Lahore, love it or hate it …. Review on Lahore

This is not a travelogue, but my own experience of growing up in an exuberant, and crazy city at the heart of Pakistan, the capital of Punjab. You will love it, and you will love to hate it. It brings out the extremes of human nature.

The city enjoys a sharp contrast between the old part of the city and the new. The old city represents the traditions while the new city is the reflection of modern aspirations of its people.

Lahore has a long history. It is located along side the Grand Trunk Road which links Central Asia through Afghanistan to the present day India and beyond. Situated on the banks of river Ravi, it was a logical break-journey for explorers, traders and invading armies. As one ruler after another rose to the throne of India, the city of Lahore became their frontier stronghold standing guard against possible invasions from North West. The Lahore fort situated on the south eastern bank of the river Ravi facing North West. A city encircled within high walls developed over time which came to be known as the ?Walled City? or as the locals call it ?Andaroon Sher? or the inner city. What once was the center of Lahore now is the northwestern edge.

The Walled City and surrounding area is where all the historical buildings, built by the Moguls and the British Colony, are located. ?The Mall?, a road built during the British Raj divides the old Lahore from the modern Lahore which is situated further south. The modern city is newer, cleaner, and less crowded.

Lahore experiences extreme climatic conditions, winter is too cold, and summer is too hot. While summer can be unkind, winter is fun in Lahore. You can stop anywhere to buy?Bhutta? or traditional corn-on-the-cob, fresh ?muli? (carrots) sprinkled with ground red chilies and salt from hawkers, who mushroom up in all corners of the city on the advent of winters.

On a typical winter day, you wake up to a misty morning, the aroma of tea and freshly baked bread. The mist lazily gives way to a crisp and clear winter sky. The stark glare from the sun penetrates your skin, giving you the warmth that you crave for. Outside, leaving the comfort of the home and warm blankets, roads become saturated with people, all trying to get to their respective destinations in every conceivable form of 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 wheelers, contributing to the pandemonium. The horse cart known as the ?tonga? is still used as the means of transport in parts of the olden city and occasionally you may catch a tonga or two carrying the young children to school in the relatively new parts of the city.

The transition from the old to the new is gradual yet steady. As you drive through the moderately open spaced residential areas into the old city where all the excitement lies, to a land which has a culture of its own you are sure to be invigorated and fascinated throughout the journey.

At a traffic light, you are likely to be greeted by an eight year old ?Pathan? boy, making a sales pitch for cheap sunglasses, who could outdo an MBA in marketing any day with his guile and glib. In an effort to ignore the boy, you try to look out of the other window of your car only to find a young girl selling flower bracelets and garlands who greets you with a smile that power to melt your heart. Between the Pathan boy, the girl and the red traffic light about-to-turn-green, your resistance gives way and you end up hurriedly buying both, the cheap sunglasses and a pair of bracelets.

Lahore is also known as the city of gardens as it has a proud inheritance of numerous old gardens. Sitting under the old banyan tree, devouring the citrus kino (orange), freshly plucked from the orchards neighbouring the city is a common practice by a typical a Lahori.

The festival of Basant, announces the arrival of spring with yellow flowers blooming all over the city?s gardens and fields. The annual kite flying festival is celebrated religiously every year, usually on the second weekend of February. The festival turns the city into one big gala in which everybody participates. The sky is sequenced with multi coloured kites, in the areas where the streets and buildings are narrow this array of kites grows closer and so does the competition of cutting the thread of the other kite flyer. Kite flying here is a sport not an activity for leisure, extreme caution is therefore advised.

The long and hot summer treats the Lahoris with a wide variety of fruits as if it were an offering to the people seeking their refuge from the heat they have to brave. The arrival of the ?King of Fruits? mango in summer is eagerly awaited in Lahore and you would find yourself invited to mango parties where the sole mission of the guests and the hosts is to devour huge quantities of mangoes and mango deserts. And let us not forget the sweet water melons, strawberries, lychee, falsa berries, just to name a few which make Lahoris ignore the traffic rules as they buy the fruits from roadside hawkers everyday before reaching their homes from work.

The scent of the wet soil after it has been washed off by the first shower of monsoon rain. Street children dancing and celebrating the onset of the season, while some swim in the canal that runs through the city, enjoying a breeze of cool air, after a spell of a hot sultry summer.

If you are a true Lahori your greatest passion should be eating because all the recreational activities revolve around eating. You will find them eating ?Gol Gappas? and ?Channa Chat? from the road side food stalls in the evenings. Having a glass of sweet milk to wash down Halva puri and Aloo Kay Parathay in Purani Anarkali, an old bazar is a breakfast ritual of the city.

Alternately, you may choose to watch a Punjabi (the regional language of the Punjab province) movie at Regal Cinema, in which the belligerent hero is more powerful than Hercules himself, incessantly covered with blood whose mission besides killing the villain and his band of murders is to court into marriage a lovely and hefty Punjabi heroin dressed in traditional Lacha and Kurti decorated with jewelry and painted with powder. The voice of the female singer matches the length and breadth of the leading lady while she rocks the land of Punjab with her vigorous body movement to the loud music. The movie ends every evening giving dreams and hopes to hundreds who carry them back to their homes.

A visit to the Lahore Fort, the Walled City and the various institutional buildings built by the British is absolutely essential to connect with the roots and relish these architectural marvels. The passion for life, food and culture is shared fervently between Lahoris from either side of the town. Whether it is the food streets near the Walled City or a hip cafe in a posh locality of Lahore; I enjoy every nook and corner of this diverse city and wouldn?t have it any other way.