours in the city. A wheat consignment at the port was damaged by the downpour. About 5,000 telephone lines went kaput. Out of them, more than 80 per cent were re-commissioned later at night; the remaining connections could not be restored because rainwater had seeped through underground cables.

Due to the breakdown of the automatic signalling system, all express and local trains ran about an hour behind schedule. Reports of major and minor power outages were widespread, too, and the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC, now KE) mobile units were slow in dealing with the problem.

But water was not just the only cause of people`s discomfort that week fire also played its part. On Dec 5, an omnibus was attacked in Liaquatabad by a group of students who wereboycotting classes to protest against the semester system. The students of different institutions that had assembled at the Government Boys Secondary School, Liaquatabad No 4, came out on the streets after holding a protest meeting, and started pelting stones at vehicles. They stopped an SRTC (Sindh Regional Transport Company) bus and attempted to set it on fire. The police rushed to the spot and dispersed the agitated youngsters. A fire tender reached the area and put out the fire before it could cause extensive damage to the vehicle.

On Dec 3, the student community`s betterment came under discussion when Provincial Minister for Local Bodies Jam Sadiq Ali said four new intermediate arts and science colleges had begun functioning in the interior of Sindh and similar colleges would be established in Karachi shortly. He was replying to a question asked on the floor of the Sindh Assembly on behalf of the Provincial Education Minister, Pyarali Allana, who was in Islamabad. He claimed Saudabad and New Karachi were the localities where the institutions were to be set up.

The University of Karachi (KU) was inthe news as well, but for a different reason. On Dec 7, eminent scholar Syed Mohammad Taqi`s latest philosophical work Tareekh Aur Kainaat Mera Nazarya was launched at KU at an event presided over by Dr Mahmud Husain, ViceChancellor of the university. Speakers (writers, poets, scholars etc) made a critical appreciation of the 850-page book in which the author had touched upon 200 subjects such as physics, metaphysics, logic, art, culture, literature, magic, animals and genesis, power and energy, infinity, medicine, democracy and the creation of the universe. Dr Husain in his address said the author had given a logical treatment to the complicated topics in a simple and impressive style.

And on Dec 6, the Governor of Sindh, Begum Ra`ana Liquat Ali Khan, paid glowing tributes to Raja Amir Ahmed Khan of Mahmudabad for his simplicity, sincerity, devotion and innumerable sacrifices that he made for the Pakistan movement. She was speaking at a meeting arranged at Theosophical Hall in connection with the first death anniversary of Raja Sahib of Mahmudabad.