The Long lost and Forgotten: Lahore

When the honking of the horns have destroyed your ear-drums, the smoke of the vehicles and nearby chimneys have clogged your air passage, when the dust is successful in bringing tears in your eyes and in the midst of all the hue and cry, if through the haze and smog, you manage to see four red-brick minarets; you have set your feet in Lahore.

Lahore, the cultural and educational heart of Pakistan. (As it is primarily called.) The city cannot stop itself from flaunting about its rich culture and history. The old, weary and rustic walls of the old (walled) city narrate their happenings with a bleak smile stretched across their faces; silenced by the tumult of their inhabitants and their professions in the nearby vicinity, the walls shed tears of despondency and hopelessness.

  The city has enfolded the mighty Lahore fort and the kaleidoscopic Badshahi and Wazir Khan Mosques within its realms, who narrate their own legacies to thirsty eyes and craving ears. 

Apart from the awe-inspiring structures the city hosts within its realms, the city is also home to perhaps the most horrendous aristocratic love story of all time, the anecdote of Prince Salem and Anarkali. As legend states; their love still lives in the hearts of the lovers who flock to Anarkali’s mausoleum on Lower Mall.

Not too far away from this dome of love, Lahore unfolds a narrative from a different era; “The Age of the British”.

From the Lahore High Court to the archives of the Lahore Museum, from the Government College to the once bustling Tollinton Market, each structure on Mall Road introduces itself from an anomalistic retrospective, mutually sharing and keenly holding onto their anecdotes of the British Raj.

As once, mighty and enlightened the people of this city were. Lahore, with every passing day is losing its literati essence.

The city which was once famous for its gardens and was nicknamed ‘The City of Gardens’ in the Mughal era, now resembles a dumpster in the crass era of commercialism; so lovingly given the moniker: ‘Paris of the East’.

The rain which brought life to the flora and fauna of the city now brings death to its inhabitants.   

A city which boasted about its ‘educated’, ‘enlightened’ and ‘learned’ masses in now governed by a gang of charlatans. Educational institutions which promised a secure future have now become a base camp for student politics and a picnic spot.

It is rather saddening to be a witness to such a heinous crime: the death of a nation’s culture, norms and values, all because of our ignorance.

As Imam Ali (A.S.) said:

“Our enemies are not the Jews or the Christians, our enemy is our own ignorance."