A friend in Karachi recently wrote to me, asking how I felt about the unrest in Lahore these days. Another Karachiite friend puts it succinctly: “Lahore, Karachi-style”. Karachiites here are more relaxed about all this, while we ring up family and friends at each mention of a riot that may be near somewhere they are….I think in some part of our selves we don’t really believe that Lahore could really have burned. I daren’t go see what the Freemason’s Lodge is looking like, or Dyal Singh mansion.
The canal is dry and trees are still bare, and Lahore limps along, blackened and bruised by her own. This is supposed to be Lahore at her most festively happy; the sarson ke khet are turning yellow and the air is balmy- and instead we’re looting, burning and now killing each other. I know everyone’s written extensively about this here, but it’s only now that I can bring myself to face it. Horrible cretins wrecking my city, get your grubby paws off it!