Church buildings are an important and interesting part of Lahore’s architecture. It

This past week I’ve been the local showing a best friend around a city that wasn’t even my home until very recently. I took her to the zoo, the new foodstreet, mini golf…and started noticing things that I hadn’t before.
(more…)

By now most of the people who saw A Walk to Remember must have forgotten its story. The movie was released in 2002.
The plot of the movie was adapted from a novel by Nichols sparks. It revolves around two teens Landon and Shamie .Landon is a carefree guy who breezes through school without making much of an effort and lives his live in the moment without thinking of the consequences. Shamie is a girl who doesn

The construction activity seems to be picking up .The boards of EMAAR were already erected there.. Ferozepur Road finally seems to be approaching to its glory days. The construction of high profile towers has a mile or two away from Qaddafi stadium (on the other side of the road).The towers are called Sheikh Zayed Center. They are spread over an area of 91 kanals. When constructed they will be the highest towers in Pakistan.
We wish the authorities best of luck and hope that the construction will be complete on time.

How many times we have to wait only becuase some VVIP is in town or just passing by; and that too after a few hours and the public transport routes have been redirected to provide him fool proof security. So much fuss to accomodate one bureaucrat. What about the other people who are waiting on bus stops? No public announcement system for them? Heck!

The city of Lahore is Pakistan

Nausheen mentioned in one of her posts that we are not writing enough about how it is like living in Lahore and mostly, we are covering the architecture and history. I agree, this is what personally I think we should mainly be focusing upon. Painting a picture that shows what life is all about for an ordinary Lahori. How we spend our days and weeks and months. Yeah, excellent idea but there is one little problem. I am not a writer and am blessed with extreme laziness aur phir uper se meri shandaar angrezi :o). So I usually retreat to my domain software engineering or my passion history/politics when somebody (a friend in this case) really presses me hard to play with words. For a change, I thought I could give it a shot. Afterall its just a matter of writing a few lines about the life of fellow citizens, shouldn’t be that difficult.

Living in Lahore is quite a different experience than any other city in Pakistan. The diversity of Lahori culture, amazing contrasts between different corners of the city and ofcourse the food. What is it about the food here that if I am not mistaken, many many (& many more :)..) Lahori’s most definitely have one motto in life – we live to eat! Every city in the world has its own colors but there is magic in Lahore, something that really makes you fall in love with this city forever once you are here. I guess you can better understand what I am trying to say once you live here for while.

There are millions of topics or issues about living in Lahore that you may choose to write about. But one thing that really strikes me is that somehow, during last 10-20 years, this city has been divided into various blocks, based on social classes. For instance you move straight ahead from Center Point towards Gulberg or turn right towards Cavelary, Cantt, Defence areas. You will find beautiful & luxury homes, excellent roads, parks and almost everything that is associated with a modern Western socity. On the other hand, you just come back to Kalma Chowk and move turn right towards Ichra. You will find yourself in a totally different world, amazing contrast as you move deeper into the old city (Mochi Gate, Bhatti, Gawalmandi or areas around Badshahi Mosque for instance). Now you suddenly see tiny houses, crowds and crowds of people (ever seen areas around Badshahi mosque where a lot of ordinary Lahori’s spend nights on foot-paths and roads?), toti phuti aur tang galian which we like to call roads, tanga’s, chin chee’s and basically signs of poverty and lack of basic necessities of life all around you. My mother tells me it used to be different when she was young. You could find rich, middle class, poor – all living in same colonies at that time. The rich and the poor in Lahore were not that far apart and isolated from each other like today.

Apart from its architecture, history & culture, Lahore is one city where you can also clearly see alarmingly increasing gap between Have’s and Have Not’s.

Lahore has a very active Punjabi commercial theatre. The Punjabi theatre is very infamous among many People as they look down upon it as vulgar entertainment. I

I had to receive a friend from railway station today and at the eleventh hour I got myself (and two friends) entangled in a lengthy pointless debate with a traffic-police-walla over nothing, in the State Bank chowk. When we refused to pay bribe (commonly referred as ‘khidmat’ by some), my bike is locked up (in Choki #3 at Anarkali) for no apparent reason. Now I have to pay the excessive challan fine in the morning to get my bike back. That too not without much fiasco.

I’m too new in this city to handle such situations (let alone handle it well). Perhaps, they get offended to see a Honda 125. I’d been offended (this is exactly what they do) twice with such incidents for no reason and had to pay ‘khidmat’ (the bribe). But when you refuse to pay bribe, you either get a hefty challan receipt or in worst cases, bike locked up. Long live Lahore Police!

Many months back I saw a very creative advertisement in the newspaper .The advertisement was of an upcoming radio station which was looking for new Radio Jockeys. I called them up and they invited me for an interview. So one fine morning I set out to some place in Liberty Market where the new FM was being set up. Once I walked into the building I had to come out and confirm the name of the tower with People outside.

(more…)