Lahore: A home away from home

By Priya Goswami

As enchanting as it gets! Rightly known as the city of ‘Sin and Splendour’, Lahore is all about trips of ecstasy through a confluence of the modern and the traditional, the oriental and the occidental. Naturally, the Pakistani city is a veritable feast for any wanderlust-stricken traveller. If you think that a rejoinder would help you understand better then it better be Sunny Deol singing ‘Main nikla gaddi lekar…kab guzra Amritsar, Lahore aayaaaa…” Yes that’s the experience when you cross the border between India and Pakistan. Lahore is not situated very far away from Amritsar. It is like you crossed the border to enter into a territory strangely familiar in terms of people and places. It was with these images in mind that we, the students of Kamala Nehru College dramatics society, hit the place to attend a theatre festival organized by the Government College University of Lahore. The Government College University, a little Googling tells you, happens to be a legendary name that served as alma mater to many heavy-duty names like Khushwant Singh and Balraj Sahani, only to name a few. All this only served to increase our excitement. The historic Wagah border stands as a tall sentinel of the shared legacies of India and Pakistan. The ‘Change of Guards’ ceremony was definitely a high point of the trip. It is a heady feeling to view your own land from a distance not too long but from an almost invincible boundary. All the other experiences of travelling fail to impart that Lahore effect, for what we now enter, is a land similar to ours in myriad ways and yet foreign for what we know as history. At the border, we were greeted by a bunch of people with flowers waiting for us on the other side to remind (rather reinforcing for us) that yes, we are truly ‘welcome’. The saga of hospitality began there but our friendship took some time to take off. The one thing that dazzled us were the heavily decorated trucks. Impossible to miss, they look as if they are straight out of a beauty pageant, full of vibrancy and colour. Interestingly, Lahore has a sound sense of aesthetics as one may witness all over. Journeying through the roads, it was impossible to miss architectural excellence in the buildings - the domed GPO, the High Court, the museum, the airport - all the heritage and public buildings in the city center are immensely well maintained. Like most big cities on the subcontinent, Lahore has clean, green and exceptionally well-maintained roads and also has narrow crowded “gallis” and areas that are congested, badly maintained and slightly polluted. As one passes through the important buildings of the City Center nestled in an otherwise lush green area, the place has an oddly familiar echo of central Delhi, among which, the first destination for a must stop and look around is the Badshashi Mosque- no different from what we may see at Fatehpur Sikri. An added advantage in the place is the museum maintained by the mosque where relics of the Prophet and other interesting religious artifacts are maintained. Another interesting feature in that area is the change of guards at the tomb of Allama Iqbal - Pakistan’s national poet and ironically the creator of “Sare jahan se achha Hindustan hamara…”- which was almost carnivalesque with the uniformed guards doing `baraat` style dancing to music that could have come straight out of a marriage scene in a Gurinder Chaddha movie. The first round of sightseeing being over now it was our turn to turn to what we all like to do the best- hog! For a foodie, Lahore is just the place to be! With three food streets in the city and innumerable eating joints catering to all kinds of palates, it is certainly a paradise for the taste buds. While the lip-smacking delicacies take your breath away, Lahore is a vegetarian’s lament. But fear not if you are partial to fast food. From Pizza Hut to KFC to AFC, they are all there at your service. Adding to the heightened anticipation are some of the interesting names of the food joints like ‘Crow Eaters’ ‘Cuckoo’s den’, ‘Cookers’ and many more! A must mention place in the plethora of others is the ‘Cuckoo’s den’ which is not only one of the most famous eating joints of Lahore but is also a very enthralling place to be and a must visit for one and all. The location of the eating joint is such that, this roof top restaurant is poised right in the middle of two realms of the spiritual and the sinful. Behind the Badshahi Mosque and right in the forefront of the prostitution hub ‘Heera Mandi’, the place is simply unique in terms of setting and ambience. The restaurant overlooks the magnificent mosque wonderfully lit up at night on the one side, and on the other a dingy alleyway, dark and infamous. As we climbed up the narrow stairs to reach the rooftop, the ‘haveli’ like setting was adorned with powerful paintings of prostitutes, painted by the most controversial painter of Pakistan, Iqbal Hussain, which captured various aspects of their life - their plight, their spirit, their objectification, their beauty, their helplessness, and their shackled life. Capping all the other ironies enmeshed in the place is that the restaurant is after all a ‘family joint’ and as we dined there we could see why it was so. The place seems as though of a different world governed with what is neither of the spirit nor of the senses but truly human. A tour in Lahore is incomplete without a visit to the Anarkali Market. If our mornings were devoted to sightseeing, afternoons were spent in what we enjoyed the most- shopping (Quoting a friend ‘girls that we are’). So we spent the afternoon exploring the winding streets of the Anarkali Market, with its profusion of colourful jutis, silver work, clothes and kohl. It was a market that brought to mind Chandni Chowk and Karol Bagh except for the high security presence owing to the market’s proximity to the Lahore High Court where the tense standoff between General Pervez Musharraf and Chief Justice, Iftikar Mohammad Choudhary was being played out during our visit in March this year. Talking of the markets, the city center or the ‘Fortress’ area gets a special mention here for it is easily a feast for the eyes at night with trees and buildings lit up and with stunning floats adorning the city canal. With floats on what looked like a Kashmiri girl in a boat, a dhol and wheat strand, surprisingly of all the things they served as a reminder to the common heritage that we Indians and Pakistanis share. More in our travelling list, we crossed the River Ravi to get to the tombs of Jehangir and Noor Jahan. If till now we were dwelling in urban Lahore, this excursion gave us a glimpse of the rural side of the place in Shahadra town, with its cart-loads of freshly harvested wheat or sugarcane and roaming buffaloes, camels and donkeys blocking the kachcha roads which at one point was inundated by an overflowing drain. Jehangir’s tomb was poorly maintained compared to the heritage and non-heritage buildings in the Lahore city centre. The ceiling had been whitewashed effacing the marble inlay work. However, the guides did point out places where restoration work had begun. The premises has 180 rooms used originally as a ‘sarai’ and the gardens contained two very special trees which the guides claimed belonged to the Mughal period and were at least 400 years old. We were lucky enough to be allowed into the underground crypt of the tomb of Noor Jahan and her daughter at Dada Bari. The only illumination in the dungeon-like crypt came from the candles our guide provided and two jharokhas that ensured the first and the last sunrays of the day would find their way into the otherwise dark, underground burial space. A couplet attributed to Noor Jahan poignantly expressed her desire to be buried in a place without any light, without the songs of the bulbul and the fragrance of flowers. Throughout our ten-day trip, we did innumerable rounds to Anarkali and Fortress but the final round was completed only with Bahaar Mela near Racecourse Park, where we went on camel rides, ate lots and shopped even more. Upon hearing about our Indian origin, some shopkeepers were ready to give away stuff to us for free - only because we were guests. And we thought only India believed in ‘ Atithi Devo Bhava’. Whoever said that the two countries were different? Also in the course of fun and frolic, one of our group members was fortunate enough to be able to visit her ancestral home. What could be said about that event when she herself was speechless as she came back? All she could gather herself to do was thank her host for being so kind as she was able to fulfill and relive the dream of her grandparents. So for all of us in our own different ways, the trip was almost a flight of fantasy. With what is unbelievable unless hospitality is felt, one is forced to acknowledge that it is true, as it is said ‘Jisne Lahore Nahi Dekha, Wo Janmaya hi Nahi’. You go back with memories of a home away from home, an experience of a lifetime.