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Lahore

13th April 2024

"The newspaper culture is dying, and you still spend one - one and a half hours of the morning reading it. Appa, your smartphone will give you more information, trust me", said the irritated Kunti, wife of the historian Shanti Kumar who loved reading about partition and stories around.

"This morning the headline that caught my eye was, "Lahore and Amritsar: Two cities joined at birth are dying together" This writer seems to have done good research while writing this particular article. I am impressed, you know what he says?" Shanti tries to drag Kunti into an interesting conversation. "As if you won't share if I don't agree", says Kunti rolling her eyes.

Shanti laughs, "He says, "How is one to imagine the cities of Lahore and Amritsar, whose origins are so deeply intertwined, separated today by boundaries that don’t just divide geographies and people, but also mythologies, legends, religions, cultures, heroes and villains? It is a border that lies in the middle of these two cities, fabling stories about itself, about its previous incarnations in different forms, telling tales about its inevitability, its naturalness. Chanting mysterious mantras, the border blows in the direction of these cities, transforming their appearances through its prayers.



Lahore today is the ultimate symbol of Pakistani nationalism – a Muslim majority city, the site of Lahore Resolution, where the Muslim League first demanded a separate homeland for Muslims, home to Minar-e-Pakistan and host to proud Mughal architecture, the Lahore Fort, Badshahi Masjid, a tradition that marks the zenith of Muslim civilization in an undivided subcontinent. Besides a few, inconvenient remnants of traditions scattered around the city, all those traces of a pre-Pakistan Lahore have been suffocated and left to die. It is easy, encouraged, to forget about that lost city, that lost geography that connected Lahore with Amritsar and Delhi, a Lahore that emerged as an important economic, political, and cultural hub because of its strategic location on that ancient route that flowed from Bengal to Kabul, a river dammed up by the border.

Lahore today is still an important city, perhaps more important than it has ever been, but it is not the Lahore of the past. Its contemporary geography and location are an awkward testimony to its changed status. A city that once looked in both directions, has today its back towards the east, and looks desperately towards the west, towards Islamabad, Kabul and beyond in search of a new identity, in search of a new incarnation."

"Wow, this is interesting, I mean, really", said Kunti.

This post is a part of the #BlogchatterAtoZ challenge.

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