Shalamar conservation

Dawn Editorial

The news of the completion of some conservation work by Unesco at the historical Shalamar Gardens, Lahore, is nothing short of exhilarating.

Visiting the unmentionable bazaar of Lahore

Hamid Rashed’s visit to Heera Mandi is an engaging account that demystifies its snazzy reputation:

I visited Texali Bazaar of Lahore on August 16, 2009. I reached the infamous locality at 10pm and remained there until 3am.

A pimpled prostitute, wearing a black bra one size too small, laying on a stained mattress, awaiting the customers in a dusty room overpowered with strong smell of incense is the situation most people assume you into when you mention the name of this bazaar.

Contrary to popular practice of the visitors of this bazaar, mine was an informative trip. My friend Tariq Yar (from PTV) had invited me to Texali. I had a vague idea that the trip will be educational but didn’t know the extant.

Yar, who is doing research on the walled-city of Lahore voluntarily, introduced me to two of his friends. Advocate Iqbal, who also runs the Ustaad Damin Academy, and Mirza Rashid.

Iqbal is from Okara and is living in Texali for the past 28 years. He is a chronic bachelor and has no apparent appetite for facilities the neighborhood can offer at any time of the day.

Mirza is the inhabitant of the walled-city for the past so many generations. He knows the webbed streets of the walled-city like the back of his hand.

Read more here

Destruction of Lahore’s famous food street

A Gul’s article for The Friday Times published this week. Credits, copyrights for photos and text remain with TFT

	Gawalmandi food street at night
	The ruins of an entrance to the Gawalmandi food street
	The flow of traffic through the demolished gates of food street
	Banners proclaiming an alternative perspective
	Food street offered outdoor desi cuisine amidst the elegant colonial architecture
	Once standing, these mini-towers quickly became one of the cultural symbols of Lahore
	I recalled the evenings that I spent ordering mouth watering kababs, tikkas, fried fish and other desi delights at night. Also rampant were the thoughts of halwa-puri, til wale naan and murgh chanay that are cherished by Lahoris. But then I saw the damaged entrance to the food street and while I was entering, my hunger temporarily vanished
	Although the issue of Gawalmandi food street is local, it does lead to broader questions. In the greater scheme of things, we must think about where we are headed in terms of our cultural identity

The decline and ruination of heritage in Pakistan by the callous state is a well known story. This is a common ailment that afflicts the planners and developers across South Asia where architectural legacy of a thousand years is being decimated and commercialization has a free reign in urban contexts. A departure from this trend occurred when a well known, controversial yet engaged civil servant turned around Lahore’s cultural life by introducing the concept of pedestrian food streets and adorning the vibrant canal that runs across Lahore with a green lifeline. We witnessed the endearingly kitschy floats representing the various sub-cultures of Pakistan and in the late-nineties a busy street was turned into a pedestrian space where the legendary cuisine of Lahore was showcased for its urban residence and the tourists alike.

The adjoining old buildings mostly dating from the colonial era were restored with tasteful facelifts. Art students and designers were duly involved in this process. This was perhaps the saving grace of an otherwise vulgar promotion of the khaba culture. For years this became a modern landmark of sorts. Tales of the first Gawalmandi food street spread across the globe and every visitor wanted to be there. It brought a glimpse of the erstwhile, pedestrian pre-partition city with choicest Lahori food delicacies.

Other cities were green of such a popular entertainment enclave. People from Karachi would often cite this as a model to follow. Islamabad emulated this at the Melody Market.

And all of a sudden in an oppressively hot summer of 2009, we discovered that Gawalmandi food street has been undone for a mix of political pressure, administrative negligence and sheer indifference to culture. Why are we so eager to destroy what adds to cultural value of our fledgling society. If anything, we ought to preserve these little signs of renewal and regeneration.

The apparent excuse for altering the pedestrian nature of the food street was to lay sewer pipeline. It seems like a typical bureaucratic shenanigan whereby some sort of ‘development’ is cited as reason good enough to damage environment or heritage. If a public utility had to be extended to this area, there must have been multiple other ways to manage this process. The lock stock and barrel razing of the place belies this claim.

The heart of the matter pertains to the local politics and wrangling that goes on unabated in Pakistan. Yet the mainstream media has not even bothered to report this matter in its full light save a few newspapers and may be one television channel. On a side note, what does this imply regarding the purported freedom of the media? Is it the case that media in unconcerned about civic issues and only focused on palace intrigues and glorification of unelected arms of the state? A trivial issue like a cultural emblem of subcontinent’s most talk about city is nothing but a footnote of the corporate media interests. I asked to myself, why shouldn’t a pedestrian culture get any attention? With these thoughts and others, I entered the Gawalmandi food street on a humid morning of Lahore’s stifling August. There was a traffic flow that could easily drive you nuts with loud glaring horns, usual feature of old Lahore’s environment. Amidst such loud horns, I was about to enter into the food street.

I recalled the evenings that I spent ordering mouth watering kababs, tikke, fried fish and other desi delights at night. Also rampant were the thoughts of halwa-puri, til wale naan and murgh chanay that are cherished by Lahoris. But then I saw the damaged entrance to the food street and while I was entering, my hunger temporarily vanished.

Before it was virtually halted, one would go to the food street, find a proper place to sit, chit chat with one’s companions, order desi delights, enjoy the meal under the grandeur of old colonial architecture and have a full fledged Lahori evening.

But recently the food street has been dogged by a controversy. The food street can be properly functional only when the eateries can provide outdoor seating so as to attract people who want to enjoy desi food under a starry sky. But presently the street has been opened up for traffic round the clock and people can only have their food within the premises of the dhabas. This has two major ramifications. One, the people whose livelihood depended on the sale of food will suffer since the pre-partition, old world setting has been a major attraction for people to visit food street in the first place. Secondly, within the larger picture, this step will lead to the destruction of an important cultural symbol of Lahore.

Not only did Lahoris enjoy visiting the food street, its popularity also attracted national and foreign tourists. A local shopkeeper who has now been working for over a decade in the food street mentioned this as a central recognition that food street had achieved in terms of cultural attraction.

Also important is the media coverage attracted by such places. The elegant portrayal of the pre-damage food street resulted in a non-militant peaceful outlook of mainstream Pakistan. And what is important is that unlike many other artificial attempts to glorify a peaceful ‘enlightened’ Pakistan in the past few years, the revival of the food street seemed to be very natural since it appealed to our overall lifestyle.

Although the issue of Gawalmandi food street is local, it does lead towards larger questions. In the greater scheme of things, we must think about where we are headed in terms of our cultural identity. I must make it clear that unlike many ‘cultural extremists’, I do not have a worldview that revolves almost entirely around the notion of tradition. But still, culture is universal, and it is valuable. To care for one’s own culture is indispensable. But if we start to dispense with it, then we are surely on the path towards cultural oblivion, and I say this not metaphorically but literally. A vibrant culture always connects with our history and origins. Thus if we are to undo the signs of the past and neglect heritage we will never be able to understand our present.

The value of history and the preservation of diverse, colourful traditions enable societies to progress and prosper. Pakistan is not just a sixty two year old entity. We are the inheritors of great civilizations and thousands of years of a plural, tolerant way of life. The destruction of food street and its unsung death therefore saddens many of us. The decision makers in the Punjab must revisit this decision; protect the threatened livelihoods and the ambiance of a great city that by all accounts is shehron ka shehr

A Gul lives in Lahore. This piece was prepared with contributions from Raza Rumi

Lahore Calling

These are prolific, topical times for Pakistani fiction. Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, published in early 2007, was the first of the recent bloom. Hamid’s unnerving novella, about a Princeton grad who grows a beard, quits his fancy New York consulting job and returns home to Lahore after 9/11, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Mohammed Hanif’s 2008 novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes, based on the 1988 plane crash that killed General Zia ul-Haq, was a finalist for the Guardian first-book award. And Daniyal Mueenuddin’s superb In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a sage, Chekhovian collection of tales set in rural Punjab, has been wowing critics since publication in February. Ali Sethi’s hefty novel The Wish Maker, set mostly in Lahore during the 1990s and early 2000s, is also certain to keep the critics talking.

Sethi’s engrossing if uneven debut is written in astoundingly assured prose that belies the author’s youth (he is 25), particularly in his throbbing takes of contemporary Lahore, where he grew up and returned to after his undergrad years at Harvard. He describes everything from the “mewl of bargainers” at a fabric shop to card games played by bored guards at gated homes like the one in which middle-class narrator Zaki Shirazi lives. Also in the house are three related women whose lives mirror the tottering arc of recent Pakistani history — from partition to the bruised Bhutto years, caught between purdah and leggy Jane Fonda workout tapes, Suzuki Swifts and donkey carts. They are Zaki’s grasping grandmother Daadi; his widowed mom Zakia, editor of a progressive women’s magazine that criticizes the government and runs interviews with acid-attack victims; and Zaki’s teenage cousin Samar Api, who is on a lame quest to find an Amitabh Bachchan to sweep her off her feet.

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The novel (national epic, family saga and testy teen drama knotted into one) meanders — including an abrupt jaunt to Granada, where Zakia and Zaki vacation just so, it seems, Sethi can make a point about the high potential of Islamic culture. And it’s burdened by clichés: the love of all things Bollywood; mingy mothers-in-law; the kid who escapes to an American university. Still, Sethi’s sharp eye, worthy of being an entomologist’s, makes the book a steadily absorbing read, all 400-plus pages of it. Recollecting his first day at a private boy’s academy, Zaki remembers of a classroom: “A dead wasp lay on its back in a corner of the windowsill with its legs curled up. It had wandered in past the mesh and never found its way out.” It’s a muted metaphor not just for Zaki but for Pakistan as a whole. It’s this kind of nuanced detail in The Wish Maker, moreover, that leaves you wishing for much more from Sethi, whose buzzing talent is unmistakableThese are prolific, topical times for Pakistani fiction. Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, published in early 2007, was the first of the recent bloom. Hamid’s unnerving novella, about a Princeton grad who grows a beard, quits his fancy New York consulting job and returns home to Lahore after 9/11, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Mohammed Hanif’s 2008 novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes, based on the 1988 plane crash that killed General Zia ul-Haq, was a finalist for the Guardian first-book award. And Daniyal Mueenuddin’s superb In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a sage, Chekhovian collection of tales set in rural Punjab, has been wowing critics since publication in February. Ali Sethi’s hefty novel The Wish Maker, set mostly in Lahore during the 1990s and early 2000s, is also certain to keep the critics talking.

By TIM KINDSETH

Sethi’s engrossing if uneven debut is written in astoundingly assured prose that belies the author’s youth (he is 25), particularly in his throbbing takes of contemporary Lahore, where he grew up and returned to after his undergrad years at Harvard. He describes everything from the “mewl of bargainers” at a fabric shop to card games played by bored guards at gated homes like the one in which middle-class narrator Zaki Shirazi lives.

Saving the canal (Lahore)

Saving the canal
The News, Saturday, August 22, 2009
(http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=194338)

The canal that runs through Lahore represents much that is good about the city. The shrubs, bushes and tall trees that line it give the provincial capital the greenery that its residents have cherished for centuries. The waterway – even today when pollution has tarnished its beauty – offers a kind of calm oasis in the heart of the urban jungle, where families picnic and fitness-lovers jog. It is these factors that have led a group of earnest citizens to renew their campaign against a plan to broaden the road along the canal which would result in hundreds of trees being chopped down. While the Punjab government argues this is necessary to maintain smooth traffic flow, the ‘Save Lahore Movement’ argues the massacre of greenery would inflict great environmental damage and indeed erode the very nature of Lahore. Trees marked for chopping have been chalked and placards put up demanding they be saved. The action by citizens including many women and children has caught public interest, with passers by stopping to find out more.

Hopes dashed along with Lahore food street gates

By Zaheer Mahmood Siddiqui, Dawn Metropolitan, 7 August 2009 http://tiny.cc/lart3

Gowalmandi food street gate being pulled down in Lahore. –Photo by Tariq Mahmood

LAHORE: Gowalmandi Food Street that had been contributing to promote the soft image of the country, particularly of Lahore, all over the world during the last one decade or so, finally fell prey to the culture of ‘political intolerance’ on Thursday.

Around 10,000 people, earning their livelihood at the food street, lost their last hope on Thursday when the Data Gunj Bakhsh Town administration pulled down its decorative gates.

Though bosses of the ruling PML-N in Punjab term the demolition operation an effort to remove hindrance to ‘smooth flow’ of traffic, residents of the area believe they have been victimised for their political dissent.

‘In fact, the rulers don’t want continuation of a project which is still being overseen by the people related to their rival party – the PML-Q. The thoroughfare is not a main artery and had become a family spot over the years,’ a PML-Q leader told this reporter on the condition of anonymity.

Another resident who used to earn livelihood by running an eatery on wheels in the food street said: ‘After assuming power, everyone wants to undo the steps taken by their antecedent, without thinking for a moment what will be its repercussions and how many people will be affected?’

‘No resident of Gowalmandi has ever lodged any complaint against the food street,’ he asserted while rejecting the government claims the action was taken on the complaints of the area people.

Pakistan: The lost voices of the middle class

By Tom Hussein

In early June, four of Lahore’s leading medical professionals congregated at the Punjab Club, a recreational retreat for the city’s educated elite, to discuss the future with a former colleague visiting from Australia.

The discussion, held over tea and sandwiches served by waiters in turbans and colonial-style white uniforms, centred on the visitor’s experience of his transition from being one of Lahore’s most fêted doctors, to a respected, but otherwise ordinary member of the Melbourne medical community.

Prisoner secures second position in general group

RAWALPINDI: A jail inmate secured second position in Rawalpindi Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education’s (RBISE) Secondary School Certificate (SSC) Annual Examination 2009. Qaisar Nadeem S/o Muhammad Ashraf (Roll No 186251), Barrack No 5/8, Central Jail Adiala, Rawalpindi appeared in general group boys in the examination

Pakistan’s Lahore Zoo has more than its share of problems

Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

At the Lahore Zoo, the largest zoo in Pakistan, the animals are suffering due to mismanagement and inhumane treatment., according to nature lovers and former board members. The zoo hasn’t invested in a pharmacy, sick bay, examination room, X-ray machine, vaccination schedules or ultrasound equipment.

Critics say mismanagement and inhumane treatment jeopardize the animals there. Now, the zoo is also grappling with a smuggling scandal involving white tigers and the aftermath of a suicide attack.

By Mark Magnier

August 2, 2009

Reporting from Lahore, Pakistan — It’s been battered by a suicide attack, residents are traumatized, and officials have been sharply criticized for failing to provide clean water, decent food or basic healthcare.

A community in Pakistan’s troubled frontier area? A camp for displaced people fleeing the fighting in the Swat Valley?

No, the Lahore Zoo.

Nature lovers and former board members say a long history of mismanagement and inhumane treatment at the 137-year-old zoo jeopardizes the animals it’s supposed to protect.

“If all this is not fraud and misuse of office, I don’t know what is,” said Masood Hasan, an advertising executive and former member of the Lahore Zoo Management Committee. “It might not be a bad idea to . . . put all the officials inside cages.”

The latest problem to hit the troubled institution is a smuggling scandal involving two white tigers, which were allegedly imported from Indonesia a few months ago without the permits required to move endangered species internationally.

According to local news reports, the zoo applied for various permits retroactively after agreeing to pay about $47,000 per tiger, a hefty markup from the importer’s cost of $1,250.

An inquiry will try to determine what role the zoo, importer and middlemen played, and whether bribes were paid, but Hasan said he didn’t expect much to come of it.

Zoo-goers didn’t seem particularly surprised by the allegations.

“If there’s corruption, that’s very bad,” said Ayaz Ahmed, 56, a retired businessman, in front of the tiger cage with his grandchildren. “Then again, corruption is everywhere in Pakistan, so why wouldn’t it involve the animals as well?”

The two female white tigers recline listlessly in the 100-degree heat until a keeper pokes at them with a steel rod to get them to look up for the crowd, prompting an angry growl. There’s no air conditioning, only a device that blows air through a wet rag into their cage.

“Tigers became extinct in Pakistan in 1886,” a sign reads.

Although tigers prefer solitude, the two majestic animals are crammed into a 16-foot-by- 20-foot steel-and-concrete cage. Next door, an even more crowded enclosure holds four adult lions.

Until the smuggling investigation wraps up, the two tigers can’t leave their cage even to stretch their legs. “That would require too many approvals,” said Saman Bhatti, the zoo’s lone veterinarian.

Critics say the zoo has a pattern of acquiring exotic animals — which are then neglected — to boost revenue that isn’t well accounted for. Some also question an official policy of auctioning off hides, horns and other body parts from animals that died naturally.

“It’s like a concentration camp,” said Shaista Sonnu, a University of the Punjab professor and former board member. “It’s absolutely criminal, a litany of misery and torture overseen by flunkies.”

A few hundred feet from the tigers, a puma paces, her left eye swollen, sightless and milky blue. A male fought with her before the zoo acquired her, said Bhatti, and the zoo now wants a refund from the seller, a private collector.

Officials have promised for years that the infrastructure would be improved once a $250,000 master plan, first outlined in 2005, was implemented. But the years drag on, as turf wars rage and egos clash over the plan’s structure and design, critics say.

“I wouldn’t mind if they took most of the money, provided some of it went to the animals,” Hasan said. “But almost none does.”

Amusement parks, puppet shows, gift shops, restaurants and cafeterias, night sessions with music and disco-style lighting, a mosque and a multi-story building are among the proposed improvements, most of which would further reduce space for the animals in a zoo where 1,100 animals are packed into 16 acres. In comparison, the Los Angeles Zoo has about the same number of animals on more than 100 acres.

“It’s crazy, very out of place,” said Shoaib Ahmed, wildlife reporter with the newspaper Dawn.

Meanwhile, the zoo hasn’t invested in a pharmacy, sick bay, examination room, X-ray machine, vaccination schedules or ultrasound equipment. Roofs collapse, moats crumble, and the crowded cages foster disease and stress. Basic fixes are put off, the critics say.

Zoo Director Zafar Shah said he took the job only a few months ago and he hopes to improve conditions.

Shah declined to comment on corruption or smuggling allegations, noting that the tiger investigation was underway. “Many of these deaths are an old story,” he said. “Accidents happen.”

Tauqeer Shah, a hunter, wildlife farm owner and longtime zoo board member, said the inquiry in the tiger-smuggling case will show that the zoo is blameless.

The animals are in good health, he said, bigger cages are planned, more veterinarian equipment is expected soon, and the theft of meat and vegetables earmarked for animals has been addressed. “Things have improved a lot,” he said. “No one can take one banana out of the zoo now.”

In a corner of the zoo housing the administration buildings, doors are ajar, windows are blown out and walls battered. Adding to its many challenges, the zoo was hit in late May by a suicide attack targeting Pakistan’s premier spy agency in an adjoining complex.

For more than 30 minutes, veterinarian Bhatti and others cowered as a gun fight raged several feet away. When the militants detonated a car bomb, the blast killed a deer, blew open pens, sent terrified animals fleeing and embedded metal shards in trees.

Less visible but no less significant was the anguish that the animals suffered, Bhatti said. Most didn’t eat for days, with many still showing signs of stress more than a month later.

In a cramped office stuffed with papers, medicine bottles, hypodermics and posters of birds and turtles, Bhatti fielded a stream of requests to look at sick animals, check the shedding horns on one, attend to a newborn.

Before she was hired two years ago, shortly after graduation, the zoo had no trained vet. Bhatti clearly loves the animals, scratching the rhino’s horns and petting the monkeys during a walkabout. But handling so many alone is a lot for one inexperienced veterinarian. “It’s not a one-person job,” she said.

Some wonder why Pakistan should worry about animals when people are dying daily in militant attacks, but they’re missing the point, animal lovers said.

It’s about core values and the soul of a nation, Hasan said, paraphrasing Mohandas Gandhi’s line that a nation’s worth can be judged by how it looks after its animals: “If a society has allowed its people to descend into hell, why must the animals follow suit?”

mark.magnier@latimes.Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

At the Lahore Zoo, the largest zoo in Pakistan, the animals are suffering due to mismanagement and inhumane treatment., according to nature lovers and former board members. The zoo hasn’t invested in a pharmacy, sick bay, examination room, X-ray machine, vaccination schedules or ultrasound equipment.

A passage from Bapsi Sidwas book : Beloved City

For, above all, Lahore is a city of poets. Not just giants like Allama Iqbal or Faiz Ahmed Faiz, but a constellation of poets. Given half a chance, the average Lahori breaks into a couplet from an Urdu ghazal, or from Madho Lal Hussain or Bulleh Shah’s mystical Punjabi verse and readily confesses to writing poetry. But if I toss up the word “Lahore” and close my eyes, the city conjures up gardens and fragrances.

Lawyers go unbridled, breaking rules in routine

By Rana Tanveer

LAHORE: The lawyers’ ruthless attitude towards media in the city on Thursday is not the first such instance.

Daily Times learnt that the lawyers are never brought to the book for committing numerous illegalities against the media, police or even judges. Most lawyers do not even abide with traffic rules.

The party is on at the Lahore night club…

Islamabad

Three youngsters have poked fun in a music video at the who’s who of Pakistan’s high-society who spend their time in a” Lahori top-class night club” while their country is in turmoil.

The music video on Pakistani socialites, whose lives revolve around gossip on who has made it to the cover or inside pages of Sunday magazines printed by the country’s leading English dailies, has been aptly titled” Sunday Magazeen”.

The destruction of Lahore’s environment is a trend that needs to be reversed, says Raza Rumi

Moaning about Lahore’s most elitist enclave, GOR-I, is a contentious undertaking. On the one hand, it was, until recently, the best of what the British left us – lovingly adorned with diverse species of trees, home to glorious specimens of ecologically-friendly architecture and an old-world-charm unparalleled for its simplicity and elegance. On the other hand, it was also a symbol of the extractive, Punjab-centric colonial state of the nineteenth century, lorded over by the agents of the Indian civil service.

But when one has lived in those sublime environs, not as the scion of a landed, aristocratic clan but rather as a member of a middle-class, professional family, what is one to do?GOR-I was a lonely plant of sorts amid the sprawl of Lahore, with trees, birds and orchards one would not have expected to find in an Asian mega-city.

Bibliography: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam By Dr. Muhammad Iqbal

Bibliography: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam By Dr. Muhammad Iqbal

Works of Allama Iqbal

(A) Works in Prose

Bedil in the Light of Bergson, ed. and annotated by Dr. Tehsin Firaqi, Lahore, 1988.The Development of Metaphysics in Persia (a contribution to the history of Muslim philosophy), London, 1908. Reprinted Lahore, 1954, 1959, 1964.