On cloud la-la-land

Last November, I visited Lahore""much too handicapped, according to my companions, to truly enjoy the place. The big handicap, of course, was the fact that I was a vegetarian in a city where copious quantities of meat are consumed at every meal.

The second, that I was a reserved South Indian rather than an exuberant pappi-jhappi paoing Punjabi, and thus could not quite grasp the "soul" of Lahore.

The roaring response that our visit from Delhi elicited alarmed me more than anything else, but I believe I "got" what Lahore was about, and admit to being charmed to my toes. Lahore is a city which exists on two planes.

One as the heart of the new country of Pakistan, and the other as the romantic city of liberals, the "Oxford of the East" in the memory and imagination of the large diaspora of those who left the city at Partition.

This book, too, reflects this dual existence. There are three sections devoted to Old Lahore, the old city, and reminiscences of people like Krishen Khanna and Ved Mehta who revisit their old homes in Lahore. Other sections of City of Sin and Splendour talk of the last fifty years of Lahore's existence.

For someone both culturally (being the distant South Indian) and generationally (being so much younger) distanced from Partition, it's the second bit that's of more interest. While there exists much literature on the big event itself, what happened to Pakistan and its social fabric after 1947 is curiously absent in conventional subcontinental (especially Indian) discourse.

Thus, pieces by Jugnu Mohsin on Habib Jalili, the eternal dissenter in Pakistan, by Bina Shah on the famed rivalry between Lahore and Karachi (much like our eternal Delhi versus Mumbai debate) and a very informative piece (strictly for carnivores, of course) on Lahori food by Irfan Hussain offer a glimpse of a city which has moved on.

Particularly illuminating is a piece by Ikramullah Chaudhary titled "The Old Mansion" about a Bihari refugee in Pakistan who shares a room with two others, an impoverished Kashmiri and a dispossessed Punjabi. All are refugees in their own way, and it portrays Partition's failure to solve the hunger problem.

Hidden in these sections are gems such as Khalid Hasan's piece on Nur Jehan, the singing star who abandoned Mumbai to live in Lahore, disappointing many fans. Hasan captures the star's naughty, childlike personality rather well""especially the part about her abbreviated list of lovers.

Had she kept count? Well, she'd tried, as Hasan recounts, and toted up 16, to her surprise: "Hai Allah! Na na kardian wi solan ho gai nain ("Oh God! Even after discounting so many, the number is so large").

It is this charm that is captivating about Lahore, and yet the city is more than just that. Therefore, what the book could have done with is more of contemporary writing from Lahore.

One youthful piece that attempts to do that is Mohsin Ahmad's: "Pathos of Exile", about two cousins, one of whom returns to Lahore after years spent in London. The changes he sees make interesting reading.

Changes. Yet, the Lahore of those who left for India after Partition is forever the liberal citadel which "incomprehensibly sunk to the depths of mob violence" for those few days. No other city since has measured up to this paragon of paradox.

Lahore is all this, yet also a city which seems complacent in its provincial charm, its exuberant Punjabi soul influenced by the austere tribesfolk streaming in from the north with their own brand of Islam, their women, in direct contrast to the red light district Hira Mandi's vivacious occupants, being pushed further into the shadows.

Admitted that Partition was a traumatic rupture in the life of the city, a sudden severance of ties. But yet, the slow changes of the last fifty years are shaping Lahore like never before.

Just as Indian authors are looking at a post-Mandal India, an anthology on post-Zia Pakistan, like Sabiha Sumer's lyrical film Khamosh Paani, should be the next Lahore project.

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CITY OF SIN AND SPLENDOUR
WRITINGS ON LAHORE

Edited by Bapsi Sidhwa
Penguin
Price: Rs 395; Pages: xviii+373