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Miles apart, poles apart: Part IV

Lahore Lahore Aye

WE TOLD him that some of us would like to visit book shops and he asked the policemen to accompany us to Readings, a big shop on main boulevard Gulberg. Getting down from the car, I told the security team chief: Ap yahan thahriye, main kitab kharid ke ata hun (You wait here till I get back with books). He said he would follow me. It was a large shop with books mostly on popular subjects. I chanced on the AP Stylebook and John T Platts’s grammar of Hindustani. As I inquired if an Urdu dictionary could be available, the man at the counter asked the policeman to take us to Variety Books in Liberty market area. It was a huge four-storey shop for books, CDs and such accessories. I could dig out a dictionary, Estelle Dryland’s Faiz Ahmed Faiz and a few other titles. Four of us who were there had by that time started to receive calls from our team members in the hotel that we should get back early as they would go shopping.

When we were on our way back to the hotel, the police squad withdrew as they had worked beyond their duty hours. The inspector, who got into our car, also got off near the hotel. But we needed to have our meals. We informed the protocol officer and he said that night time in Lahore was safe. We got into the car and asked the driver to get to the restaurant where we had our lunch the day before. Soon after we had reached the place, the police called our driver to get to know our location. Within minutes, the police squad reached the place and asked one of us to go out to meet them. We then started for Anarkali, yes, for shopping.

While we were in the restaurant, we needed to tell the restaurant people that we were a group of journalists from Bangladesh, the man waiting on our table instantly said that he had recognised us. Then he said that C42 TV channel had aired a bit in its news bulletin on us. Back home in Dhaka, I managed to dig out the clip of the bulletin from an online repository and found that the producer of the news item had thoughtfully done away with showing the interview with our group leader.

People of Lahore, considered the cultural capital of Pakistan, say that Lahore Lahore Aye (in Punjabi, Lahore is Lahore). Probably they are right even though it seemed that the whole city was trying to become modern, shaking off the old. In the two days, we could hardly feel the city as we visited a few places, within a small circle, and stayed in a corner off the city bustles, but we could see that it has everything that we could like about an old city.

It was all over with the Lahore protocol, with us waiting to be taken to a bus terminal at dawn on Thursday from were we will be travelling on a motorway called M2 to Islamabad. We later found out that the terminal on the other end was in effect in Rawalpindi.

A hotel bus took us to the M-2 motorway station. Shahzad the previous night had told us not to fall asleep after we would reach Bhera as the place along the rest of the road was scenic. The motorway spans 367km and offers a nice journey. We were going in a luxury bus of Daewoo Bus Company. After we had had started rolling on the road, a girl, working as the guide in the bus, offered us snacks and drinks. She was announcing the departures and arrivals, first in Urdu and then in English. But we could hardly make anything of what she was saying because of a drawling accent, strongly marked with mid, high and low tones, till then unknown to us. It seemed that she was speaking in a third language.

Later, when we were in Murree Tehsil, I heard a similar utterance, looked back and noticed a girl standing on a slope. I asked the protocol officer what was the language she was speaking in. He said that it was Pothohari, a dialect of Western Punjabi but the language she was speaking was a Murree dialect of the Pothohari, which is a group also known as Pahari-Potowari.

Getting down at the bus terminal in Rawalpindi, we found an EP wing protocol officer waiting for us with car and a security squad composed of four personnel of the Anti-Terrorism Squad. Soon we headed for the Islamabad Capital Territory, or Waqafi Darul Hukumat, established in 1960 on land from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Headed for the hotel, on AK Fazal-e-Haq Road (I heard people also calling it Sher-e-Bangal Road), with Jinnah Avenue passing by at a distance, we checked in an hour before midday. The city is quiet and traffic was thin. We hurried to the Foreign Office, had a briefing with the director general of the South Asia Division Riffat Masood.

After a short briefing and a question-answer session, we went to a place where our group leader by his refusal to ‘talk about local politics on foreign land’ shamed us all. We went to the Institute of Regional Studies on Kamal Ataturk Avenue, to trade questions and answers. This organisation, running on government fund, documents news on bilateral relations. It also has half a dozen folders on Pakistan’s relation with Bangladesh.

After all we asked and they answered, the director, a former army officer, said that they also had questions for us. As he asked a question about religion and secularism being used by political parties in Bangladesh, our group leader blurted out, to our dismay and awe, that as leader of the team he had decided not to talk about local politics, which we feared was out of his unwillingness to hear bad things about whatever political group he is ideologically inclined to. The director heaved a sigh and asked his people not to ask questions. Aside, later we handed them our visiting cards and requested them to ask questions on anything and we would be giving replies. No one has so far made any queries.

The next destination was the National Press Club, a relatively new structure with corrugated tin sheets on a sprawling space. At lunch, we met the cook, who is from Bangladesh but spoke Bengali with an accent. We could not meet more than two or three journalists as the Pakistan parliament was in session passing the national budget.

We were off to the information ministry in a while and had a briefing with the federal secretary to the ministry, Agha Nadeem. He said that they believed that partial freedom of the press was worse than having no freedom even if it were a bit too strong against the government. It seemed that he talked facts as from discussions with journalists, and even government officials, we came to know of the strong, vibrant press in Pakistan, especially in Karachi, which houses headquarters of all newspapers.

I have not seen any newspaper shops on the footpath or in road crossings that we see in almost every important crossing Dhaka. On our second day in Karachi, I saw an old man hawking around some newspapers through the bustling Bohri Bazaar where we were waiting on the road, I wished to buy some newspapers and as I got down, he walked so far away that I could not shout enough to draw his attention. I asked an officer if there are any footpath shops for newspapers. He said that they had them removed many years ago. They get newspapers delivered at home in the morning. He then said that there was the Empress Market (All we came across in Karachi pronounced it Impress) where we could buy newspapers.

In the afternoon, I saw an old man holding a bag of rolled newspapers coming out of the hotel. I called him aloud, but not loud enough and a security guard had to call him. I asked him if he had any Sindhi newspapers, he said that he had sold them out and could bring a few for me the next morning. I bought a Jang and an Express Tribune. He said that they had made up ‘Chabbis rupaye.’ As I was looking for small notes, he said, ‘Rehne dijie, nahin hai to. Akhir, ap hamare mehman hain.’ (Let it go, if you do not have changes. After all, you are our guests.) We did not meet the next morning. Either he came early or we left early.

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Akkas, Abu Jar M (2013 Oct. 10). Miles Apart, poles apart. New Age. 9

 

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