Waking up in Lahore: The idea of Pakistan
Jyoti Malhotra -
Monday, May 19, 2008 1:18 PM
The idea of waking up in Lahore is something you’ve held onto for most of your life, a small little secret, tightly guarded, only to be shared with the few who breathe the same unspoken dream. Half of you even hopes this will never come true. Oh to wake up in Lahore and walk through Anarkali bazaar, gorge yourself on the austere lines of Aurangzeb’s Badshahi mosque, drive down Mall Road, and end up at the Government College, where your father and all your friends’ fathers must have studied – once upon a time, long, long ago. And so, here I am back in Lahore, certainly, indisputably, one of the most interesting cities in the world. Lahore is the heart of the subcontinent, not Delhi.
The Urdu is so beautifully spoken (“aapka paigam Mian Nawaz Sharif tak pahunch gaya hai mohtarma”), it puts the vulgarized Hindi spoken on the streets of the capital back home so completely to shame. Here is where cultures jostle for attention. At the Avari hotel where I am staying (total luxury at astoundingly sensible rates for Indian journalists!), there’s a tablet erected on the outside wall in the memory of Khorshed Avari, by her husband, Dinshaw Avari. May the Almighty Ahura Mazda grant her soul eternal peace in heaven, it says. Parsis in Pakistan? Sure, peel the layers of Pakistani society and the unfairly-held perceptions of this being a monochromatic culture slowly disappear.
Partition may have emptied most Hindus and Sikhs from this country (more’s the pity, says Ejaz Haider, executive editor of the `Daily Times’ newspaper) but in so many ways Pakistan remains one of the best kept secrets in the world. The gulf between the idea of Pakistan and reality is so enormous it could be funny, if it wasn’t so tragic. The flight from Delhi to Lahore is hardly 45 minutes long, and its full of returning Pakistanis. Khurram, a young manager with Pepsi in Lahore was in Delhi to partake of Indra Nooyi’s inclusive experiment. Madeeha was in Mumbai to condole the death of her mother-in-law’s brother. Humayun Bangash, a former corps commander, had flown in to attend a gathering of ex-soldiers from both sides (what delicious irony!). But where are the Indians? “Veer Zara” may have been Bollywood’s gift to Heer Ranjha or Sohni-Mahiwal or so many other love stories littered across the sub-continent, but shouldn’t Lahore, South Asia’s most cosmopolitan city, be crawling with turbans from across the border, barely an hour away by road?
Okay, so I’m in Lahore, and counting every blessing that inspired my week-long visa to Pakistan. But how can I leave this blog without leaving you a line by the popular Punjabi singer Taj Multani, that is said to have moved none other than Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the poet whose spirit epitomises this city. Ishq hai sada pir, sang Multani Religion is my love.
By the time you wake up in Lahore, you’ve always known that’s true.