Rice, Fat, Meat, Streets.

I have been writing online for about seventeen years now as I type this, but during all that time, no experience has come close to how magical this was.

Everything about it, from what a story on Karachi and biryani meant to me, to the way it was researched, to the way I got to write it while working with one of my favourite writers/editors/humans, Supriya Nair as well as the wonderful Vikram Shah, to the way it was received - I have never before or since experienced such a sublime creative process and result.

I wish to relive such an experience again, but if I don't, I'll have this forever.

Unlike every other article I've posted here, I am going to insist that you read this at its original source. The artwork, the layout, and the larger home that this article found can't be replicated here, and I won't try. The text below is from the last draft I had submitted, and it is missing the footnotes and final polish of the original.

Rice, Fat, Meat, Street. (click to read the original essay)

"Dekheyn Karachi jiddad wala sheher hai … yahan [ke log] all-rounder [hain] pooray... jo bhi yahan pe jo working karnay walay hain, wou jiddat paida karna jaantay hain. Tou biryani bhi ek jiddat hi hai samajh leyn aap." Mohammad Abu Mian, biryani chef

Biryani may be one of the country's most famous dishes, but Pakistan is pulao country - when you look across the regions that make up this land, the most popular rice dish is pulao. But if there is one place where biryani reigns, it is in the city of Karachi. It is one of the most popular street foods in the city, a meal that can be had on the go without any accompaniments. Just as importantly, there is no such thing in Karachi as a good biryani that's expensive - it remains one of the most affordable foods in the city.

Karachi is a city that is easily misunderstood, and often requires an appreciation of its myriad and contrasting layers. This is after all, a city of at least sixteen and up to allegedly thirty million people who are mostly immigrants; it is the permanently hustling commercial heart of the country; it is a roshniyo ka sheher; a city of ordered disorder; a confluence of exhausted geographies, and home to the world's greatest biryani. And it is through a plate of biryani that the city best reveals itself.

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Bambino is Italian for baby, or child. The man who owned Bambino Cinema might have named it after his child, who was a young boy in the 1960s when it opened, and would grow up to be one of the more consequential Presidents of the country. It is now a Friday in the 2020s, and the Bambino Cinema, like Pakistani cinema long before Covid, is in a state of dusty disrepair.

It is one of the many such crumbling buildings in the Saddar area. For boomers and some nostalgic Gen Xers, Saddar represents the peak of what Karachi once was; an area of nightclubs and go-go bars and similar flashy things in an otherwise horribly inequitable era that ended with the country partitioned. For millennials and younger, Saddar's appeal lies in that it has today, to some extent, resisted Karachi's propensity to devour its past, and retains older buildings and architectural styles that look good on their Instagram accounts. Saddar is also the commercial heart of the city, with botal gali and paper gali a few blocks from mobile market.

On every Friday, as the vast, maniacal commercial area shuts down completely for jumma prayers before slowly shuffling back to life afterwards, a Suzuki pick-up pulls up right next to Bambino cinema. On it are multiple degs of biryani, and instantly they are surrounded by a vast crowd of customers.

"Aik din bechne ka maqsad hai ke logo ke andar uski talab ho," Mustafa XYZ offers as the sole reason his biryani is as famous as it is. He is speaking on a weekday outside his regular workplace - a fast food restaurant cum catering business. In between instructing his workmen how to stretch the limits of the latest COVID protocols, he details the history of how his jummay wali biryani came to be.

Biryani might be one of the most popular and widely available street foods in the city, but it is still a complex dish that gets unduly affected by the elements. Before he had started his Friday Suzuki runs, he would send off his biryani in parcels to customers. But they would regularly complain that it had gone cold, or that they didn't get a good piece of meat, or the masala was too much/little. Fed up, Mustafa decided one day to innovate - jiddat paida ki - and loaded up three degs on a Suzuki and drove to the centre of Saddar where he began to sell it on the spot. Word began to spread - Fridays already have a strong association with biryani and Mustafa's once a week, a few hours exclusive, Suzuki hauled biryani provoked the same sort of hype that pop-ups in Brooklyn do.

In an era where (mostly western, male) chefs are celebrated as artists trying to perfect their crafts, it is natural to see Mustafa's motivation - to serve the best possible plate of biryani - as the work of a serious craftsperson. But he doesn't entertain such views, and declines to describe his biryani as inherently special. Other than his insistence that Friday (and it's inherent barkat) is the primary reason for the biryani's popularity, he even refuses to describe what type it is, stopping short of calling it generic.

"Dekhayn, log… kehtay hain ke yeh Hyderabadi biryani hai, koi … kehta hai yeh Gujrati style hai… koi kehta hai aisi Sukkur mei milti hai." But if he refuses to concede a type, he has a lot more to say on why the biryani is so popular in this city.

Biryani, he says, is popular because "hamaray Karachi mein basic masala khaanay wali community zyada hai, log zyada hain chatpata khaanay walay. [Non-Karachiites] yahan khaanay ... khaata tou bohat mazay se hai.. magar uskay baad jo uska nizaam out hota hai."

As a spicy dish, he argues, biryani has reason to be popular here. And why do Karachiites like spicy food? "Yahan ke log jo hain wou rangeen hain, aur yahan ke logo ko shor sharaba pasand hai, basic agar hum paida huay hain is sheher mein tou humne bachpan se le kar baray honay taq ronakain dekhien hain, muhalla dekha hai buildings dekhi hain compound dekhey hain, chawl dekhey hain, yeh saari cheezein dekhi hain jismay aisa hota hai k ek jagah pe bees bees dus dus pandra pandra ghar ek saath hotay hain, jo ek family ki tarhan apas mein rehtey hain, Phir yahan par har community ke log jo hain... yeh sab merge rehtay hain, theek hai na."

But in typical Karachi cynicism, right after delivering this moving paean to this most multicultural of Pakistani cities, he adds one more reason for why biryani is so popular in this city. "Hum log jo na 2-number khaanay ke aadi bhi hogaye hain.. 2-number se muraad ...chemicals hogaya, acids hogaye yeh hamaray masalay mein flavors hogaye kyunki yeh waqti taur pe tou bari khushbu detey hain.. essence hain, bari khushbu detey hain tou aadmi ko attraction hoti hai isko khaun check karun."

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Change is etched in Karachi's DNA. Just over a hundred years after Sindhi merchants developed it into a city, by 1921 half of its population hadn't been born within it. By 1951, after Partition had seen a complete demographic shift via refugees from India, it's population had tripled and only a quarter had been born Karachiites. During that time, Hyderabad Colony was created as one of many similar housing schemes (Delhi Colony, Bangalore Town etc) that were targeted at the wealthier refugees arriving from different parts of India, and sought to preserve community integrity (amongst fellow regional elites) in the new country.

Home to many members of the erstwhile Deccani elite, Hyderabad Colony would go on to provide several prominent administrators, bureaucrats and politicians for the new Pakistani state. In 1974, when Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto sought to burnish his global credentials by hosting the first Organisation of Islamic Countries summit, one of those officials asked the most famous local caterer to fly to Islamabad to serve biryani at the event.

That man was Abu Mian, who had arrived in Karachi in 1954. His father was a sword decorator for the last Nizam, but after a falling out with his step-siblings, Abu Mian had run away from home and began to work in Hyderabad's famous Muhammadi Hotel. It was there where he mastered Hyderabad's highly specialised cuisine, and thus arrived in Karachi ready to set up shop.

Today, his sons Mehmood and Ahmed ran Abu Mian Pakwan. They estimate that their father trained around 200 chefs personally, and if one counts their students the number would reach 2000. It is a formidable legacy, and it shows in the food - of all the biryanis featured in this article, this remains closest to an original style. Much like the biryani, Hyderabad Colony itself still holds some of its defining characteristics - it's iconic achaar shops, its unique street foods, its tailor who can still cut sherwanis just like the old Nizam preferred to wear them.

Mehmood speaks of Hyderabadi biryani with suitable reverence, explaining that "jisko zaiqay ka pata nahi hai tou wou sirf dekh raha hai ke mun pe mirchayn lag rahi hain aur ungli pe tail lag raha hai tou wou usko biryani keh rahay hain... biryani tou yeh aisi cheez hai ke usko agar aap khatay rahain... aapka pait bhar gaya dil nahi bharay ga."

The distinct Hyderabadi style, is milder than most of Karachi's varieties, and eschews the conventional essences and food colors found in the rest of the city's biryanis. "Dekheyn Hyderabadi khaanay baray nafees aur saaf suthray hain.. Aur [inn mei] bohat saaray aisay ajza daalay jaatay hain jo aam pakwano mein nahi daltay, jaisa ke kacchay gosht ki hamari ek biryani hoti hai ... ismai zaafran ka istemal hota hai, doodh ka istemaal hota hai… kuttay huwe badaam aur khoya daltay hain."

It is this magic of the Hyderabadi kaccha gosht style, with the meat marinated for a day and then cooked solely in the dum of the biryani, that makes it so unique. It is also what has made the Hyderabadi style remain insular to some extent. While the small colony still boasts several caterers and shops offering Hyderabadi style biryani, it is rarely found in the rest of the city. As biryani's popularity grew, it went from being a dish made by caterers for weddings and funerals to a popular street food, and thus required quicker turnarounds in cooking times, something which didn't favour the Hyderabadi style. As Ahmed puts it, biryani "shaahi khaano mein shumaar hoti thi - Karachi mein aa kar yeh thelay par agayi."

This remark is delivered more as fact than with any bitterness, and the brothers manage to balance their pride in retaining their culinary traditions with a genuine appreciation for the average Karachiite's palate, and their desire to always eat the best. Ahmed, in between attempts to convince me to get married, explains that "aapke sheher ko Allah taala ne God Gift ...diya hua hai.. har maamlay mein yahan ka aadmi dildaar hai, chahay wou cholay khaanay jayega tou achi jagah se chun ke khayega chahay wou paan khaanay jayega tou achi jagah se chun ke khaayega.. har sheher mei yeh cheez nahi hai."

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Hyderabad Colony was specifically planned and developed for migrants from the eponymous region, but Liaquatabad situated further up north had far more haphazard development as post-partition refugees streamed in. The area was named after the assassinated Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, but is popularly known as Lalukhet, given its pre-partition status as an agricultural area owned by a Hindu farmer named Lalu. The migrants here arrived from all parts of India, and over the years it incorporated sizable minorities from other parts of Pakistan. Consequently, while Ghausia Nalli Biryani also features a son carrying on his caterer father's legacy, the biryani itself is a testament to innovation.

To get to Ghausia, you have to abandon any vehicles several hundred meters beforehand and walk over an asphalt palimpsest, layers of once-repaired roads wiped out by Karachi's notorious urban flooding, burst sewers and general chaos. You need to ignore the aggressive soliciting by the waiters at the copycat Nalli biryani shop right opposite. When you first see Saqib X, the main chef and owner, you might do a double take and wonder if you've landed in Lahore's old city. Much like Lahore's famed Kashmiri Butts, who can be seen manning the stoves serving the area's famed delicacies, Saqib is a large, mustachioed, garrulous figure. Hearing him speak is like listening to an AI-generated SEO script - every adjective-strewn sentence is liberally peppered with the phrase Ghausia Nalli Biryani.

"Aaj dunya ke andar Pakistani khaano mein number one khana "Ghausia Nalli Biryani" ke naam se pehchaana jata hai." It is one of many similarly bombastic statements, but to give Saqib his due, his biryani is a spectacle. Nalli means bone marrow, and as you arrive at his shop you see degs with preposterously large cow bones piled on top, dyed in deep yellow hues by the masalas. When you order a plate, Saqib retrieves a freshly cooked bone and scoops out the glistening, gelatinous fat from within, which lands in opaque hunks on the hot rice and almost instantly dissolves. While several of the biryanis profiled here have multiple Youtube videos about them, Ghausia Nalli is easily the most popular on social media, with visits by foreign vloggers adding to its fame.

Apart from the spectacle, there is no doubt that this biryani also represents a fascinating innovation. "Pehle hum paaye bhi banate the islye hamne paaye ki yakhni k tareeqy se biryani k andar introduce karaya. Ye "Ghausia Nalli Biryani" Nalli aur Gosht ki yakhni se banti hai, iss mei ghee tel nahi dalta isilye iska taste dusri biryani se bilkul different aata hai." Saqib's father hailed from Fatehpur in India, and worked in several different industries upon arriving in Karachi before choosing to get into food, using the recipes from his family. But his son is quick to point out that the nalli biryani is purely a Karachi invention, and he doesn't stop there. He argues that Karachi's tastes are unique and influencing the rest of the nation, particularly with regards to biryani. "Karachi mini Pakistan hai - yahan apko dunya ka har zaiqa milega. Iss liye aaj kal [Khyber Pakhtunkhwa] ho ke ho Punjab, har jaga pulao ka system khtam hota jaraha hai biryani ki maang barhti ja rahi hai."

Anecdotally at least, he doesn't seem to be wrong. Biryani is increasingly found in big cities and small towns across the country. But along with Karachi's cultural impact, a huge reason for that is a technical innovation - the biryani masala packet. And of course, it is Karachi where it's most influential version was created.

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One of Karachi's most evocative phrases is "bridge ke uss paar". It refers to the metaphorical divide between the haves and the have-nots, but it's physical manifestation is generally agreed to be one of the several routes into Karachi's Defence Housing Authority (DHA), one of the first of the Pakistan Army's enormously successful forays into real estate, and effectively an enclave for the elite. It is inside a house in DHA in which I hear a story from the 1970s about a death at a wedding in Lahore, which kicked off a series of events that forever changed the history of biryani in Karachi, and hence, the world.

Sikandar Sultan's mother was a Kashmiri married into a family from Delhi. She had brought with her the Kashmiri practice of creating tikyas from a blended paste of masalas, ground ginger-garlic etc which were then dried out in the sun. When it came to cooking a dish, the tikya was reconstituted in water. Before leaving Karachi for this wedding, she prepared enough tikyas to last the two weeks while she was away, but the sudden funeral delayed her return. Her husband was a gourmand who had installed multiple stoves around the house (no less than three outside the kitchen) and awarded gifts to his children for cooking something he liked. With none of his wife's food to go with, he asked his children to cook instead and it was then that Sikandar's skills stood out.

Building off his mother's tradition of creating spice mixes, and learning from the experience of sending those to his sisters who moved abroad after marriage, by 1981 Sikandar Sultan launched Shan Masalas, a corporation that would end up with an inordinate influence on biryanis the world over, but particularly in Karachi. If you speak to the biryani-walas of Karachi today and ask them to name what types of biryani you can find in the city, you usually hear Delhi style, Hyderabadi, Memoni/Gujrati, Sindhi and Bombay. In at least the cases of the last two, both were actually inventions of Shan Masalas.

Around the start of the 1980s, the biryani scene in the city was quite different, as Sultan puts it. He counts the varieties as the lightly spiced, zafani style from Delhi, a 'wet biryani' associated with the Kathiawari and Marwari communities, and the Hyderabadi style. So then, where did all these new variants come from? "Meri biwi Bombay ki hai, toa hum ne Bombay Biryani unhi ki mohabbat mei start ki thi," is how Sikandar Sultan puts it, describing a display of love for one's partner that arguably only Shahjahan has bettered in South Asian history.

But it is also an insight into his process - right from the start, Sikandar and his family would "profile the kind of people who would like our blends. Aur phir wohi hum ne masalay develop kiye. Bahut logo ko khilaya, banaya, khilaya, banaya aur phir him ne confirm kiya ke yeh logo ko pasand aya hai." The Bombay Biryani - which Shan Masalas claim is an original variant and not like the version of biryani you find in Mumbai - was developed from the style cooked at Sikandar's in-laws, and then tested endlessly on them until they felt it was perfected.

Similarly, the Sindhi biryani was actually inspired by the style of pulao made by the Sindhi workers at Sultan's factory, and the same workers were among the focus group that repeatedly tasted the various iterations until the biryani was perfected. Shan's Memoni Mutton biryani is developed from the Akhni pulao made by the Gujrati-speaking community, while their fish biryani is a version of a Parsi and Aga Khani fish recipe. In each case, the community which Shan Masalas took inspiration from was at the centre of taste-testing the recipe until it was approved.

That fidelity to authenticity, and the desire to attempt the definitive version of every dish is why Sikandar insists that Shan Masalas are the "custodians of tradition. warna aap bataye yeh shan masalay na hotay, toa yeh tradition hi khatam ho jati. gharo mei nahi sirf hotelo mei yeh cheezain hoti, gharo mei biryani se mushkil banti." At the same time, they are aware of the danger that standardising recipes creates. As Summar Sultan, XYZ at Shan and Sikandar's daughter, puts it, on one end you can lose a legacy of culinary styles when it comes in the form of a boxed masala, but "the cost in terms of losing [that] legacy comes at the cost of a woman's freedom", referring to how women - who almost exclusively do the cooking at home - can prepare traditional, popular dishes in far less time.

What is undeniable is that Shan has dramatically changed how biryani was prepared and consumed, and thus even in their efforts to preserve the taste, they have also helped manifest more innovation, more jiddat into biryani itself.

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Around twenty years ago, the area referred to as Maskan, opposite the sprawling Karachi University campus in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, was known as a sort of a hidden gem for fast food. Nowadays however, it is a formidable food street, with prominent local chains and famous traditional restaurants siding up against international fast food franchises and their local copycats. Through roughly most of this time, there has been a small shop that has always been heavily frequented by students from the university campus, selling some of the best biryani in the city. Welcome to Al Fareed Pakwan Center.

Imran Bashir, currently in his late 30s, was a teenager when he first arrived at Karachi from Jhang in central Punjab. His first job was at a restaurant where the owner took great pride in his work, and encouraged Imran to do the same. From winning bets for being the fastest to cut vegetables, Imran rose to running the restaurant itself until it closed down. It was then that he opened up his new shop in Maskan in 2004.

"Paida mei Punjab mei huua huun, lekin mujhe jo stand diya hai na, woh Karachi ne diya hai." There is plenty that Imran says which feels like straight out of a script for the model immigrant, but his love for Karachi is enthusiastic and genuine. "Karachi mei biryani nahi, mei kehta hun Karachi hub hai khaano ka. Mei Faisalabad Lahore, Islamabad, Hyderabad... in sab shehro mei gaya huun, lekin ... jo original recipe hoti hai na … woh sirf Karachi mei [milti hai]. Biryani le leyn, pulao le leuyn, karhai leleyn … otherwise koi bhi cheezain le leyn aap ko original recipe … sirf Karachi mei milay gi iskay ilawa aap ko kaheen par nahi milayngi yeh cheezain. Aur biryani, biryani toa Karachi ki saughat hai."

If biryani really is the crown jewel of Karachi's vibrant food scene, then Imran has taken his responsibility of making it seriously. For example, he set up his own poultry shop to ensure that he had access to the best product. Similarly, he says that after almost a decade of learning how to make biryani at his previous job, he spent another two years perfecting the recipe he serves today. "Mei ne iss mei Dehli waloun ki biryani, Bombay biryani, Sindhi biryani - mei ne in teeno biryani ka nichour le liya hai… hum ne teeno ka yakja ker diya, toa uss mei kuch cheezain aisi hain, woh jo usko ubhar deti hain aur woh har tarah se aap ko aisa lagta hai ke mei Karachi hi ki biryani kha raha huun." That sense of the spices blossoming in the taste is made more apparent by the fact that there are no visible clumps of masalas, no chance of eating the internet's most dreaded bite of biryani, one with ilaichi. This is because when Imran noticed that many customers would pick out the whole spices or masalas from their plates, he decided to blend them all, either as powders or pastes. Each grain of his biryani is packed with flavor, while also possessing the sort of convenience that modern consumers want.

Talking to him is like talking to a student of biryani, and he gets most lyrical when talking about spices. After a lengthy detailing of each of the ingredients, he settles on his favourite three. "Jaifat javatri aur daalcheeni - mei inko masalo ka badshah bolounga … yeh teen cheezain jaan hain biryani ki… agar na aap ne inki miqdaar ko girift mei le kar aagaye, toa aap badshah ban jaoge iss kaam ke." At first pass, it sounds like Imran seems to just enjoy these three components of garam masala, which aren't what you would immediately associate with biryani. But he expands further, insisting that "inn teeno ko heavy nahi kerna hai, toa buss yeh aisay jo boltay hain na ke door se, koi bhi cheez zehen mei aap ko lag raha hai kuch aa raha hai muu ke andar lekin aap ki samjh se baalatar hai ke mei kha kya raha huun." The perfect bite in other words, should evoke a fleeting, indecipherable sensation of the spices at play.

As Imran keeps dropping more examples of his craftsmanship, ("deg ke dhuyain ka gehrapan dekh ke mei bata deta huun agar biryani tayyar ho gayi hai ke nahi"), it becomes obvious that Karachi's lack of a singularly identifiable biryani style has also maximized the opportunity for chefs like him to develop new styles. And so now it is the new waves of migrants who are taking the dish that the previous migrants brought with them, and are adding their own styles and flourishes, ensuring that in Karachi at least, biryani remains a jiddat.

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Ali, the fourth Caliph in Islam, the Prophet's cousin and the source of all of Islamic spirituality, was also a famed warrior. When Naseeb Rehman aka Malang went to buy rice from his trusted seller, the seller brought up Ali's name when explaining why Malang should buy his new, shorter-grained rice. "Ali ka jo qadd tha na wou chota tha, lekin jab wou maidan mein jaata tha tou uska koi muqabla nahi tha - yeh chawal bhi aisa hi samjho." Malang, a large Pashtun man with a 400 watt smile, breaks into one his frequent belly laughs as he tells this story. It is one of the many ways Malang finds to gently puncture the importance of what he does, but what the story also reveals is the lengths he goes to for finding the best ingredients for his biryani, obsessing over every detail of every ingredient.

Like Imran, Malang's trajectory in Karachi and biryani is quite similar. He arrived to live with family, found work at a biryani shop, and eventually learnt to make it himself and set up his own shop. It exists in West Wharf, next to the Kemari port, a small shop amidst industrial sites and smoke belching eighteen-wheeler trucks. Unlike Punjabi migrants, and Karachi's indigenous Sindhi and Baloch populations, Pashtun migrants are a lot more visible, particularly in the transport sector, as is their food. Pashtun cuisine, unlike the other non-Muhajir ones, is ubiquitous across the city. But this imprint also includes staggering violence - Karachi has witnessed at least three eras of severe conflict between Pashtuns and Muhajirs, most recently at the start of the 2010s. So the idea of a Pashtun man making a Muhajir-dish in an area historically populated by Karachi's indigenous populations is perhaps one way of showing the way Karachi comes together in a mixture of violence and assimilation.

Malang describes himself as a wicked man, citing his youthful love for smoking hashish, and repeatedly explains away his motivation and drive as greed for money. Yet listening to him talk about his biryani makes clear that he is motivated by a desire for perfection. His story about the rice was part of a longer explanation about how he learnt that longer-grained rice isn't always the most flavorful. There is obvious curiosity and palpable passion in hearing him explain how he rigorously tests the flavor of every ingredient as well as the character of every seller.

"Har aadmi, har cheez mein … quality dhoondni parti hai. Hum achay aadmi ko dekhtay hain, phir market ko touch kartay thay. Ab jo mein dahi ke liye doodh mangwata hu, [aik] aisa doodh wala hai... jo apni bhainson ko biscuit khilaata hai.. us biscuit se jo doodh nikalta hai tou uska zaiqa hi alag hota hai. Ab haldi le lo, kuch haldi mein phitkari milti hai uska formula banta hai, ab aam aadmi hoga khareed lega lekin mein usmein humesha quality dekhta tha."

Perhaps his most fascinating story was when, dismayed by the rising prices of jaifal javatri, he decided to figure out what impact on flavor each of the different spices made. "Meine ek din beth kar har masalay ko paani ke andar ubala aur ubaal ke humney uska paani check kiya ke zaiqa kiya ha. Shoq ki baat bata raha hun na. Tou usmei se bhi phir humney formula banaya ke yaar is cheez ka itna zaiqa hona chaiyeh ab wou cheez hamara tol kar aata hai wahan se ab ek formula hai, wou aisa nahi ke andazay mein daal deyn." He didn't stop at the ingredients either. Over the years, he had his own, specifically designed utensils and stoves made as well.

It is fascinating to see such levels of preparation and commitment spent on creating a dish cheap enough for dockworkers to afford, but amidst his passion and humor, a brooding existential crisis also occasionally breaks out. He continuously bemoans that his younger brothers and sons lack the discipline and drive that he feels is needed to run the business. At the same time, he ruefully concedes that since the point of a successful business is the soulless task of making money, perhaps there is no reason to put in such effort.

It is tempting to wonder if perhaps what Malang really needed was a little bit of validation and admiration for what is clearly his artistry. That perhaps he needed to be told that his drive isn't for money but for creative excellence, for jiddat, and that is valuable in of itself.

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On one end, is a vast ocean of people - people who once lived here, people who were similarly evicted from their lands, people who are looking to protest the latest example of decades-long practice of throwing indigenous, working-class people out of their homes. On the other end, owned by the most powerful civilian, and probably one of the three most powerful people in the country, there are shiny, tacky, faux-Dubai style structures which lead the largest and arguably most notorious land grab in Karachi's extremely chequered history. Despite considerable distance between them, and heavy securitisation on one end, it is there where a mysterious fire emerges, black smoke billowing vividly against the bare blue sky. Soon, people who weren't even present at the protests were being arrested, and the fire was declared as an act of terrorism.

Karachi has always been a city of migrants and transit, but while some of this has been gradual, a lot of it has been violent and either accepted or sanctioned by the state itself. The city's indigenous Sindhi and Baloch communities, as well as the larger Sindhi population in the province, has often found itself at the sharp end of this displacement. Despite being the capital of Sindh and a city by the sea, you would struggle to find any Sindhi restaurants in the city, barely any seafood amongst its thousands of eateries, and a cuisine that comes from the plains of northern India and the mountains of Pakhtunkhwa. And perhaps the most potent sense of this erasure in terms of food comes from the fact that most people would name Sindhi biryani as an authentic Sindhi dish, when it is actually a modern invention.

Sikandar Sultan's origin narrative for the Sindhi biryani, that after developing his Bombay variant he developed the Sindhi style one, is essentially confirmed by AR Jamali, a renowned chef and promoter and preservationist of Sindhi cuisine. "Rahi baat aap ki biryani wali tou wo jo log kehtay hain ke sindhi biryani hai, mein usko sindhi biryani nahi maanta kyun ke wo asal sindhi biryani hai hi nahi hai. Asal mein yeh basic Bombay biryani hai. Wahan se aai hai." When asked when this new dish emerged, his estimate is roughly analogous to when the Shan version first emerged. But he also mentions what was a recurring theme across Karachi's chefs, namely that young people had embraced biryani most enthusiastically. "Aaj se 20, 25 saal pehle Sindhi biryani ka koi concept nahi tha, ye nayi nasal ke aanay ke baad hi hit hui hai. Un ko ye sindhi biryani bohat pasand arahi hai." He points out that this popularity amongst the youth is also a reason why you find biryani in smaller towns as well across the country. But at the same time, particularly after the Shan version is brought up, he notes that Sindhi biryani is defined by many of the features common to Sindhi cooking - the liberal usage of hara masalas versus the restrained use of garam masala, the inclusion of khattai via aalu bokharas, focusing on a khatta-meetha combination rather than a chilly and spicy one.

One of Chef Jamali's main motivations has been to redress the paucity of Sindhi cuisine available in Sindh's largest city. "Aap ko American, Italian, BBQ… yahan har tarhan ki cheezain milaingi lekin basic sindhi style ke khanay jo gaaoun dehaat mein bantay hain, nahi milaynge. Iss hi liye mei inn pe kaam kar raha huun." Currently, he runs a cafe in DHA's Khadda market, having had to change locations twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But he also regularly appears on television and creates his own Youtube videos as well. In each of these, he prepares dishes from across Sindh, imbued with a palpable sense of pride in his syncretic identity, a trait that often stands out amongst Karachi's indigenious communities as compared to its more narrowly defining migrant ones. His attitude to the biryani however is not one of conflict, but rather of seeking to embrace it in a way where he can see it in his own terms. "Dekhain, ab ek cheez agai hai aur chal bhi gai hai tou humari koshish hai ke us ko aur mazeed achay tareeqay se karain. Ab mein soch raha tha ke ab mein biryani mein aalu ki jagah bheh daal doon. Tab hi lagay gi ye asal Sindhi biryani."

Once again, it is that sense of jiddat that pervades those cooking Karachi's biryanis. As each new wave of change arrives, the people find ways to make sense of them in their own terms. But it is at our final destination, at the very origin of Karachi itself, where the idea of jiddat breaks out most vividly.

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Tracing the history of biryani is a fraught journey, with many of the claims based on hearsay, or half-researched references. Overall, there are three main strands theorising how biryani evolved. The most popular is that this was a dish brought over by the Mughals; the second is that it was brought over by their precursors from Central Asia; and the third is that it developed after interaction between Arab traders along India's western coasts. Some have argued that the dish developed independently in the north and south of India, splitting the origin between interactions overland versus those over sea. What is common to all of these is viewing biryani as the result of interaction with what are seen as a religious group - Muslims - even though each of the groups mentioned were very different. Such a classification carries the colonial folly of viewing South Asian history as a series of distinct, religiously defined phases.

In contrast, the author and journalist Nilanjan Hajra, is one of the few to have provided primary sources in the quest for tracing the evolution of the biryani. He quotes the Brihadaranyaka Upanishada, where there is a reference to a dish made from rice, the meat of a bull, and ghee. Focusing on this combination, he outlines how subsequent dishes from across the subcontinent keep building on them. He turns to the Aimperumkappiyam, the five epics of the Tamil language written between 100 and 1000 CE, where there is the mention of Oon Soru, which adds more flavours to these three basic ingredients. He then turns to recipes from Shahjahan's imperial kitchen in the 17th century, including five varieties of a dish named Zer-e-Beriyan. As Hajra keeps showing, each of these builds off the basic rice, fat and protein combo, adding more ingredients. In essence, he argues that the biryani was a dish that evolved across the Indian subcontinent, rather than arriving from the outside. Instead of emerging at one place in time, it is the product of the subcontinent's intrinsically syncretic nature. Thus rather than north-south or origin debates between coasts and heartlands, it makes more sense to view all of it as one process. It is along the coastline of Karachi, in what was once a small fishing village where the enormous city emerged from, that the true consequence of Hajra's theory comes to light.

Fatima Majeed is a tall woman with a soft face who is a formidable activist and the vice-President of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum. She is famed for taking on the entrenched politicians of her area and reportedly was the first woman from the coastal region to contest elections. She is also a treasure trove of information on the culture of Karachi's original, indegenous population - its fisherfolk. There are very few places in the city where you can find the cuisine of Karachi's fisherfolk, and no restaurant that serves prawn biryani the way it is made here.

Fatima lives in Ibrahim Hyderi, which is a congested former village where all roads eventually lead to the ocean. We are sitting in her autaaq, a few hundred meters away from a vast mosaic of mostly blue and teal painted wooden launches bestraddling one another on the port. Instead of cricket, the few, grassless playing areas are occupied by football. After explaining some of the defining characteristics of their biryani - imli and tomatoes for khattaas, fried red onions as garnish, prawns - she says something very intriguing. Fatima claims that Karachi's fisherfolk version of the biryani is so old she feels it was invented here itself. "Biryani toa hum sirf mere bachpan se nahi, mere dada waghera ko bhi apnay bachpan se yeh yaad hai. Aur aaj kal jo coastline pe climate change ke mutasireen Karachi aye hain woh bhi humesha se yeh prawn biryani banatay aa rahay hain." When asked about Sindhi biryani and how it was most likely developed recently, she counters that the cuisine of the coastline has always been distinct from the heartlands, a fact that Chef Jamali also confirms.

Fatima's assertion is quite stunning, because it further confirms Hajra's thesis that biryani evolved from a long process within the subcontinent, picking up influences from the myriad cultures that swept through it, rather than being brought over from abroad.

Karachi itself is named after a woman from the fisherfolk community, Mai Kolachi. She is linked to multiple legends, but in each is represented as a brave and resilient woman taking on forces much greater than her, whether it is searching for her husband Sanval in a terrible storm, or helping her son Moriro defeat a sea monster that had eaten his brothers. There are few Karachiites who know of their city's legacy, with Mai Kolachi relegated to the name of a road leading to the ports. All manner of new people have arrived, bringing their own culture and language with them, as well as their own food. It would have appeared that biryani was one of many such arrivals brought with migrants.

But Fatima's claim gives rise to a fascinating thesis - rather than arriving from elsewhere, biryani was originally a jiddat of Mai Kolachi's people, and instead of an arrival to Karachi this is a return, a reunion. Karachi is where the biryani, having left its shores perhaps a millennia ago, having traveled across the des and learnt its many lessons, returns to find perhaps its most transcendent form. Biryani is the beloved that has finally returned home, to the city that rejoices, revels and replenishes in its love.

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