Remembering Karachi’s Informal Libraries and Reading Habits

Karachi was a much smaller city then, but its people had rich reading habits. Many of them were content with newspapers, but a lot of them would go to scores of quality bookshops to satiate their thirst for knowledge and imagination. These area libraries would normally open in the afternoon and serve their clientele till midnight. These informal libraries had been doing a sizzling business till late 1970s and suffered a blow when people found the alternative entertainment in the form of VCR.