Back in 2004, after fetching me and my sisters from our schools in Clifton, my mother unexpectedly careened the car towards Hatim Alvi Road instead of taking our usual Zamzama route back home — sending us children tumbling and hollering in the backseat of that Suzuki Mehran.

By then, we were starting to become accustomed to her breakneck driving and also to the occasional post-school detour. As us siblings untangled our limbs and reassessed our bearings, we quickly deduced where we were headed.

Up until then, the Mohatta Palace, with its combination of pink Jodhpur stone and locally sourced yellow stone facade, existed in my imagination only in the form of ghostly stories, courtesy my older sister, who had told me that the spectre of Fatima Jinnah still haunted the Madar-i-Millat’s former residence. I simply took her word for it.

But on that day, the dread of what lay beyond the palace’s palatial gardens quickly morphed into amazement upon seeing the building’s stately rooms, majestic teak wood staircase, octagonal towers, balustrades, parapets and ornate ceilings. Having been refurbished and inaugurated as the Mohatta Palace Museum just six years prior in 1999, the building, its lawns and its sprawling exhibits commanded a grandeur unlike any I had ever seen before.

As Nasreen Askari steps down as the curator of the Mohatta Palace Museum after 28 years of service, her story and legacy shall forever be woven with that of the museum

ENTER THE CURATOR

Ever since its inception, the Mohatta Palace Museum has showcased some of the most memorable, ambitious, even audacious, exhibitions the city of Karachi has ever seen — many of which you may well have attended over the years. Think of, ‘Treasures of the Talpurs: Collections from the Courts of Sindh’, ‘Visions of Divinity: The Art of Gandhara’, ‘Sadequain: The Holy Sinner’, ‘Jewel in the Crown: Karachi under the Raj 1843–1947’, ‘Rebel Angel: Asim Butt’, and many........

© Dawn (Magazines)