The Near Pavilion

ARCHITECTRE and landscape are being slowly but openly murdered at a stone's throw from the Governor  House. Yet, neither the police have moved in the matter nor has the Lahore  Conservation Society. And the Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner and the Mayor and the rest of them are too busy to bother.

          The brief facts of the case are that across the road from the Governor  House is Bagh -i-Jinnah . It is a cricket ground, which used to be the very best and the most picturesque place in Pakistan  for playing the game. Not now any longer. Last week I went to Bagh-i-Jinnah for a breath of fresh air, and was horrified to see the state of the cricket ground. I have never seen it worse kept. The grass was yellowing for want of water at a place where there is no shortage of water. It was as uneven as the Pathi Ground used to be in my childhood. Part of it had been taken over by tennis players from the Lahore  Gymkhana or whatever. It wasn't fit, in short, for even a weekend match between two junior school teams.

          Not only that. They are putting up a hideous new addition to the left of the old, hundred-years old pavilion. An uglier structure in cement and steel I have never seen. It simply does not relate to the landscape. It is an insult to Bagh -i-Jinnah and to the city of Lahore . They catch hold of a poor man who pays to buy himself a bit of happiness. You've violated the Hudood Ordinance , they tell him. They get hold of a man found with a girlfriend. Hudood Ordinance again. But they never punish people who are raping and murdering the landscape a la Jack the Ripper. And they are being paid for it! By the holy beard of the Mayor, why don't the heavens fall? Majid Khan  used to be in charge of the Lahore Gymkhana  Ground until he forgot the difference between a cricket bat and a hockey stick and was promptly given a job by the PTV . I don't know who is his successor but no matter who, he ought to hand for it.

          In the petite old pavilion, they have marbled the veranda floor so that the place, which used to be nice and cool in the cruellest of summers, is now hot as hell even in spring. The ugliest brick grill you ever saw has replaced the wooden railings in front. This type of latticework went out of fashion even in Chuharkana a good thirty years ago.

          The Gymkhana cricket ground is not just a playfield. It is a museum of memoirs. Here every brick of the old pavilion is sacred. Here the playing strip is sacred. Here I have seen the late Mian Mohammad Saeed  hitting the ball over the trees on a beautiful winter's afternoon after a huge lunch with tons of fish downed with bucketfuls of the stuff that used to cheer-and still does, but officially overseas only. Here I have seen John Goddard  and Rohan Kanhai  and Garfield Sobers and Sonny Ramadhin and Wesley Hall in action. Here I have seen Vinoo Mankad  and Lala Amarnath  and Polly Umrigar in action. Here I have seen Bert Sutcliffe and John Reid in action. Here I have seen Maqsood Ahmad and Imtiaz Ahmad  and Abdul Hafeez Kardar  and Fazal Mahmood  in action. Here every blade of grass is a sacred memory and I won't have it desecrated and vandalised and vulgarised. Not if I can help it and not without protest. I protest to the Lahore  Conservation Society. I protest to Governor  Gilani. I protest to Mayor Shujaur Rahman. I protest to the Commissioner, to the Deputy Commissioner, to other authorities concerned and unconcerned. Help, gentlemen, help.

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I should have started with elections this week but do you think it is really necessary? The non-party elections are not such a non-event as my friend in the MRD thought they would be, and polling in some city constituencies may be fairly high. My candidate in town-it is unfortunate that I don't live in his constituency-is Mohammad Saleem Kirala, who is contesting from the PP-104 seat. Never in my life have I seen a more upright candidate. Iqtidar ke bhookon mein aik aur bhookey ka izafa is his call and confession-"one more added to the list of the power-hungry," says he, and more power to his elbow. If returned, he will make a good Information Minister, I think his supporters have coined this jingle for him: Kunwara tha Kanwara hey, Saleem Kirala harama heh ! (A bachelor he was, a bachelor he is, Saleem Kirala for us is). And Habib Jalib  has chipped in with a pro-Kirala quatrain.

          By the way, I have a complaint to make. Lahore  will take at least six months and millions of rupees to wash and scrape its walls off the billions of posters that have disfigured them.

          All walls have been pasted or painted over with election posters and slogans, which will require some rubbing off. What will these men do when returned to the assemblies? The winners among them must be given a refresher course in civics before they take up their onerous legislative responsibilities.

          An aside. Now that the candidates have been permitted to use megaphone, what will they do with it? They will speak mega nonsense, says a friend.

          Now a bit of imported-not smuggled wisdom. Writing on the spy scandal in India , Sunanda Datta-Ray says in The Observer that an obsession with secrecy can be counter-productive.

          In defence he quotes from the Indian  Express , which once wrote that while Mrs. Gandhi's government  was feared and obeyed, it did not evoke loyalty.

          "The tragic consequence of her short-sighted insistence on identifying her Government with the country meant that disloyalty to the former led to the betrayal of the latter." Any parallel seen with conditions at home is purely coincidental and the undersigned disclaims and disowns all responsibility.

Saturday, February 23, 1985