Days remaining to
Independence Day -
August 14

Karachi, standing at the head of the Arabian Sea, is the gateway to Pakistan. It is the main Bundar (harbour) of the country, and the road that leads from the harbour to the city was long known as Bundar Road; it has now been named M. A. Jinnah Road. It goes straight to the site which, in olden days, was known as Exhibition ground that lay beside an undulating surface of the earth culminating in a low ridge used by the military rangers for shooting practice. A greater part of it is now levelled, with a ditch at the back and a higher ground to the south-east side still retaining the natural roughness of the original. The whole area has now assumed the shape of a huge quadrangle at a height overlooking the new growth of the city sprawled around it. At the highest point in this area stands aloft the Quaid's mausoleum. Its white marble dome makes for a lovely attraction against the blue sky of a clear evening from afar. When lit at night, the effulgence of the light presents a spectacle of a semi-circular globe on a tapering, square pyramidal stand - a pleasure to be enjoyed from housetops in every nook and corner of the city.

A visitor plodding along M. A. Jinnah Road in his weary journey through a busy throng of cars, buses and motor rickshaws gets a first glance of the monument near the Idgah. As he advances, he sometimes loses sight of it by the obstruction of a hugh lorry on the road but regains it soon. He always finds the monument - standing all alone, clad in white in the purity of its soul, erect and firm, to console and inspire hope.

The mausoleum is at a site where now meet the main throughfares of the city and where come one and all - old and young, men and women, children and babies in arms - to pay homage to the departed soul and recieve blessings. The site once lay at almost the end of the old city, but today it occupies a central place with the new growth of the city. The throughfares that impinge on the site strike at the four angles of a parallelogram which encloses the lofty monument.

The old city follows the alignment of the old Bundar Road to the south with the cantonment extension to the east. The Shahrah-i-Quaideen on the east leads to the Pakistan Employees Cooperative Housing Society and onward to Drigh Road and the Airport. The road to the north leads on towards the University of Karachi, while the one to the west branches out in several directions, one of which goes to Nazimabad and New Karachi. Around the quadrangle, the roads make a ring of wide dual carriage that circumambulates the sacred site. A visitor, driving around, sees the monument from all the angles and, while paying a tribute to the memory of the Great Leader, he praises the perfect symmetry of the building which the architect Yahya Merchant designed for it.

From the top of the terraced platform, on which the building stands, one gets a panoramic view of the city around that spreads down the desert plain with the Manghopir Hill skirting the northern side and the Arabian Sea limiting the southern extension. The Quaid, while alive, guiding the destiny of the Muslims of the subcontinent, and now in his permanent abode looks around his own city of love and watches over the future activity of the nation that he created.

Courtesy: Prof. Ahmad Hasan Dani, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad