The last time she came from Karachi, it was 1952, the city was Bombay and people certainly didn’t refer to the world’s biggest film industry as Bollywood. Back then Parveen Saeed Haroon was a star-struck 16-year-old. It was an era when on-screen eroticism was about the way Madhubala draped her cotton sari. ‘‘I don’t appreciate the dressing now. Actresses had a style of their own, just in the way they wore their pallus,’’ says the impeccably turned out Haroon. Thanks to the Indo-Pak thaw, she is back in town to watch the Star Screen awards with her son Hameed — chief executive of Pakistan’s Dawn group of newspapers. So what if she doesn’t like the way Bollywood dresses, she’s still a big fan. She thinks Shah Rukh Khan handled the formidable task of following Dilip Kumar as Devdas fabulously. The bouncy Khan is certainly her new favourite. She even tracks the saas-bahu sagas and didn’t eat for three days when Tulsi’s (Smriti Iraani in Kyunki.) husband died. ‘‘I wish I could meet the director and say I hated it when they took the perfect bahu down from her pedestal.’’ Her shelves in Karachi are lined with recorded TV serials and cookery shows. Already, power breakfast visitors to her five-star hotel have included industry friends like censor chief Anupam Kher and director Mahesh Bhatt. Rishi and Neetu Kapoor are due to visit on Thursday. She’s even got a sneak peek of Paap, Pooja Bhatt’s debut as a director. ‘‘I loved it. After a long time I sat silently through a movie,’’ she says, eyes sparkling. But though she keeps pace with a changing Mumbai, her best memories are of a post-Partition city where you were greeted warmly when your steamer docked from Pakistan after a three-day journey. ‘‘So many people knew each other on the docks, now it takes two hours to get past all the questions at the airport.’’ In those days, you were sure to find the best badla dupattas in the ‘‘clean, beautiful’’ Crawford Market. Sari blouses (knotted in front was the craze) cost Rs 5 each to tailor and once, Nargis came up and said hello at a wedding. ‘‘I could have fainted. We didn’t want to leave,’’ recalls Haroon. Of course some things haven’t changed. Like you always travelled to Poona on the Deccan Queen for the races. And one of the best places to buy saris is still Kala Niketan on Marine Lines. ‘‘I told them I came 50 years ago, they better give me a discount.’’
