Haroon Khalid - Imagining Lahore: The City That Is, the City That Was

W ith one hand on the pressure horn, the taxi driver rolled down his window and showed me his other arm, the Punjabi version of the middle finger. Still glaring at me, he forced himself through a tiny gap in front of my car, the shiny yellow body of his car brushing against my bumper. Another wound. Another story of struggle from this arena where only the toughest survive. I honked back. Twice. Fuck! You!

A garbage collector on his donkey cart calmly filled the gap left by the taxi driver. A little child sat next to him, holding a cheap mobile phone on which the song Kitna Haseen Chehra played loudly. It was from Dilwale, a popular Ajay Devgn movie from 1994. Cursed at by dozens of people who felt their space unlawfully invaded by the donkey cart, the older boy, who held the reins in his hand, sang on, oblivious to the curses and the traffic jam around him.

On the other side of the car, a motorcycle rider stood on the tips of his toes to gauge the extent of traffic ahead of him. Sweating profusely, he took off his helmet and held it in his hand, undoubtedly planning to wear it closer to the junction where there would be an army of traffic wardens, almost as helpless as the sea of humanity converging upon them from all directions.

How long? I asked him, as he sat back on his bike.

A long time, he said with the frustration that grows on you as you learn to live with the messy traffic of a developing country. Almost instinctively, both of us looked up at Shehbaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab, who smiled down upon us from a gigantic billboard over the bridge. I wondered if this was the most appropriate picture for this spot, where thousands of commuters got stuck every day. The accompanying message suggested regret for the temporary inconvenience to the commuters for the larger good.

With no control over my situation, I honked again. Twice.

The message on the chief ministers billboard had become a part of my daily routine. Every evening, at the peak of rush hour, I would get stuck at this junction for roughly an hour. Soon after coming to power in 2008, after a decade of military rule, the chief minister of Punjab had resorted to what he knew bestconstruction of new flyovers and underpasses. This was one of the iconic junctions of LahoreKalma Chowk. A tall minaret once stood at its centre with the first Kalma, testifying to the divinity of Allah and the finality of the Prophet of Islam, engraved upon it. When the government decided to construct a new flyover at the same spot, the structure was demolished but for the part with the Kalma, which was carved out of it reverentially and preserved.

For months, day and night, seven days a week, work on the flyover continued. This is what the chief minister is known forefficiency, his supporters claimed. It was completed in record time. For a few months, life seemed to return to normal. The flyover, as expected, managed to ease the traffic flow at this congested junction. However, before one could fully recover from the trauma of its construction and appreciate its utility in a city where only a fraction of the population owns and travels by car, the chief minister was at it again.

The newly carpeted roads that had taken months to be constructed and cost billions of rupees were torn apart once again, this time for another pet projectthe Metrobus. On a recent trip to Istanbul, reflective of the burgeoning relationship between the Sharifs (Nawaz and Shehbaz) and the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the chief minister had become enamoured of the city. Lahore under Shehbaz Sharif was to become the new Istanbul. Automatic parking machines and garbage trucks were imported. But the most ambitious import was the Metrobus, eventually to become a bone of contention between the Opposition and the government.