I once had an inside joke with myself while watching an ice cream commercial on TV.

 

Children dressed in bright colours screamed excitedly when asked if they wanted ice cream. They made a big mess and wiped their lips clean, their smiling parents and grandparents laughed, and the ad ended with a typical tagline that equated ice cream with happiness in life.

I thought - what if the kids said ‘no’ when asked if they wanted ice cream?

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This visual kept me amused for days.

I am thrilled by the idea of children discovering their agency in a culture that insists on their passive submissiveness. I began dreaming up scenarios where ice cream-rejection might occur in a Pakistani context, and as Ice cream started to take shape, I realised that I had the opportunity to explore something unique through Ahmed, Amna and Ali - I could stage a multi-layered, generational rebellion.

Ahmed, Amna and Ali are individuals who come from my world - one that is very familiar to many Karachiites who grow up in a socio-economic bubble, feeling like they never really belong anywhere. A world of English-medium schools and a western upbringing in a country where Urdu is the vernacular, a guilt-ridden, charitable outlook towards the city with a strong disconnection from the experience of poverty, of contradictory taste in most things, and a superficial understanding of the places and contexts that serve as a backdrop to our most cherished memories. This world is colourful, joyful, innocently optimistic, but feels inauthentic - as it is systemically guarded against the stark ‘realness’ of the city. Even extraordinarily happy moments come with an underlying awareness that there is danger and suffering occurring somewhere else. Through Ahmed, Amna and Ali, I honour my lived experiences as a confused Karachiite with a forbidden yearning to merge with the landscape, despite all of its dangers and imperfections.

While it took many years of self-reflection and a deep dive into post-colonial studies to come to terms with my feelings of alienation in the city I call home, in recent years, I began to seek a more heart-centered connection to my city, rather than a conceptual one. What was the piece of land that had sustained me throughout my life? The Nature that had been present and nurturing, always in the background but never part of my conscious identity. I began to think about the much-awaited monsoon rains, the birds chirping at my window, the trees in my neighborhood, and of course, the Arabian sea - my silent companion on countless Sundays. All significant aspects of my lived experience, that had been overlooked in favour of drawing room discussions about politics, religion, the economy, and visas granting lucky people an exit from the country.

 

As Karachi's land and water continues to be impacted by climate change, societal neglect, excessive consumerism and corporate greed, a heart-based connection and personal accountability towards Nature is needed now more than ever - especially since Karachi faces the very real existential threat of being flooded by 2050, according to a recent study.

 

Ice cream is my imagining of a new way of being - one where unspoken distances are bridged, a possibility of new generations freeing themselves of their complex social programming to reclaim their connection to the landscape.

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I chose Karachi’s Clifton beach as the setting for Ahmed, Amna and Ali’s re-birth as free individuals in society, as the location perfectly captures the complexities I attempt to convey in this film. Clifton beach (also called Sea view beach) is a public beach that is both loved and hated by Karachiites. Loved for its novelty - the beach is fully alive with a plethora of vendors, camels and horses, food and snack vendors and thousands of families who travel from interior regions to celebrate national holidays. It is a sight coveted by street photographers and tourists because of its chaotic vibrancy - one that we love to boast to foreigners. On the other hand, due to environmental degradation and institutional neglect, the beach is dirty - the water contaminated and filled with trash still has a stench from an oil spill that occurred 21 years ago. For the elite class of Pakistani society that has access to clean, private beaches along Karachi's shoreline, Clifton beach's breathtaking sunsets are usually enjoyed from a safe distance. It has been my attempt to bridge this distance by creating intimacy with the sea, a kind of baptism into a new world of authentic expression and reclamation of the land that sustains us.