Published on, Sept. 5 -- September 5, 2025 3:56 PM

I was born in Sukkur, a city where history, culture, and engineering intertwined. To the world, it may appear provincial, but to those of us who grew up there, Sukkur was a miniature cosmos - a city of barrages and bridges, of clubs and libraries, of rivers and Algoza music, and of blind dolphins that existed nowhere else on Earth.

A City of Learning and Culture As a schoolboy at St. Mary's, I wandered often from the classrooms to Lucas Park, to Sadhu Bela's mystical island, and to the banks of the Indus at Manzilgarh. But Sukkur was not only about the river; it was a city of letters.

The General Library of Sukkur, founded in the 1800s, was one of the oldest libraries of Sindh. Alongsi...