A cocktail of humour fizzed with romance of life make Lahoris different from the rest of Pakistanis

IN HIS 70th year, Rudyard Kipling sat down to pen his autobiography. He was a sick man writhing in pain. Time was not on his side that he well knew. But the memories of Lahore still stirred enough passion in him to forget his misery. They had to be recorded before he died. Thus began his memoir on August 1, 1935 at his stone cottage in Sussex, England. Six months later, he died, leaving the manuscript unrevised.

In Something of Myself, the Nobel Laureate takes the reader inside Lahore and his life as a newspaperman. Born in Bombay in 1875, Kipling arrived at Lahore at the age of 17 to work for the Civil and Military Gazette which was located on the Mall. His father was the curator of the Lahore Museum. Calling his story “Seven Years Hard”, Kipling lived in Lahore for seven years before taking off for different continents of the world, including America where he lived in his later years and hated it enough to write about it.

But Lahore was his darling. He talks fondly of familiar landmarks that remain Lahore’s colonial legacy till today — the railway station, the Fort, Punjab Club, the Museum, and the Free Mason’s Lodge. But the heat of Lahore, Kipling never forgot. He writes: “In those months — mid April to mid-October — one took up one’s bed and walked about with it from room to room, seeking for less heated air; or slept on the flat roof with the waterman to throw half skinfuls of water on one’s parched carcass ... often the night got into my head and I would wander till dawn in all manner of odd places — liquor shops, gambling and opium-dens, wayside entertainments such as puppet shows, native dances or in and about narrow gullies under the Mosque of Wazir Khan for the sheer sake of looking ... one would come home just as the light broke in a hired carriage which stank of hookah-fumes, jasmine flowers, and sandalwood.”

Lahore still has the power to seduce with its sights, sounds and smells. They linger forever. Even today, the city, from Kim’s Gun on the Mall to Kalima Chowk on Ferozepur Road has spread beyond recognition, inviting crass consumerism in its midst. Yet it’s retained the old-world charm that made its lover swear: Lore Lore hey! (Lahore is Lahore).

What joyous sights the old colonial buildings lining the Mall present to the beholder. They stand secure in their majesty and splendour. No greedy developer dare eye them. These heartthrobs were the objects of Kipling’s love affair with Lahore. In the last six months of his life, remembrances of Lahore past flowed freely from his pen, instead of stories of his famed life as he lived it in South Africa, Paris, London or New York.

Lahore and The Civil and Military Gazette which closed its press in the ‘60s were Kipling’s first love as he wrote:

Try as he will, no man breaks wholly loose

From his first love, no matter who she be.

Parsons in pulpits, tax-payers in pews,

Kings on your thrones, you know as well as me,

We’ve only one virginity to lose,

And where we lost it there our hearts will be

“And, besides, there is, or was, a tablet in my old Lahore office asserting that here I ‘worked.’ And Allah knows that is true also.”

The Punjab University on either side of the canal too is a dazzler (despite some bearded men controlling it). I visit the registrar’s office for personal work. I dread going. I know my work may never get done given the laxity of our psyche. The deputy registrar, Iqbal Khalil, is the archetypical fault finder who harangues me the moment I open my mouth. After he’s done with his tirade, I get a chance to say my piece. Those around him (there are always sitting around guys in such places) cheer him on and echo his ‘pearls of wisdom’.

The choice is mine: do I succumb to his berating or do I stand up for my rights. I choose the latter. Things cool down between us. He backs off. And so do I. He smiles, laughs and even jokes. And so do I. Phew! That was close — from verbal blows, we become best friends almost.

I spend three mornings at Iqbal Khalil’s dera at the university. The man is simply amazing. He is so chirpy about life. He is so thrilled about this job. “Let me take your picture,” I urge him, “you are quite wonderful.” But Khalil fights shy and refuses to be photographed. He changes the subject and says, “Do you know I made chicken burgers for my two kids, opened a bottle of coke and saved the family Rs500 had we gone out to eat.”

His wife cooks according to the menu Khalil has pasted on the kitchen wall. “Today we are having keema with Shimla mirch,” he tells me with a glint in his eye. In between discussing his good fortune, work ethics, student affairs, he deals with international phone calls from New York and New Delhi. He rattles off their case history by getting Fazal, his assistant, to check their records on the computer that instant. The alacrity with which he disposes off minute-to-minute academic business over the phone and people who walk in endlessly with their problems, makes one wish if only Pakistan could produce clones of Iqbal Khalil.

And the man never takes a shortcut or bends the rules for anyone, even a VIP. Recently, a Punjab Assembly legislator lost his seat because Khalil declared his degree to be a fake. His boss, the registrar, lauds him for smoking out frauds, and not sparing fools. Registrar Naeem Khan himself is a stickler for rules.

Money does not change hands in this office block. Khalil and company cannot be bribed. Having just been promoted to Grade 18, he waves a cheque that the university has given him as a car loan. “It has also given me one canal of land to build my home,” he tells me proudly.

A cocktail of humour fizzed with romance of life make Lahoris different from the rest of Pakistanis. Even the imperialist Rudyard Kipling never managed to shake off his hangover of Lahore all his life. I come away falling in love all over again with this city basking in spring and the wonderful strangers I meet. Charming people live here. For example the three doctors I just happen to come across: Asghar Javed, his wife Musssarat Perween and their daughter Faeza Javed. They once lived in Springfield, near Boston (Faeza was born there). We share stories of our life in America. Dr Javed heads the Sports Science and Physical Education Department in the Punjab University. Mussarat is a doctor of psychology, while Faeza is a doctor of medicine from King Edwards.

“We have returned to our beloved Lahore,” orchestrate the three.