April 1985, Bushra Zaidi, a college student, was run over by a speeding minibus, sparking a frenzy of violence in Karachi; for the next one and half year, the neighbourhoods of Orangi, Liaquatabad and North Nazimabad became battlefields in a free-for-all rioting that claimed 200 lives. According to news reports, residents of these areas faced an acute shortage of food and water, and many of them fled to the homes of their relatives in other parts of the city. Many at the time believed that the city was witnessing the worst violence in its history.

In light of current events, all this rings a bell. In 2011, Karachi is witnessing history being created and written once more in bloodier colours. Residents of the most violence-prone areas complain, like their counterparts from the past, that they run out of kitchen supplies; that their children cannot go to schools and they cannot go to work because of the mayhem and bloodshed going on around the houses and streets they live in. In this latest creation of historical records, Karachi has seen death toll climbing to unprecedented levels. More than 700 people have been killed within a span of just three months between June and August of this year.

In another painful reminder of the past, violence is now plaguing many of the same areas it did 26 years ago. Of course, there is an increase in the geographical spread of the violence; its frequency and lethality have shot up like never before. With so much in common between the current bout of violence and its earlier instances, it is difficult to find new and different angles to inform the readers about what is going on in Karachi. In addition, the human face of suffering has disappeared and political activists, and ethnic stereotypes have taken over. Here the Herald tries to tell the same old story — with a human angle.