By Nadir Nabil Gabol

​NEWS travels fast in the narrow lanes of Lyari. Usually, it is news of a football match, a poetry recital, or the passing of an elder. Recently, however, the talk of the town has been the release of the trailer for Dhurandhar, a big-budget Bollywood spectacle starring Ranveer Singh. The film, we are told, is a spy thriller set against the backdrop of the Lyari gang wars. Reportedly, because they could not film here, the producers constructed an elaborate set in India—recreating our Cheel Chowk, our chaotic skyline, and our weathered streets.

​Watching the promotional material, one feels a familiar, weary sense of déjà vu. Once again, Lyari has been reduced to a gritty aesthetic, a convenient stage for bullets and bloodshed. To the filmmakers in Mumbai, and indeed to many content creators in Pakistan, Lyari is not a home; it is a genre. It is the “Wild West” of Karachi, a place where the only story worth telling is one of violence.

​As someone whose family has represented this constituency in parliament for nearly a century, I view........

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