From Bollywood slum to Pakistan's boxing haven: Lyari's defiant rise

Throughout the winter weeks in Karachi, 60-year-old boxing coach Younus Qambrani has been sending videos, photos and clippings from his Lyari neighbourhood via WhatsApp. They are vivid evidence of how he teaches young girls to throw a punch.

In one video, Qambrani – a bearded man in a cap – uses his palms to absorb blows and dodge as his young students practice their hits. The clatter of gloves and squeak of trainers on the concrete floor of the Pak-Shaheen Boxing Club drown out the street noise outside.

Outside, motorbikes race through winding streets, weaving past kebab stalls where eggs sizzle on griddles. Lyari is home to nearly 950,000 people – the population of Amsterdam packed into just three percent of that Dutch city's land area.

For millions of Bollywood fans, Lyari is synonymous with brutal gang wars set against a permanently grey backdrop. It is the setting of Bollywood's all-time blockbuster Dhurandhar and its sequel Dhurandhar: The Revenge. Both films, earning over $100 million each, follow an Indian spy infiltrating Lyari's criminal underworld to neutralise threats to Indian national security.

But for locals, Lyari is more than a backdrop for bloodshed: it is a cultural and traditional melting pot, rooted in a history far deeper than Bollywood has ever explored. It boasts an emerging rap and hip-hop scene, producing artists like the Lyari Underground crew and masked rapper Eva B. The neighbourhood has earned the nickname 'Mini Brazil' as Pakistan's football heartland.

Between 2000 and 2010, Lyari was engulfed in gang violence. Armed groups such as those of Rehman Dakait and Uzair Baloch – both depicted in the films – turned parts of the district into battlefields. In 2012, the government launched Operation Lyari, with police and paramilitary Sindh Rangers cracking down, dismantling major gangs and ending the era of large-scale street warfare.

But according to social anthropologist Adeem Suhail, Lyari has always been more. 'Think of Naples or Sicily in Italy – major cultural hubs despite their association with Mafia violence,' he said.

Preparing for a different fight

Younus Qambrani started boxing at age five with his father, uncles and older brothers – all boxers. In 1992, he founded the Pak Shaheen Boxing Club, initially training boys aged 7-16. In 2013, he opened the club to girls after watching them practise karate at the YMCA and wondered: 'If girls can do karate, why not boxing?'

Earlier, when he raised the idea with colleagues, one said 'girls have weak brains'. Qambrani stayed silent, then went home and pasted news reports about female boxers from around the world into a notebook. 'Girls box outside – why not here?' he asked himself. He started training his daughter Anum when she was three.

In 2015, several of Qambrani's students competed in the South Asian Games. In 2016, Anum won the district championship at the Karachi Jinnah Women's Boxing Championship. Most notably, Aliya Soomro – Pakistan's first female boxer to win a world title – began training at his club. Last year, Soomro took just 45 seconds to knock out her Thai opponent and win the WBA Asia 105-pound belt.

For Qambrani, boxing is not just about medals. 'Whoever prepares for war prepares for peace,' he said, adding that the weak are the most vulnerable to attack.

Lyari's colonial history

Lyari is Karachi's oldest settlement, with its first residents arriving in 1728. The district has endured British colonialism, the partition of the subcontinent and nearly eight decades of independent Pakistan. According to Sarwat Viqar, a professor at John Abbott College in Canada, 'Lyari was portrayed one-dimensionally by the media as a den of crime, drugs and gang wars, but its rich cultural practices have always been part of life here.'

Professor Suhail noted that Lyari has been a cultural hub for a diverse working class since before 1947, bringing together Baloch, Sindhi, Marathi, Gujarati, Afghan and Siraiki communities. They brought culinary traditions, dance, religion, songs and sports. Lyari is also home to the Baloch and Afro-Baloch community – people of African descent living in Balochistan.

'Because Lyari was the first diverse and vibrant working-class area as Karachi became a city, it also became a centre for working-class politics,' Suhail said. Lyari's level of 'development' has always depended on the strength of Karachi's labour movement.

What Dhurandhar gets wrong

In the film, Lyari appears with its real-life 'Welcome to Lyari town' gate. But the washed-out grey palette seems to erase the neighbourhood's cultural depth. Suhail called it 'a crude fetishisation of Lyari and the Baloch people with violence and crime'. He compared it to other Indian gangster films like Satya (1998) or Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), which he said offer 'dense, unapologetic cultural depictions' and understand the political economy of the post-colonial state. In contrast, Dhurandhar is steeped in 'chauvinism, Islamophobia, homophobia and hypermasculinity', with characters who 'seem to have no history'.

Unlike Lyari

At Qambrani's club, 10 girls aged 8 to 16 spar for an hour each day except Sunday, preparing for city tournaments held every two months. Qambrani is searching for a portable boxing ring to take to schools. His dream: to make boxing accessible to as many girls in the neighbourhood as possible. The challenge: he has not found a portable ring in Pakistan and needs sponsorship.

Bollywood and Dhurandhar mean nothing at this Lyari club. Qambrani has a new generation of female boxers to train.