PART ONE

Lahore and Lahories

Where Have All the Lahories  Gone?

IF HEAT was the problem here until a few days ago, now it's humidity. Everything is sticky-shirts cling to the body and hands are clammy with sweat. Trousers literally hiss off the chair as one gets up. And glasses get misty as one gets out of an air-conditioned room. Your morning newspaper is limp in your hands and it feels heavier. There's mildew inside your shoes, but the fragrance of the motia  wafts in from the lawn outside and it makes up for more than one misery.

          However, motia  or no motia , mango or no mango, jaman or no jaman ; in the rainy season-or barsaat  as we call it-you can be quite miserable before the rains and after when it is so close you want to choke. However, you can enjoy the thundershower while it lasts.

          I do not know who were the people who thought of pakwans , the jhoolas , and the koels . One does hear a koel or two in the outskirts now and again, but the birds have vanished from the city proper. For instance, the last time a koel sang in the walled city was when it had a green belt around it with lots of trees and shrubs, and the city was protected by a moat and it used to have drawbridges. F. E. Chaudhry, the doyen of the city's corps of photographers, who turned 75 in March this year, says he remembers at least one drawbridge quite clearly. Those must have been the days when the Railway Road was called Kailianwali Sarak or Banana Road. Just imagine.

          I myself have a child's memory of a huge bungalow in, of all places, Misri Shah, which had a swimming pool big enough and deep enough to be navigable. Today, the locality is the slummiest of the city's one thousand and one slums.

Eating out

                                But I was talking of the pakwans , the jhoolas , and the koel . All these barsaat  institutions have gone. We don't have pakwans any more. We eat out, and for this barsaat is not necessary. Lahories will now eat out at the slightest provocation. Barbecue has been an eternal favourite, but Chinese food is preferred by the jet set. You can see almost all Chinese joints on the Main Boulevard in Gulberg overflowing at dinnertime. As for the jhoola , it has been replaced by Honda Civic or Honda Accord, and similar other mobile swings from Japan. And Honda Accord is a swing for all seasons. The deep freezer has made a mockery of all seasons. I remember that the cucumber used to be the first casualty of the monsoons. It was considered a health hazard to eat a cucumber after the rains had started. Now it is a permanent salad item, and nobody gets sick eating out of season cucumbers.

          The koel is not heard any more except in such open areas as Model Town and the Cantonment. But there, too, the koel's call does not excite any amorous sentiments in you. It is just one sound among many. The papiha and the papiha songs have also become extinct. No one now sings " Pihu pihu boal, pihu pihu boal, boal papiha pihu pihu boal ." Now it is Duran Duran, Talking Heads, Culture Club, The Clash, Michael Jackson, and what have you. Only an old friend does sing " Aiee barsaat  toa barsaat ne dil toar diya." (The first line comes within mischief of the Hudood Ordinance ).

You remember the Faiz 's lines:

A yay kuchh abr kuchh sharab ayay
Uss ke badd avay jo azaab ayay.

It is said that the day Faiz wrote these lines, the heavenly telex system was not of order, and a most garbled version went up. One doesn't have to go into details, but the gods granted Faiz his wish in reverse. I am a law-abiding citizen. All I wanted to say today was that the pleasure has gone out of the seasons.

Not Lahories

The pleasure may have gone out of the seasons, but where have the Lahories gone? A friend insists that the men and women who made Lahore famous were not Lahories at all. Charagh Hassan Hasrat came from Poonch, as indeed did the Ombudsman. Iqbal and Faiz came from Sialkot, Sufi Ghulam Mustafa came from Amritsar, Dr. Waheed Mirza came from Lucknow, Noor Jehan came from Kasur, Malika Pukhraj came from Jammu, Habib Jalib came from Ludhiana or Hoshiarpur, Sadequain came from Amroha, the man who makes the city's best nihari  came from Delhi, Munnoo Bhai came from Wazirabad, and so on and so forth.

          Among the ecclesiasts who made a name for themselves in Lahore:

          Allama Hfiz Kifyat Hussain came from Lucknow and Maulana Maudoodi came from Delhi via Hyderabad (Deccan) and Pathankot.

          Among politicians, Daultana, Mamdot, Qizlibash came from Multan, Mumdot and Afghanistan-in that order.

          Among the leading Lahore newsmen that I know, the man I love the most comes from Hasanpore in Gurgaon; the man I respect the most comes from Wah-Campbellpur. Among my editors, there has been a Kashmiri, a Nabha Patialvi, and an Uttar Pradeshwi. Even I myself, a third-generation Lahori, come from a place very close to Ulan Bator .

          Among the judges I respect above everyone else was Kayani, and he came from Kohat.

          No disrespect meant here to the memory of Mian Iftikharuddin and the ootherarians of Lahore . But the one Lahori who became famous was Ghulam Mohammad, the Governor-General. How do you like that?

          Even the patron saint of the city was not a Lahori. He came from far away Hujver.

          I love the city. Make no mistake about it. " Lahore  Lahore aiy " (Lahore is Lahore), but where have all the Lahories gone?

          IF THE Government were to pay for the publication of its handouts, all newspaper in Pakistan would become viable. This could have another advantage too. The handouts would become shorter and people at various directorates of public relations would learn to appreciate the value of words.

          The other day I went to see a friend, who works for a newspaper. At his table was a Punjab government handout. It said that the Chief Secretary had "stressed the need of the inclusion of new and interesting items in the National Horse and Cattle Show-1985 as well as ensuring greater and effective participation of other provinces to make the show a truly national event and a real tourist attraction for the foreign visitors." On and on it went. It was interminable, and in atrocious language.

          One would have thought making national events, such as the Horse and Cattle Show, was the duty of the public servants concerned. Again, the Chief Secretary was busy with matters relating to the Cattle Show; the day the Governor was paying a surprise visit to the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre. The Chief Secretary should have visited Wasanpura or Misri Shah the day it rained in Lahore. Get your priorities right, C.S. Don't leave all the hard work to the Governor.

July 14, 1984