Some nine years have elapsed since Sumera Farooq lost her only son, Hasan, to the ferocious waves of the Hawkesbay Beach. "I had told Hasan not to go deep into the sea, but he did not listen to me. I should never have allowed him to go in the first place," Sumera wept.

In a bid to save the 17-year-old Hasan, two of his friends jumped into the sea - only to drown alongside their mate. "He had gone to the beach with his college friends for a day of fun and frolic. But by evening, we received news that Hasan and his friends had drowned. Even though his body was recovered by some volunteers, it was too late to save him," she said.

Sumera's agony is understandable, given how most of these deaths go unnoticed by the officials responsible for providing adequate safety measures for picnickers. Qamar Pervez, the information in-charge of Edhi Foundation, told Kolachi that in the month of May alone, some 17 picnickers had lost their lives while bathing in the sea.

"The monsoon season started from 15 May this year. We have already issued warnings in this regard, but people do not pay heed to such warnings, and continue to bathe in the rough seas," Abdul Samad, an official of the Karachi Meteorological Department, told Kolachi.

Pervez argued that the number of deaths due to drowning is alarming, especially considering that the monsoon season has just begun. "Picnickers should understand the dangers of swimming in this season, when the sea is rough. Beach-goers should take precautionary measures and not go into the water. If they don't listen, the figure may increase in the remaining months of the monsoon season," he said.

The Edhi official explained that most drowning cases were reported at Sonera Beach; in one recent incident, four boys were swept away by a strong current. In another incident earlier this month, a 16-year-old girl, Nimra, was washed away by the strong currents at Manora Beach. Others drowned while picnicking at Sandspit, Hawkesbay, Neelum Point and Cape Montz.

After a cyclone warning was issued on May 31, Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Penal was imposed to ban swimming and bathing in the seas. The meteorological department issued warnings, emergency and disaster units were set up, fisherfolk were advised to not venture towards the open sea, and police officials have been deployed at beaches.

Samad emphasised that people should pay heed to the warnings. "Beach-goers ignore signs and do not cooperate with us," he said.

On hearing news of the cyclone hitting the coastal areas, however, people flocked to the beaches, ignoring warnings and violating rules of not bathing in the waters. 'This is the only entertainment we have. The beach gives me peace of mind and refreshes me. So when I heard that the waves were rising, I came here with my family. Even though officials say that it is dangerous to go into the sea, I know how to swim and can therefore protect myself," young Farhan told Kolachi at Seaview.

A frequent picnicker, Samia Zuberi feels that the government should pay attention to safety in emergency situations. "When news first flashed about the tropical Cyclone Phet hitting the coastal areas of Karachi, various organisations and government agencies took notice of the situation and responded. Similarly, during the monsoon season, when there are high tides and people are vulnerable in strong currents, the law-enforcement agencies should take command and prohibit people from going deep into the waters," she said.

Every Sunday, around 10 to 12 Edhi lifeguards and volunteers are deployed along the Hawkesbay coastal belt. "Since a large number of people turn up at the beach on the weekends, our men are present to save them in case they go deep into the waters. Our volunteers are trained swimmers and also provide first aid to victims," Pervez told Kolachi.

Meanwhile, Reza Samad, president of the Pakistan Aquatic Life Saving (PALS), an NGO which deploys voluntary lifeguards at the beach, told Kolachi that due to the lack of sponsors and funds, the number of lifeguards in his organisation has decreased to 50.

"Every year, around 200 to 250 of our men used to be deployed at several beaches including Sandspit and Hawkesbay. But this year, the dearth of funds has brought the number down," he said.

Samad claims that his lifeguards have been effectively working to decrease the drowning deaths among picnickers. "Years ago, around 200 to 250 drowned and died routinely. Now the number has come down to 20 or 25. Even this small number wouldn't have existed if lifeguards performed night duties," he said. Samad believes that police officials should enforce their writ on beaches. "A lifeguard cannot tell a person to not bath in the sea. His duty is simply to protect their lives. The duty of stopping the people lies on the shoulders of the police who seem to be absent from such scenarios; even if are present, do not impose their writ," he said.

Samad's lifeguards have been trained by experts from New Zealand but the lack of funds is forcing them to look for other jobs. "It is sad that no attention is paid to such important issues," he lamented.

At an informal gathering some time ago, the famous writer, Intizar Husein, said that Delhi sent two things to Pakistan: one, an acclaimed intellectual (he will remain unnamed); and the second, Nihari. Intizar Saheb maintained that "Woh Saheb to Nahin Chale, Par Nihari Chal Pari." Despite there being much truth in Intizar Saheb's argument, there was another thing that came from Delhi, and which kept going strong: our beloved and dear friend and comrade, Mansoor Saeed, whose death has left a void in our lives.

I got to know Mansoor in the early 1980s. That era is now often remembered as the dark days of Pakistan's history due to the suppression of public freedoms by a brutal and oppressive military regime. Many of us who came of age in that decade, however, also recall a city (and a country) where we constantly struggled for a better future and against the regime's imposition on our public and private freedoms. Mansoor Saeed was part of the generation which guided us during those uncertain times, and gave us the hope and courage to move forward.

It was sometime in 1981 when a comrade doctor (I never knew whether he ever finished medical college), would occasionally and unexpectedly appear to stay in my hostel room at Dow Medical College. I was in my first or second year of medical college back then, and tangentially linked to the prevalent progressive politics on and off campus.

My mysterious "doctor" friend would visit me over the weekends at our home in North Nazimabad, where we would have long arguments about literature, politics and Gandhi. Armed with my recent reading of Rajni Palme Dutt's book on the subject, I would criticise Gandhi as the lackey of the Indian bourgeoisie, and he, a pre-perestroika communist would, either espousing the party line or due to his own instincts, argue in favour of Gandhi the humanist, the peace activist and the populist.

A few days into these conversations, perhaps sensing that I was trustworthy enough to be introduced to "others", my comrade doctor mentioned Mansoor Saeed to me. He painted a picture of a theatre enthusiast and a person of immense intellectual depth who was looking for likeminded people to start a cultural group.

It may have been later that same year that I made my first trek to that generous and caring abode, the house that Abida and Mansoor lived in with their two wonderful children, Sania and Ahmer. I took the mini-wagon from Sakhi Hasan, which would go through Gulshan to reach Tariq Road -- a journey I would make hundreds of times after that.

My destination was a lower floor apartment near the Tariq Road telephone exchange, a place which would literally become a second home for many of us for the next six or seven years. I arrived on Mansoor's doorstep that afternoon and was welcomed in. I sat in the front room where the books were (there were always books) and talked to him for hours about his passion for theatre.

He would go to the book shelf and pull out a book by Wole Soyinka, I had not heard of him, or by Bertolt Brecht, had never heard of him either. He told me about IPTA and spoke about Habib Tanvir and his folk theatre. He mentioned to me Irfan Habib's research on Mughal agriculture (something that I was familiar with) and then again turned to discussing absurdist theatre and plays by Eugene Ionesco, and so it went on.

Mansoor may have thought that he was again among one of those young people whose education had remained inadequate by his standards, but he never expressed such concerns. Rather, as was his way, he continued to speak to me as an equal, insisting that I call him by his first name and encouraged me to read by giving me several books to take home, asking that we meet again soon to discuss what he had lent me. He must have seen something in me that I myself could not, or, as I got to know later, this was a person with immense respect for human intellect and creativity and saw in people what was good in them, what was noble, what was possible. He had a deep sense of commitment to an enlightened future for all. It was not me alone, but whoever came near to Mansoor knew instinctively that he or she was in the company of a rare human who could only see the best in a person, whatever his/her station in life.

This was the start of a long and enduring friendship. There was seldom a week that we did not see each other, sometimes several times a week. Within weeks of our first meeting, we had discussed plans for creating a theatre group, and gave each other the task of assembling those whom we were politically and socially close to in order to start a discussion on the topic.

Sheema Kirmani, who had started Tehreek-e Niswan a few years earlier and was staging socially relevant plays at different venues, also knew Mansoor, and worked with him in producing Aurut, the play sent to Mansoor and Abida from India by Safdar Hashmi (who was alive then and was their cousin). We brought some friends and colleagues together, and with minimal rehearsal, Aurut was performed at the Defence residence of Ghazanfar Ali, the TV and film producer. We then collaborated with Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER), and took Aurut to the rooftop of a labour union office in SITE to perform before a working class audience.

Dastak, the theatre group, had started to take shape. We had another meeting at Sheema Kirmani's, house, which was also off Tariq Road (did all creative and politically active people live around Tariq road in those days?), where for the first time we were introduced to Aslam Azhar, who agreed to join the group. This was an immense boost to our confidence, and shaped the contours of our creative life for the duration of Dastak's existence.

Those were strange yet invigorating times. With all the insults on human intellect, the public display of violence against the populace, the passing of anti-women laws, there were still people who were willing to defy the "new order". It was also a time when the city was a mosaic of various efforts in the creative arts with a range of artists working tirelessly to question and critique the state-sponsored censorship, the obscurantist cultural politics and the social and political oppressions of the era. Whether it was Yasmin Ismail and Imran Aslam working together to create the Grips Theatre (in Imran's pre-Star days, when he had recently returned from abroad and occupied a small office in the Dawn building. He once gave a brilliant one-person reading in Urdu of Dario Fo's "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist" for an audience of Dastak members), or Sheema Kirmani and Khalid Ahmed producing plays for Tehreek-e-Niswan, or for that matter, Ali Ahmed, that veteran of progressive theatre, still directing meaningful plays.

Dastak, with Mansoor's translations, Aslam Azhar's direction and the energy and dedication of its members took off, and became a major presence in Karachi's cultural and political scene of the mid-1980s. It welcomed, factory workers, students, academics, housewives, the unemployed the rich and the poor to come and be a part of its experience. We performed on Women's Day, and on May Day, in the Karachi Press Club, and in the old Railway Club, wherever there was a space and we had an invitation we would readily perform.

Our resources were meagre, our ticket prices were low and our sets were bare, but we had the passion to take our message everywhere we could, defying the censors and the authorities, improvising, taking risks and in the process also having a great time.

Soon after our formal initiation, we started working with plays by Bertolt Brecht. While engaging with political issues that were immediate and important, Brecht nevertheless often situated his stories in a different historical moment or in an obscure geographical space. This temporal and spatial distance enabled us to convey our message through his plays as they were placed sometimes in seventeenth century Italy and at others in the imagined surroundings of a folktale. Brecht allowed us not only to perform political theatre, but helped us avoid the strict censors. As long as it was not about Pakistan, things were still somehow "permissible".

We performed Brecht's "Exception and the Rule" in the garden of the Goethe Institute, with Dr Hoeschle, the then director of the Institute, emerging as our benefactor. We also staged "He Who Says Yes and He Who Says No" at the open air theatre of the Arts Council, for which the late Kaleem Omar gave us raving reviews in the Star.

One evening, while performing Brecht's "Saint Joan of the Stockyard" on a hastily-erected stage near Bara Board in the Site area for a large gathering of labourers, we lost electricity. This was not as common then as it is now (were the authorities sabotaging our effort?), and Irfan Hussein (then in government service), who was in the audience, directed the full beam of his car's headlights toward the stage, and the show went on.

Our crowning moment was the production of Galileo Galilei at the old Rio Cinema auditorium. Saddar still retained some of its old charm -- Rex was still around, so was Rio, Palace, Capitol, Paradise and Regal, all the landmarks of our youth have vanished -- and we bussed in workers from the industrial area and had special five-rupee tickets for them.

The play went on for almost a week and we did brisk sale; it was our coming out party and the people of all classes showed their appreciation. We had arrived. Many other major and minor plays followed, including Chekov's, "Petite Bourgeois" and a play about Pinochet's Chile, "Interview in Buenos Aires", but Galileo has retained its fixture on people's memories.

All these plays could not have been performed if Mansoor had not translated them. Despite domestic and other responsibilities, he kept on working at them. They were master pieces, as they retained the nuances of the original, yet communicated the essence of the play to a local audience. They should have been published as a collection, perhaps this is a task some of us should pursue to pay homage to our dear friend.

As Dastak grew, the world changed for all of us. As always, life made some of us go our different ways.. Many from the original group have not been in close contact for some years now. However, in those uneven and uncertain days Dastak provided a space for us to remain fundamentally close and to care for each other. And thanks to our meetings in that Tariq road flat, many among us still remain a part of a larger family.

Indeed, during those days of the 1980s, when everything seemed bleak and dark, all of us were together, and Dastak was our family. Mansoor and Abida's home was where it all started, where we read plays, rehearsed scenes, discussed and debated, argued, listened to invited speakers, laughed, cried, worried about the future of the country, thought about friends in distress and in prison, sang songs, drank…. too much at times … and ate Nihari all the time. Mansoor's passion for Nihari and his Delhi days was only surpassed by his passion for theatre.

Mansoor and Abida hosted us, their children became our friends, their families became close to us. It was in their house that I first met Anis Hashmi Saheb, Abida's father, and one of the most decent, dedicated and committed progressives this nation has ever seen. That is where we listened to Mushtaq Gazdar give a talk and heard Dr Mubarak Ali present his early work on Sindh (he had recently returned from Germany). That is where we thought of working on Marx's hundredth anniversary that culminated in the memorial event at the Karachi Press Club, and that is where we mourned Sibte Hasan's death when news filtered through from India. That is also where we welcomed Houri (Maktab-e-Danial) and Noni's daughter, Maya, the first child born to a Dastak couple. Or for that matter, made fun of my friend Muzaffar Qazilbash (a cancer specialist now) who played the working class hero in "Petite Bourgeois" for being recognized for years by people on the streets as Neal, the character he played. There are many such memories and perhaps as we get older, some of us will write about them.

Yet, this may be an appropriate time to remember an endearing aspect Mansoor Saeed's personhood. For all his great feats, we needed to constantly prompt Mansoor on stage for the lines that he had translated himself. Many of us would be frightened about sharing the stage with him, as we would never be certain what creative liberty he would take with his lines, and whether our cues would ever be delivered. It was an art of improvisation to say the least, and the near misses and close calls were legendary.

The laughs we had after a performance were mostly about the disasters related to Mansoor's reinterpretation of the script, a script that he in all cases had translated himself. That was our Mansoor -- forgetful, caring, loving, generous, committed and full of life, all in all a great human being.

I met Mansoor for the last time when I was in Karachi during the summer of 2009, and he sneaked me into Mustaq Ahmed Yusufi's reading at the Arts Council. I promised to meet and sit down with him before I returned to the US, but as many times before, I could not keep my promise. I now wish I had gone to see him, and told him how much he had meant to me and so much more. As Muneer Niazi would say, Humaisha Der Kar Deta Hun Main.

Delhi's loss was our gain. Mansoor left us laughing, full of energy, committed to his cause and loving all of us with the passion and caring he showed to everyone near him. In him, we have lost a person who cared deeply about social justice and worked tirelessly all his life to create a just and humane future for all. We will all miss him; he takes away with him what is best in all of us, leaving us with mere memories of an era that may never return. An irreplaceable loss, our dear friend and comrade, Mansoor Saeed.

Aane Mein Ta'amul Tha Agar Roz Jaza Ko

Acha Tha Teher Jatey Agar Tum Bhi Zara Aur

-- Faiz Ahmed Faiz

The writer is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at asdar@mail.utexas.edu