Invasion of the Aliens
16 May 2017
Pakistanis have the greatest knack for making the worst possible choices insofar as the natural environment is concerned. In 2016, motoring north on M-2, I was very pleased to see large scale destruction of the non-native, water-guzzling eucalyptus underway. On another trip shortly afterwards I was aghast to notice that the stumps, about a metre in height, were left standing. Today, one year on, every cut eucalyptus has transmogrified into 10 that stand about four metres tall and they are still growing. If the earlier trees were each consuming massive amounts of water per day, these new hydra growths are several times thirstier.
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| Each eucalyptus trunk left in the ground next to the M-2 is sprouting with over a dozen new trees |
The eucalyptus is not invasive and it does not cause allergic reactions among humans. However, in the early 1990s, research by Nuclear Institute for Agriculture and Biology (NIAB), Faisalabad, showed that a three-year-old eucalyptus can process upwards of 100 litres of ground water in a 24-hour cycle. In a water-scarce country such as Pakistan, threatened with a dreadful water shortage within the next half decade, eucalyptus should not be seen. Yet the provincial forest departments continue to encourage its plantation.
Read more »Labels: Climate Change, Ecology, Karachi, Lahore
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Learning From the Ignorent
15 May 2017
Forty years ago when one flew over Lahore, one saw a vast sea of green. Today one sees great dusty swathes. Two things happened in the interim. One, the agricultural land around the city has turned into housing estates. Secondly, the centuries-old native trees that adorned that land as signs of ancient wisdom have been chopped down, burned and replaced with exotic dwarf ornamental flora.
Date palm obsession in Lahore
General duty bureaucrats masquerading as horticulturists with blighted visions of water-scarce Arabian desert and California with their date palms and ornamental bushes have in the past two decades engaged in ‘beautifying’ this sorry land that same way. The result is the brown expanse one sees from the air. Sadly, this pattern has now been followed in all other cities with their ‘development’ schemes.
Read more »Labels: Climate Change, Ecology, Lahore
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Pir Disappeared Ali Shah
24 August 2016
Sitting between PTV Lahore Centre and the offices of the DGPR (Director General Public Relations) on Abbott Road, there is a small shanty. Inside is a sarcophagus with all due trappings of the burial of the spiritually gifted: the green sheet of cheap satin inscribed with religious formulae draped over the hump, a few rosaries, burning joss sticks and some flowers. At all times there are one or two dopey hangers on. If you are lucky you will catch a whiff of hashish; luckier still and you might be invited for a puff or two. At night the little cubicle is garishly lit up with fluorescent tube lights.
There are two padlocked money boxes as well. Outside, on the sidewalk, there is a terracotta kunali containing salt. Passers by mouthing the wishes they want fulfilled by whoever is supposed to be buried under the concrete sarcophagus having silently aired their desires take a pinch or two of the salt. The hangers on do not say how the salt helps the wishes on their way or the wisher on his or her, but woe betide the man who suffers from hypertension, believes in this saint and passes by two or three times daily!
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The shade that scorches
22 July 2016
An ignorant military dictator and his equally misguided ministers first forced the Forest Department to increase forest cover in the advent of the 1960s. Since the survival rates of local saplings were as low as 15 per cent, the eucalyptus – imported from Australia and not fed upon by any subcontinental animal – was favoured; thus starting the practice of destroying forest cover with wholesale plantations of water-guzzling eucalyptuses.
Trees being felled from Gulberg Main Boulevard to make way for the signal-free corridor project
Towns expanded, chewing up what was once forest and farmland. Large tracts of well-forested land were cleared of trees hundreds of years old, and were replaced by new roads and newly laid out parks. Hills that were once clad with pine trees, but had since been denuded due to erosion control post-Partition, were generously carpeted with eucalyptuses. When the old intercity road, once passing under tunnels of acacia, neem, pipal and shisham, was widened, the old trees were cut and replaced with eucalyptus trees. By the late 1970s, eucalyptus was seen from Sost, on the Chinese border, to Jiwani on the Balochistan seaboard, and from Nagarparkar in Sindh to the hills of Bajaur and Swat. Yet, no one connected the drying up of springs to the introduction of the ever-thirsty tree.
Read more »Labels: Birds, Ecology, Herald, Lahore
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Fools that Rule
24 May 2016
Every day one reads something in the papers and cannot but wonder what sort of fools and retards rule the various government agencies that mismanage this blighted land. Today (21 May 2016) I am told, ‘The Lahore Ring Road Authority [LRRA] has made a plan to fix iron fencing at various sections of the road to stop pedestrians from crossing the road and causing accidents.’ (Dawn, Metro section).
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| A small bit of steel fence removed from right in front of a narrow street to give free passage |
We are further informed by the blockheads of LRRA that this effort will ‘force’ pedestrians to use overhead bridges meant for them to cross the road. What country do these idiot shitheads live in?
Labels: Governance, Lahore, Life, Society
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Wide Road Do Not Mean Better Traffic
23 May 2016
This started on Twitter this morning, 20 May 2016. I tweeted something about courtesy and discipline on roads making for better traffic. And that wide roads make no difference at all.
Tweeple discuss this here
But let me add sense of responsibility to courtesy and discipline on the roads. My friends Moazzam (@MoazzamSalim) and Rizwan (@rizwarned) took exception to my assertion. Both of them seriously believe wide roads will make for better traffic. The argument went illogical when, in responding to my tweet about narrow streets in central London being happily unclogged – or largely so, Moazzam said something about population and vehicular density. As well as that, he said, there were not so many different types of vehicles in the West.
Labels: About, Lahore, Life, Society
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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My Favourite Alcove
19 February 2016
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Labels: Lahore, Photo Stream
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The mosque of Wazir Khan
06 January 2016
Indeed, it will not be incorrect to say that together with the contemporaneous Shah Jehan Mosque of Thatta, it is a superlative of Mughal art. Masood Khan of Aga Khan Cultural Services Pakistan (AKCSP) says, the tile work seen in both mosques reached its state of perfection in Shah Jehan’s period, was used to great advantage and then faded out of the artists’ vocabulary.
Read more »Labels: Heritage, Lahore, Punjab
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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And no birds sing ...
21 December 2015
Growing up in Lahore in the middle of the last century, any child would have taken the drone of grey hornbill wings overhead, the mocking laughter of the golden-backed woodpecker and the oh so beautifully honeyed flute of the golden oriole for granted. They may not have known the names of all these birds, but the songs, these and many more, were familiar. These songs were heard from the Mochi Gate garden through The Mall and Davies Road. Lawrence Garden and Governor’s House simply tossed them out like embers from a lively fire. Gulberg echoed with them and the cantonment was just one huge ecosystem alive as alive can ever be with birdsong of a hundred different notes. And Model Town was simply very much more of the same. Barely 10 kilometres from the city centre, villages like Bedian, Shadiwal or Bhekewal were primal forest.Labels: Birding, Birds, Ecology, Lahore, Punjab
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Palace of Fairies
07 March 2015
Sea Monsters and the Sun God is available at Sang e Meel (042-3722-0100), Lahore
Among other Mughal buildings mentioned by S. M. Latif in his book on Lahore written a hundred years ago, there is one called Pari Mahal: ‘The Pari Mahal, or the “palace of fairies” is situated in the Shah Almi Gate quarters. It was founded by Nawab Ilmud Din, surnamed Wazir Khan, Minister of Shah Jehan, and was his private residence. He also held court here. It was furnished with magnificent halls, gardens, baths and other elegant buildings; but the three governors of Lahore, and, after them, Ranjit Singh, stripped it of its costly materials. The shops attached to the haveli, together with certain other buildings, still exist and are substantial works of architectural beauty.’
Latif does not say anymore and the ‘three governors,’ one can assume, were those who ruled over the city immediately following Wazir Khan. But the fact that the building was called Pari Mahal and that it was his ‘private residence’ implies explicitly enough that Wazir Khan housed his wife (or wives and concubines – the last if he kept them) in it. So when friend and fellow writer Sarwat Ali read out this passage to me, I resolved to see this 17th century building that had missed my notice thus far. Even before I set out for Shah Almi, I harboured little hope of re-discovering a grand Mughal relic. I knew there would be no more than a crumbling ruin rendered ungainly, almost ugly, by the growth upon it of cement concrete excrescences – as is the wont in our country.
Read more »Labels: Lahore, Punjab, Sea Monsters and the Sun God
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Cholistan in Lahore
14 February 2015
‘I am a Cholistani; Cholistan lives within my soul,’ says my friend Akhtar Mummunka. And so it is that barely half an hour from the famous crossing known as qainchi in east Lahore, as one drives to Kasur, one notices a sign by the canal bridge on the right side of the road proclaiming ‘Cholistani’.
There along a smaller distributary and barely a few hundred metres off the highroad is a walled-off, tree-shaded compound. This is the dream that was born back in 2002 when Akhtar was invited to conference by Asian Productivity Organisation in Japan. Every year, this organisation awards one person from around the world for outstanding work to preserve the world’s environment.
Read more »Labels: Cholistan, Lahore, Punjab
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Madhu Lal Hussain
27 November 2014
On the onset of spring, the canal traversing through Lahore is decorated with multi-coloured boats, fitted with models of architectural wonders of Mughal era. The tradition of celebrating spring in Lahore is centuries old and usually begins with the kite flying festival (this practice has been discarded for past some years because of official ban) and culminates with Mela Chiraghan — festival of lights — that is held in the last week of March to celebrate the Urs of Punjabi sufi poet and saint Shah Hussain, popularly known as Madhu Lal Hussain, at his shrine in Baghanpura.
As basant draws menfolk of Lahore on roof tops and fills the blue skies with colourful kites and still chilly mornings with cries of bu kata; so, Mela Chiraghan has been attracting multitudes from Lahore as well as the interior of Punjab to relive the myth of Madhu Lal Hussain at his shrine.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Ali Mardan Khan
17 September 2014
Hard by the railway workshops in Mughalpura Lahore, there sits a domed building. Kanhaya Lal, writing in the late 19th century, termed it the highest building in the city this side of the Badshahi Mosque. This is the tomb of Ali Mardan Khan, purportedly the great builder of Shalimar Gardens and a great canal-digger to boot.
Today, Ali Mardan’s tomb, like any other burial is a shrine where people come to pray for sons and wealth and where their prayers are answered too. The watchman posted by the Department of Archaeology quietly collects — and pockets — the donations of simpletons who believe in demigods. But Ali Mardan was neither. He was not an architect or an engineer; neither was he a man of lofty, unimpeachable character. He was a fraudster in the finest tradition of many a modern mandarin.
Read more »Labels: History, Lahore, People, Punjab
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Monsoon!
04 August 2014
Whenever I say the rains just don’t come like they used to; that they have shrunk and that they fall in spots, never over the whole city and never wholesale like they once used to, young people (and sometimes old too) very sagaciously tell me that is because Lahore has grown so much.
There can be nothing more blatantly stupid.
Savan, the fifth month of the Nanakshahi calendar, lasts from 16 July to 15 August and is celebrated in sub-continental music, poetry and lore. There was the sizzling dry heat of Jeth (15 May-14 June) when the sweat on a man’s body dried even as it oozed out of the pores of the skin. Jeth was the month whose heat stunted the growth of every vegetation because of its aridity and it was a time when birds of the wing and animals sought the shade of trees with their mouths hanging open. It was when the colour of the landscape was burnt to a half tone: half green vegetation, half khaki dust and the sky a nameless colour, scarcely blue and not yet full grey.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 14:00,
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We who hate shade trees
23 July 2014
Pakistanis hate shade. And by extension they hate shade trees. The sight of a banyan or shisham or mulberry sickens them and their first instinct is to chop it down, destroy it. They will happily do it even when they do not stand to gain anything and doubly happily if there are only a few paltry rupees in it. In my fifty odd years have seen countless trees fall victim to unthinking greed, so-called development and just plain foolishness. Sadly all these trees were indigenous species planted by the farsighted and prudent white man when he ruled over us.
These indigenous trees grew wide crowns that provided much needed shade against our burning summer heat that lasts no less than seven months a year. In their stead, we imported that accursed water-guzzling eucalyptus from Australia to sully our land, a tree that is good neither for shade nor for birds to nest in. Look into the millions of eucalyptus around you and you’ll have to do a good deal of looking to spot a bird’s nest in this damned tree. The rare nest that you do spot will be that of a crow’s.
Read more »Labels: Birds, Ecology, Lahore
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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If Lahore runs dry
10 July 2014
I go cycling very early in the morning and I see servants washing, yes, washing the roads in front of their masters’ bungalows in Model Town. I also see cars being washed under full pressure of the garden hose on the ramp outside these homes. On a few occasions, I have asked the men why they could not use the bucket because the wastage would eventually lead to a water famine in the city.
Read more »Labels: Ecology, Lahore, Punjab
posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:00,
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…because we don’t do these things
23 March 2014
Wednesday morning. 10:10. I halted at a traffic signal in Jauhar Town, Lahore. Noticed a young man on the footpath turn suddenly around mid-stride, stoop and collect a banana peel to deposit it in a nearby rubbish bin. I was dumbfounded. We are Pakistanis and we don’t do these things. Even for a person as cynical as I have become over the years, this was a bright light in a rather dark night.
I kept my eye on the man walking away, now across the road, willing the light to turn so that I could catch him. The light turned but by the time I parked my car, the man had disappeared. I had no face to go by, having seen only his walk. All I knew was a gait and that was not much to recognise a person by.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:41,
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Lahore that once was cycle friendly town
14 March 2014
I learned to cycle in 1959. I was then seven years old and Lahore was the most beautiful, the most god almighty wonderful, human and humane and caring city in the entire world. Venturing out of our Durand Road home, I first explored Davies Road (and that is how it was spelled in those days) and Lawrence Gardens where you could take your bicycles right in.
There were perhaps a couple of hundred cars in all Lahore. The streets seemed the widest in the world, horns were heard only once in a while, and the great noise was the throaty thrum of those 600 cc motorcycles driven by teenage boys clad in drainpipe pants and red or dark blue, open-collared shirts with their hair slicked back and their pointed black shoes shined to reflect the sky. Of course, the other sound was the staid clip-clop of the horse-drawn tangas (I refuse to call it a tonga).
No one and no one was in a hurry to run over a seven year-old child on a wobbly rented bicycle. I didn’t even have to be careful – though my mother did tell me to watch the road before letting me loose; other drivers cared. They looked out for me. That was the kind of city Lahore was.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Chinky and Pinky in Lahore
06 March 2014
Though I did not attend the Literacy Fair (as I insist on calling these shows), I did meet the good Vishwajyoti Ghosh and Nishtha (whose last name I never asked) together with their colleague Tasungtetla, nicknamed Atet. Together with our one and only Ahmad Rafay Alam, they came to dinner on Sunday, 23 February.
Now, Nishtha is slightly built while Atet is a big girl, tall and large-boned. Nishtha’s grandparents were from Lahore and Atet is a native of Nagaland in the far northeast of India. And if you don’t know that, that is what makes the Indian subcontinent the most interesting part of the world: Nagaland is just another country whose people are a beautiful mixture of Chinese and Indo-Aryan blood. Naturally enough Atet has a button nose, high cheek bones and somewhat chinky eyes.
We talked of everything under the sky and at some point the Lahori sense of humour was mentioned. The girls had a beautiful story to tell. This particular day, Nishtha was dressed in pink and the two were walking from Liberty Market to the terminus of the Lahore-Delhi bus only a few steps away when they saw this young man walking towards them.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The spirit of Lahore
11 February 2014
Sugar and spice and all things nice. That is what Lahoris were always made of. But let me ramble. The year was 1968, it had been a great monsoon and in September the mid-morning sun was sharp and clear but it did not hurt. My friend Sajid and I stood on the pavement outside Tollinton Market (yes, there was a pavement in those days) watching the world go by as we talked of the weather.
Sajid said, ‘The power of summer is broken.’ Translate that into Punjabi for that is what we spoke. A man walking past overheard, paused, turned around and came up to us. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s broken. It’s broken into two. And I’ve seen it; it’s lying on the far bank of the Ravi.’ In Punjabi he said, eyes wide and wagging his finger, ‘do totay hoya ai, do!’ And having delivered his piece, he turned around and marched off and the two of us burst out laughing.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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