City government hopes for an August 14 opening for Pak Tea House
The Pak Tea House will now open on August 14, hopes the city district government.
The City District Government Lahore had the property vacated in early February with plans to re-open the tea house. However, a stay order had been obtained by Zahid Hussain who claimed to have possession of the land through a lease agreement with the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA).
Work on restoring the city’s most iconic eatery began in late June when the Lahore High Court lifted the stay on the renovation.
Additional Director Security Colonel (retired) Younis Barula told The Express Tribune that Hussain was responsible for the government missing the original deadline of July 7. Hussain had challenged the LHC’s setting aside of the stay order, Barula said.
Commissioner Jawad Rafique Malik said he was monitoring the construction work to ensure the pace and quality of work. “It has only been two weeks since work was restarted,” said the commissioner, adding that the contractors had been given a July 31 deadline to complete the renovation.
Discussing renovation plans, Barula told The Tribune that the engineers had rejected a proposal to raise the height of the first floor ceiling saying that tampering with the original beams will damage the structure. The first floor is 6-foot high.
Pictures of famous writer, poets and activists who patronised the place will put up around the tea house. Period furniture and crockery will be used to complete the retro style decor.
With a 60-person capacity, the two-storey restaurant will offer food on subsidised rates.
Pak Tea House will be run by a committee that will be formed by the commissioner. It will be supervised by the commissioner or the DCO, according to a proposal put forth by Malik.
An 11-month lease agreement has already been signed between the YMCA and Data Gunj Baksh Town administrator.
The agreement will be extendable indefinitely until Pak Tea house remains in business.
The CDGL will pay Rs10,000 as monthly rent.
The place, established in 1940, had originally been called India Tea House. The name was changed to Pak Tea House after independence when the Indian owner leased it to Sirajud Din. After Sirajuddin’s death, the lease was transferred to his son Zahid Hussain who closed the tea house in 2000.
Intezar Hussain (Sitra-i-imtiaz), the renowned Urdu fiction writer, appreciated the government’s efforts to reopen the tea house. He described it as a “worth while experiment”, but said he wasn’t optimistic about whether writers and intellectuals of the same calibre frequenting the place again. Hussain said that Pak Tea House wasn’t the only place of its kind, “there were other places like Shezan on The Mall where poets and authors used to mingle.”
Published in The Express Tribune, July 18th, 2012.
COMMENTS (4)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
1736332856-0/Untitled-design-(20)1736332856-0-270x192.webp "kourtney kardashian s stepdaughter alabama barker debuts striking new look after recent er visit")
1736334465-0/sidra--(45)1736334465-0-270x192.webp "sindh introduces ev taxis for unemployed youth")
60-person capacity with only Rs10,000 monthly rent?
A laudable effort but can you bring back past by renovating concrete? From where would you create the special milieu of peace, spontaneity and security that was the hallmark of the defunct Tea House.With the sharply divisive social fabric of today,what would be missed is love of art for the sake of art! I am not a pessimist but see the futility of a well-intentioned effort to provide an environment to literary world that has already gone off its settled orbits of the past.Good luck,anyway.
A lot of people are looking forward to the opening of the Tea House which will be another fine addition to Lahore's cultural scene.