Cities: In View of Lahore

Cities. All too familiar. We live in them, but so what?

We live in these entities and take them for granted. It may be Dubai, New York, Delhi or Islamabad, or any others besides - they all share distinct features.

Cities are living, breathing organisms in a sense. There has even been an experiment to measure the so-called 'breathing rate' of a city! [courtesy: Discovery Channel]

I went to Lahore with my university class this weekend on an industrial tour. I've been to Lahore twice before, the most recent being in Gr8 though that seems like long ago.

I realized there how similar different cities in the same country were! There were places and parts of Lahore we visited that reminded me of Rawalpindi, and others of Islamabad. It stands to reason that Lahore has a night-life whereas Islamabad and Rawalpindi are European only in that they shut down early (something I had a hard time adjusting to since Dubai is a nocturnal-city). There were the same billboards up along the roads to sell soap and cloth as in Rawalpindi, the same dusty look all too characteristic of Taxila with it's granite-cutting machines. There was the same divisioning into the posh and urban areas with the noisy city centre. There were the same run-down workshops with electricity poles dangling dangerously at the entrance. There were the same side-walls splashed hues of orange-ish red with spit 'paan'. There were the same hawkers pulling carts loaded with goods of every imaginable kind; shouting after potential customers, lowering prices to insane levels just to get a purchase.

There were the same traffic jams where Punjabi folk music blared from the colorfully painted trucks and buses; the drivers shouted obscenities to show their dominance  while the conductors couldn't resist the temptation to swing with the outer pole and poke their heads outside to get a look(as if that would make the traffic clear, lol!)

There were the same corner shops we prefer to call 'tuck shops' selling your average biscuits and Lays^®. There were the same smokey roadside inns selling curry steeped in unnecessarily extra cooking oil for a 'tarri'.

But some things stood out too. One of the most prominent and probably the most disgusting too, was the smell of sewage in just SO many areas of Lahore! Even the posh areas weren't safe and you couldn't be far from the stench wherever you went. Another feature I thought had already become obsolete was DONKEY CARTS. Yes, donkey carts. I mean, are they still in use? :|

I saw a LOT of them along the sidewalks and they reminded me so strongly of something, which I'd better not mention for fear of being discovered!

Lahore is world-famous for its food - both the cooked delicacies and the gazillion eateries of all standards and stature dotted about the city. 'Vegetarian' is a forbidden word around and it's just meat galore there!  And while in Lahore, we clearly felt the capacity of our appetites expanding too; in short, we felt ourselves turning distinctly 'Lahori'.

The experience on Food Street was amazing. The 'kulcha' especially was mouth watering and the Kulfi beat the best I've tasted so far! But there I start again, showing off my primal partiality for things food.

Lahore was as near to Taxila and Rawalpindi as it was far away.

Though there are just so many intersecting points in the Venn diagram of Pakistani cities, Lahore is, simply, Lahore.

For that is the reason a proverb goes: He who hasn't seen Lahore has yet to be born! [Adapted from Punjabi]