Pictures telling the stories.
The Queen of England, Elizabeth, riding with Pakistani head of state, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, in an open-top car through the streets of the Saddar in Karachi during her visit in 1961.
Both sides of the road were packed and lined by college and school students and thousands of onlookers.
Till the early 1960s Saddar was one of cleanest areas in Karachi. Between the late 1960s and early 1970s it was lined with bars, nightclubs and famous shopping spots and became the place to be for middle-class Karachiites looking for entertainment and shopping
A still from one of the most famous one-off plays on Pakistan television, ‘Quratul Ain’ (1975).
It starred Naveen Tajik (right), a Pakistani Christian, who, along with Roohi Bano and Uzma Gillani, was hailed as one of the finest TV actresses in Pakistan (in the 1970s).
A Pakistani family waiting for transport after attending a function at Karachi’s Beach Luxury Hotel in 1973.
A 1975 press ad for one of Pakistan’s largest selling cigarette brand, Red & White.
A group of friends pose outside their class at the Karachi University in 1973.
A Pakistani girl, Aqba (second from left), seen here celebrating Christmas with US President, John F. Kennedy and his family at the White House in 1961.
Aqba who belonged to a working-class Pakistani family that had managed to migrate from Pakistan’s Punjab province to the US city of Washington lost Aqba for a while when the young and extremely bright girl ran away from home and ended up outside the White House.
Western tourists enjoying a few rounds at a restaurant Karachi’s Tariq Road, 1975.
A terrific 1975 photograph of a scholarly talk show on PTV. Intellectual talk shows were rather popular on TV in Pakistan in the 1970s. This one shows renowned playwrights, Ashfaq Ahmed and Bano Qudsia (centre right), talking about ‘socialist plays’ with the host.
Former Pakistan military dictator, General Yahya Khan having dinner with famous Pakistani singer, Noor Jehan in 1969. Yayah was having an affair with the popular vocalist and former actress.
The premier of ‘Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom’ at Karachi’s Nishat Cinema, 1984. In 2012, the cinema was burned down by religious fanatics.
A group of fighter pilots of the Pakistan Air Force posing just hours before the start of the 1965 Pakistan-India war.
Some of these men never came back, while others were later send to Libya, Jordan and Saudi Arabia (in the 1970s) to train the air force of these countries.
The 1965 war however ended in an awkward stalemate
A 1962 photo showing Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of American President John F. Kennedy, disembarking from a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane at London’s Heathrow Airport and being greeted by the plane’s flying and cabin crew.
Ms. Kennedy went on record saying that PIA was one her favourite airlines.
Say, Vat? Nothing extraordinary about this old 1975 Urdu film poster of a movie released at a time when the country’s film industry was booming. However, check out the bottle of whiskey, Vat-69.
This brand of whiskey (according to late filmmaker and cinema historian, Mushtaq Gazdar), appeared in hundreds of Pakistani films between 1950s and late 1970s. But why Vat 69?
A telling image from Pakistan’s first horror and ‘X-Rated’ film, Zinda Lash (The Living Corpse) - a modern (and voluptuous) retelling of the story of vampires and Dracula in a Pakistani setting.
Released in 1967 the film became an instant box-office hit and was then repeatedly shown on the state-owned Pakistan Television (PTV) during its late Saturday night film slot.
A 1970 press ad of a perfume named after Lahore’s historic Shalimar Garden.
Famous Pakistani intellectual, novelist and playwright, Ashfaq Ahmad saying a prayer at the grave of British Romantic poet, Percy Shelly, in 1955.
Ahmad started out as a progressive thinker and writer with a growing interest in Sufism. In the late 1960s he went on to endorse and support Z A. Bhutto’s 'Islamic Socialism’.
Urdu newspaper photo of the wife of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Nusrat Bhutto (third from right) with a group of Pakistani ‘supermodels’ at a launch party of a film in 1973.
Crowds gather at a runaway at the Karachi Airport to witness a ‘flying parade’ and joint military exercises of American and Pakistani armed forces (1953).
Canadian travellers in Multan, 1982. They were touring the world on their car.
German tourist outside a ‘ hashish shop’ in the tribal areas of former NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), 1976.
With the state of Pakistan having little influence in such areas, shops selling hashish sprang up when young western tourists began to pour into Pakistan from Afghanistan from the late 1960s onwards.
American tourists enjoying a ride on a tonga in Rawalpindi in 1975.
Photograph showing late Pir Pagara talking to the press at the Karachi Press Club in 1977. Pagara was heading a right-wing movement against the Z. A. Bhutto regime.
Here he is seen talking to the press (surrounded by some members of the Jamat-i-Islami, Jamat Ulema Islam and Jamiat Ulema Pakistan)
The Pakistan hockey team playing against Great Britain at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.
Notice how a Pakistani player is sprinting across the field completely barefooted!
This 1956 Pakistan team that was desperately low on resources and money not only topped its qualifying group in Melbourne, but went on to reach the finals of the tournament where it was beaten by India 1-0 in a closely fought contest.
A 1966 photo of the beautiful Punjab University in Lahore. Notice the double-decker bus. Such buses were quite common in Lahore till the late 1960s
A shelf in a shop displaying Scotch whiskey brands in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s ‘Bara market’ (smugglers’ market) in 1977.
Fatima Jinnah, sister of the founder of Pakistan, Muhamad Ali Jinnah, playing with her dog at her residence in Karachi in 1959.
This is a rare photograph of notorious Pakistani left-wing radical, Salamulla Tipu, hanging out from the cockpit of a PIA plane that he had hijacked with three other colleagues in 1981
A 1974 photo showing a young boy in stylish ‘bell bottoms’ filling the tank of a Vespa motorbike as a young school girl walks home in Lahore.
A 1963 press ad of Pakistani airlines, PIA. As mentioned in previous ‘Also Pakistan’ features, PIA, between 1962 and 1980, was considered to be one of the top 10 airlines in the world, having one of the best in-flight entertainment facilities.
The above ad highlights the airline’s in-flight entertainment facilities as PIA was actually the first airline in the world to start showing Hollywood movies during flights.
Chairman PIA, Nur Khan, hosts a party of the airline’s staff in late 1960s. Under Khan, PIA rose to become one of the top 10 airlines in the world
The cover of a 1967 issue of the National Geographic. It had a special photo feature on Pakistan’s tourist resorts, wildlife and politics. The cover shows two Pakistani women on a swing. One’s from a village in the Punjab (part of West Pakistan) and the other from a village in the Bengali-dominated East Pakistan.
European 'Earthwalkers' in Islamabad, 1973. They had arrived in the Pakistan capital to raise awareness about environmental issues.
Future Pakistani Test captain, Misbah-ul-Haq with trophy at school, 1987.
A bar, restaurant and ballroom in Swat, 1970.
