My Pakistan Diary: Lahore Aaya Main Othay Dil Chhod Aaya!

This is a wonderful time for an Indian to be in Pakistan, especially Lahore.

The bus from Delhi reached the Faletti’s Hotel at 7 PM. Imran was there to receive us and, with the help of the picture he had emailed to us, we had no problem spotting him in the crowd. He had traveled more than five miles to transport us to the Holiday Inn, which is literally across the street from the Faletti’s. The hotel wore a merry, festive look for Basant and was decorated with festoons and lights; Panjabi songs were playing in the background to create a proper Basant atmosphere. Sorry, no generosity for Indians here! We were charged triple the normal tariff for the first two days because of the popularity of the Basant festival.

We phoned Yasser, the secular “fanatic” from chowk. Within an hour he was there with his wife and his charming young cousin. Meeting this young chowkie in person was a pleasant surprise. Unlike his chowk persona, he is very soft-spoken and respectful in real life. Soon, we were on our way to our first engagement in Lahore, a Mehndi ceremony in a leafy neighborhood. The ceremony was in a shamiana (a tent) set up for this purpose. The music was mostly songs from Bollywood films. The ceremony was not very different from similar ceremonies in India – chit-chats, followed by food served in buffet style, followed by impromptu entertainment. Women were dressed in their fine clothes and jewelery, as was appropriate for the occasion.

But a few things did surprise me. Having been to a few Pakistani parties in Ottawa, I expected men and women to be seated separately but they were freely mingling with each other. Nobody was wearing burqa, a few girls were wearing hijab but this seemed to be more a fashion than a religious statement: when people started dancing on the stage, the hijabi girls were no less vigorous in their “thumkaas and jhumkaas” than the non-hijaabi ones. Another surprising element was that the bride seemed to be not at all bashful, she was talking, smiling and giggling – very different from the image I had of a conservative Panjabi bride.


Basant
The next day was the Valentine’s Day and the day before the Basant festival. The hotel sent us a package of gifts for the occasion, which included some candies, a yellow basanti chunni (long scarf) for me, a set of bangles for my wife and an invitation to a roof-top basant party. This was a nice gesture and made up for the somewhat inefficient hotel service and the exorbitant tariff. The hotel had laid out an elaborate brunch buffet whose highlight was basanti halwa and poories.

The Basant festival symbolises the end of winter in Panjab; a Panjabi proverb says “aaya basant, paala udant” (when basant comes, winter flees). The festival has taken a somewhat different turn in Pakistan than the original festival. The original Basant Panchami takes place on the fifth day of the month of Magh of the desi calendar. It is still the day on which it is celebrated in India and was celebrated on the 25th of Januuary in Delhi and elsewhere in India this year. But in Pakistan, the day is arbitrarily fixed each year by the Lahore municipality, usually the second weekend in February. The festival in Lahore means kite-flying, partying, fun and merrymaking: Unlike India, where it is also associated with Sarswati Puja in some parts of the country, it has no other significance in Pakistan. As far as I am aware, it is not a big festival in Sindh where a sizeable number of Hindus still live.

For us, the most memorable event of the day was unrelated to Basant. It was the luncheon get-together arranged by the Lahore chowkies. In addition to my wife and me, guests also included Nazar Hayat Khan who is from Karachi. Nazar and his lovely niece, an expatriate like ourselves, came to visit us at our hotel and joined us and Feroz, who had come to take us to The Village, the restaurant chosen for our get-together. The legendary Lahori hospitality was on full display. Before going to The Village, all of us were shooting the breeze in our hotel restaurant when a young man celebrating his engagement brought a large slice of cake for all of us.

The chowk get-together was a grand success; we were not only able to put faces to the names or, more accurately, nicks, but also able to establish instant rapport. The conversation covered all topics except those covered at chowk. The food was plentiful and could easily meet the needs of every taste bud, vegetarian and non-vegetarian, desi, oriental or western. The atmosphere was friendly and revealed chowkies to be a jovial, youthful and fun-loving bunch. We stayed at the The Village until almost everyone else had left and the place had emptied out. The party ended with gift-exchanges and picture-taking.

We had invitation to two Basant-Eve parties. We first went upstairs to the roof-top party of our hotel. A stage had been set up and elaborate arrangements had been made for food, entertainment and kite-flying. All servers, male and female, were wearing the colours of basant and many of the guests too were wearing the basanti scarfs gifted to us. We left that party just when it was beginning to warm up, to go to another invitation-only party in Gulberg, a fashionable commercial district of Lahore. The party was arranged on the roof of a large building. In the typical sub continental style, it seems that more invitations had been issued than there was room for and many people were using the same card for multiple entries. The number of people must be in thousands and there was a virtual stampede both outside and inside the party. I was somewhat unprepared for this type of party in Pakistan; men and women were jostling with each other to get inside the building and then climb up the stairs, the concept of self-discipline being alien to Panjabis.

The kite-flying was in full swing. I asked one enthusiast if he had “killed” any kites yet and he proudly answered, seven. He generously invited me to hold his dori-string for the next pecha fight. I thankfully declined the offer, which was a good thing, as the next pecha proved humiliating for the young enthusiast – his kite suffering a bo-kaata (cut by the opponent), with him left holding a limp string.

We followed the crowd to the food stalls. The food was plentiful with all types of favourite Panjabi preparations –fruits, juices, pops, corn-on-the-cob, halwas, poories, naans, kebabs and meats of all types as well as desserts, but there were fewer plates than the people chasing them. There was a pandemonium but people were still enjoying themselves. The entertainment program started before the dinner was over. It was a mujra-type set-up - chairs all around with an empty space in the middle for the dancer to perform. The dancer was a scantily-clad girl who started dancing to some popular, mostly Bollywood numbers. When she was tired, another more scantily-dressed dancer took her place. Alas, it was getting late and the ladies in the group hurried us back to our hotel, but I was told that the dances continued all through the night and the dancers’ costumes became skimpier and skimpier with each change of performer.

The next morning was the actual day fixed for Basant. On my morning walk, I could see the aftermath of last night’s "battles". The streets were littered with ‘dores’- the basant weapons of kite-mass-destruction; dore is a razor-sharp string fortified with “maajha” or metallic concoctions to cross swords with the opponents’ kites. Every kite that goes into the battlefield in the sky eventually falls onto the ground. Newspapers and TV channels were full of accounts of deaths due to kids falling off roofs while flying kites or chasing fallen kites or even due to electrocution as metallic strings tangled with electric wires.

While walking towards the famous Lakshami chowk, I passed by a chai-dhaaba where a few taxi drivers were having chai-naashta, their breakfast. I approached one and asked if he would be interested in taking us for a sightseeing trip of Lahore. He agreed and I asked him to pick us up from our hotel at 10 AM. The driver’s name was Anwar but he said that he was better known as ‘Lala’. I recognized Lala’s accent and asked him if he was from ‘Pindi. He was. I tried to reactivate my rustic potohari and we developed a good rapport. From then on he was our driver as well as a guide for part of the trip. Lala was very happy that the two countries were talking peace; he philosophised that there was no enmity between Indians and Pakistanis, it is only siaastdaaans -the politicians- who create problems between the two countries. I did not ask him if he included military brass among the siaastdaans.

Our first stop was the famous Lahore Fort. The construction of the Fort is generally associated with the Mughal emperor Akbar although it is said to be built on an earlier mud fort mentioned in Al Beruni’s Kitab Al-Hind. This is perhaps the oldest monument of Lahore. Lahore, an ancient city, is said to derive its name from ‘Luv’, the son of the Hindu god-king Ram of Ramayna. Not too far from Lahore is Kusur, which is said to owe its name to Ram’s other son, ‘Kush’. The Fort was closed for the rehearsal of some play to be staged there. But not to worry! The subcontinental “culture” came to our rescue. Lala found a Guide who was in cahoots with gatekeepers and who let us in through a side door for a small consideration. But the same culture also led to disappointment; the Guide did not tell us that we would only be able to see a small part of the fort, the inner part and the museum was still closed to us.

The area around Fort has many attractions of historic interest. There is the famous Badshahi Masjid built by Aurangzeb and the tomb of Allama Iqbal. But there is also the lesser known Dera Saheb commemorating the place where Maharaja Ranjit Singh was cremated. It is also a place to commemorate the martyrdom of the fifth sikh guru, Arjun Dev. The gurudwara is well kept, with daily langar/community kitchen. From its ramparts one can have a nice view of Minar-e-Pakistan. This Minar is the newest monument in Lahore where a resolution to create the state of Pakistan was passed in 1940. Although there is no monument to mark the place, these are also the grounds from where a young Jawahar Lal Nehru gave the clarion call for India’s freedom on January 26, 1930 and the day on which India now celebrates its republic.

From the Fort, we went to spend a few minutes in Lawrence Gardens – a really massive, well kept garden which is home to several species of plants and trees - and on to the Museum and Daata Durbar. We spent quite some time exploring the shrine and paid our homage to the great sufi, Daata Baksh Ganj. This is the place to go if one wants to meet the awaam-janata of Lahore. This is also the place where one probably sees more burqas than anywhere else in Lahore. The place was quite crowded on that Sunday afternoon but I was told that it is always crowded. The Darbar reminded me of the Haaji Ali Masjid of Mumbai but without the scenic Arabian Sea backdrop and the loud music blaring from the commercial stalls lining the approach to the Haaji Ali Masjid. There were the same large crowds of men and women (though none in saaris!), old and young, rich and poor; the same rush of faqirs and beggars, the stalls selling food and trinkets and people eager to receive the blessings of their patron Sufi saint. There seemed to be more malangs at Daata Darbar and more people seeking you out for donations to Tegs (food for the poor) without your knowing whether your donations would feed the poor or the family of the canvasser. Like the Haaji Ali shrine, the couples have to separate and enter the shrine from different directions and try to find each other in the crowd after paying homage to the Daata.

In the evening we were taken to another invitation-only basant party, this one hosted by none other than the grandson of Allama Iqbal, who is doing an admirable job of aesthetically renovating his grandfather’s old haveli, Barood Khaana, located near the famous Heera Mandi of Lahore. This was certainly a party of the elite and we got an invitation only because of Yasser’s extensive network in Lahore. The who’s who of Lahore was at the party, including the Junoon artists and Wasim Akram, the Pakistani cricket legend. Wasim was being mobbed for photographs by his fans and had just escaped the mob after great effort when he was approached to come back to pose with the guests from India, which he readily and graciously did. The keynote entertainer at the function was Zafar Abbas whose song, Chunno ki aankhon mein kitna nasha hai, is all the rage in Pakistan these days. Unlike the previous evening, this was a much better-behaved and disciplined crowd. As at last night’s party, men and women mingled freely. Both men and women were dressed in their fineries. Lahori women are perhaps the most stylishly dressed on the subcontinent. Although, there is not the same variety of costumes as in India, Lahoris have made creative use of dupattas and chaadars to create pleasing variations in fashion and styles. Despite the all-covering shalwar-kameez, they manage to look glamourous, even sexy, with clever use of the cuts of shalwar-kameez, variations in the length and girth of the kameez and shalwar, and sometimes using thin fabric. Their choice of colours and fabric is tasteful, though ostentatious. The event was being covered by the Pakistani TV channels, one of whose correspondents approached both my wife and me for our comments on the celebrations. When the food was ready, we were the first to partake of the typical Panjabi meal of sarson ka saag and Paraathas and headed out with Yasser and his family for a round of old Lahore, including the vast complex of the Mayo Hospital.

This was the end of the first phase of our Lahore visit. The second phase, towards the end of our Pakistan trip, was spent mostly in shopping and a visit to Anarkali, both old and new. Anarkali was decorated for Moharram at this time with some stalls creating ‘jhaankis’ or kiosks depicting scenes from old Lukhnow. Here, we again got a chance to see what the ‘magic’ word Indian can do in Pakitan during these days of bonhomie. We arrived to visit a newly opened chic gallery-cum-restaurant at Anarkali just when the doors were being closed, but a word from our hosts about their Indian guests got the doors opened again. The gallery was displaying the works of an artist who was present in the gallery and was being interviewed, I believe, by Indus TV. After the interview was over, the interviewer approached us for our reactions, followed by the artist himself who spent quite a few minutes chatting about his work with us.

It is customary to compare Lahore and Delhi and there are, indeed, many similarities between the two cities. The vibrant Panjabi culture of ’khao-piyo-aish-karo’ - eat drink and be merry - dominates both cities. Ostentatious living comes naturally to Panjabis and is as visible in the lavish parties of Lahore as of those in farm houses outside Delhi. But while the Panjabi culture dominates both cities, one cannot say the same thing about the Panjabi language. Panjabi is not the formal language of either city – it is English/Hindi in Delhi (though some road signs are in Panjabi and the language is taught in many schools) and Urdu in Lahore. And while the street language of Delhi is Hindi/Hinglish, Panjabi still rules the roost in Lahore. Urdu spoken in Lahore has a distinct Panjabi accent, even when spoken by the descendants of Mohajirs. Indeed, those Mohajirs from the land of Ghalib and Zauq would be aghast if they heard their progeny speaking Urdu like that Sialkotia, Iqbal.

Both cities are a dream come true for the connoisseurs of food. But vegetarians would have a somewhat hard time in Lahore; one is likely to find meat even in samosas, vegetables and parathas. If more Indians are to visit Pakistan, there is a good opportunity for an enterprising Lahori to start a vegetarian restaurant, even one that serves Idlis and Masala Dosas.


While Lahoris complain of traffic, one visit to Delhi will cure that complaint. There are many more cars clogging the roads of Delhi than of Lahore though Lahore seems to have a larger proportion of bigger, imported cars. Despite dozens of flyovers and many more under construction, Delhi is a driver’s nightmare. There are several roads in Delhi, especially old Delhi where the fastest mode of transportation is often by foot. Even the traffic sense of Lahori drivers is somewhat better than those of Delhi drivers. But one notices fewer women driving cars in Lahore than in Delhi. Indeed, one sees very few women, especially unescorted women, on the streets. But quality makes up for quantity.

Lahoris love life and love themselves. If it is true that puritanical Islam abhors fun and frolic, then the Mullah has met his match in the Lahori, whose motto in life is captured by the saying:
Guddi vee udaavange! [Like it or not we’ll fly kites]
Te akh vee ladaavange! [Like it or not, we’ll have fun]

Next: The Feudal