The Lost Lahore

On any given day, the most noticeable thing about Lahore is the construction in progress. Roads are being widened, many, much to the consternation of environment watchers, heritage monitors, or simply the habitual critics of the incumbent government. Flyovers, underpasses, ring roads and traffic-signal-less corridors mark the stark landscape of Lahore, marred by an undignified hurry to sully its Lahore-ness bit by bit, with the construction of one nondescript building after another, and demolition of old houses, like those memories of a love that remained unfulfilled.

Despite not being from Lahore, I love this city like my own. My whole life is here, everything that I am is here. Ergo, my pain.

Much appreciated is the modernising of the road system in 2015, and it’s good to drive from, say, DHA to Model Town, in half the time it took me a year ago. Time changes, transforms and replaces realities, perceptions and ideas, and the physical structures of cities also undergo gradual or constant alterations. They say Lahore has an old soul, a history that is colourful, larger than life and beyond words… and boundaries. I look for that Lahore. In the crumbling but magnificent edifice of the Lahore Fort. In the majestic campus of the Aitchison College. In the imposing facades of the GPO, Government College, Mayo Hospital. In the rundown but still elegant fronts of some shops on the Mall. In the darwazas of the old city. In the graceful minarets and domes of the Badshahi Masjid. In the filigreed windows of the few havelis in the androon shehr that whisper of nostalgia, of stories that haunt the walls.

A road and a few turns, an eternity in wasted opportunities later, it merges, helplessly, into the newness of my indescribable city, the newness that is gaudy, without substance, and without a trace of the magnificence it replaced. Nonchalantly. Without a note of regret. My longing is to see the soul of my Lahore resplendent in the manner of the still majestic, still proud, cities of Europe, like that of that city that takes my breath away: Paris. The perfect juxtaposition of the old and new is the Paris that breathes and lives its history, melting leisurely into a new day every day. If only my life was a Hollywood movie, and I had the power to travel back in time…

I would tell them to stop. Even if no one heard me I’d have persisted. I’d have because the disappearance of my city is like watching my own family losing its identity. I’d urge them to reconsider, all those who erased the substance of Lahore, armed with their tiny ideas, petty minds and big pockets. Move forward, but is your way the only way to do so? Unable to make it a jungle of concrete and steel like Shanghai, you’ve certainly managed to eliminate almost all signs that made Lahore a city like not many others. With one myopic planner after the other, Lahore kept getting barer, uglier and shallower.

Remodelling Lahore, the city has ceased to be… Lahore. With the old houses went the old school values and substance. As trees — older than most of our grandparents who were laid to rest — were cut to widen or construct roads, entire buildings were demolished to make plazas that are uglier than the curses of a drunk politician at a stag party. The miles-long canal in Lahore, canopied by thick trees. Trees that are spared the axe of road-wideners, which sparkle when there’s a festival to celebrate, while wallowing in their mud and noisy laughters of male bathers the rest of the year. Residential places of some of Pakistan’s most renowned names were sold/demolished by their family members who cared more for a few crores than the sanctity of family history. Self-consoling; “ah-memories-live-in hearts”.

There’s no turning back the clock. There’s no point lamenting the past that remains impervious to any protestation. There’s nothing to gain by hyphenating the nostalgia of a Lahore that once was. I know. Yet… the lost splendour of the city that I love evokes emotions. Myriad, chaotic. As I long to feel the soul that lingers. In slivers.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 3^rd,  2015.

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