The Hindu : The din and bustle of Lahore

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 02, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

The din and bustle of Lahore

By Kuldip Nayar

Blessed be the SAARC leaders who made my visit to Pakistan so easy and simple. Members of all Parliaments in the SAARC countries are entitled to cross one another's border without a visa. Nor is there any restriction on the entry point. I took the morning Shatabdi train from Delhi to Amritsar and went straight to the Attari-Wagah border. Ten minutes later I walked from India to Pakistan's iron gate, spending hardly five minutes at forlorn immigration offices on either side. Mubashir Husain, leader of the India-Pakistan Friendship Society, was on the other end waiting to take me to Lahore, some 20 kilometres away. The road runs along a lazy-running water canal.

I recalled the bus journey with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to Lahore in 1999. Then there was too much fuss, too much security and too much media-hype. This time it was so quiet that you could hear your own breath. It is the same border where some of us have been lighting candles for the last seven years on the 14th-15th August mid-night, when the two countries got freedom in 1947, to convey the message of peace and friendship to the people in Pakistan.

My walk across the border was the first since September 1947 when I entered India as a refugee. But at that time, the walk was from the other side, from Pakistan to India. What a tragic sight it was then. There were pain-etched faces, men and women with their skimpy belongings on their heads and their fear-stricken children trailing behind. All of us had left behind our hearths and homes, friends and hopes. All of us had seen murder and worse. All of us had been broken on the rack of history.

* * *

Lahore is now no different from the city I saw during my last visit nearly three years ago. The improvements which Shahbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif's brother, made some five years ago as the Punjab Chief Minister still retain their distinctiveness — flower beds running on both sides of main roads, widened streets within the city and smartly dressed traffic policemen. I did not see any soldier. People are still afraid of the military.

What was once the red-light district is now partly a food plaza offering fish to gnarled, exotic roots. The scene in the nearby Punjab High Court, an old British building, is full of din and bustle. Many are still discussing why Jawaharlal Nehru "sabotaged" the Cabinet Mission plan which gave parity to Muslims at the Centre and sustained the semblance of a united federal India. The progressive lawyers are trying their best to unite against a jehadi-type lawyer with a long beard.

Growing a beard seems to have become a fashion in Pakistan. An editor complained to me in Lahore that he could not recognise one of his reporters because he had grown a beard.

The newspaper management has constructed a mosque on top of the building. The staff has a valid reason — the prayer — to be absent for hours. The wedding season is in full swing in Lahore. The hotel where I checked in had four weddings in one evening. It was like any Punjabi wedding, loud, ostentatious. Till the Supreme Court's recent order, the menu was limited to two dishes. Still the number of dishes does not go beyond six or seven. In Delhi, 25 to 30 varieties are considered normal.

Women above 40 have their head carefully covered. Women below that age are not. The number of people dressed in salwar and kamiz, which Zulfikar Ali Bhutto introduced as the quami-labas (national dress), has decreased since my last visit. Western clothes have now taken over.

I passed by the Acheson College, Pakistan's Doon School. Recently, somebody from Delhi sprinkled the ashes of his friend opposite the college. The friend, an army officer in Delhi, had expressed such a wish before his death. He had studied in the college before Partition. His message was: I fought against you. But I bore you no ill will.

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