पुराना पाकिस्तान

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A 21-year-old Benazir Bhutto sitting on the porch of her father Z A. Bhutto’s house in Karachi (1974). Benazir would go on to lead her father’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) after he was hanged to death by General Ziaul Haq in April 1979.

In 1990s she was twice elected as Pakistan’s prime minister before tragically losing her life at the hands of Islamic militants in December 2007.

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A rare photo showing the Pakistan hockey team on its way to win the 1971 Hockey World Cup held in Barcelona, Spain. It defeated the host country in the finals.

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A 1968 shot of a famous Karachi cinema, Taj Mahal. It was one of the many that operated during the heydays of Pakistan’s film industry.

Between 1965 and 1977, the industry produced dozens of films every month. The trend hit a peak in 1975 when a total number of 114 Urdu films were released that year.

The industry began to wither away from the late 1970s due to the arrival of a reactionary dictatorship and then the growing popularity of the VCR.

Today the Pakistan film industry that was one of the most lucrative show-biz ventures in the country in the 1960s and 1970s is as good as dead.

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Cover of the May 1972 issue of The Herald. Herald (a monthly published by the Dawn Group) was initially a magazine focusing on the changing fashion, political and social trends of the urban Pakistani youth. However, from 1980 onwards it became more political in its content.

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A 1973 issue of The Herald with a cover story on the then vibrant social scene of Karachi.

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Famous Pakistani model, Rakhshanda Khattak. She was one of Pakistan’s leading fashion models in the 1970s before quitting and leaving the country in 1979. She died in the United States in 2011.

(The photo is from 1972).

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Soundtrack album (LP) of 1975 Pakistani film, ‘Shabana.’ The film starred one of the leading Pakistani film actresses and sex symbol of the 1970s, Barbra Sharif.

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A 1973 album cover (that was then turned into a poster) of Pakistani film playback singer and pop icon, Runna Laila. This poster became popular with college students and could be found gracing the walls of their hostel rooms right along-side posters of Che Gurevara, Mao tse Tung, etc.

Laila was a Bengali hailing from East Pakistan. Her songs attracted the attention and adoration of the Pakistani youth in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Though she did not leave West Pakistan after East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, she finally decided to go and become a Bangladeshi citizen in 1974.

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A European couple outside a cheap hotel in Peshawar in 1975. A number of such hotels had sprung up in Peshawar, Lahore and Karachi to accommodate the rising tide of Western backpackers that began arriving from the late 1960s onwards. Can’t explain the gun holster, though. Most probably it’s empty.

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A 1974 photo of famous Pakistani cricketer, Imran Khan, in typically flashy and expressive 1970s attire. Equally famous of being an ‘over indulgent playboy,’ Khan became a ‘born-again Muslim’ after he retired from cricket in 1990 and then formed a political party (in 1996).