Exploring Lahore's walled city

Exploring Lahore's walled city, in and around Dilli gate, to experience the extraordinary

By Naeem Safi

You put on your rugged jeans and the most comfortable walking shoes and check the battery and the card of your camera. Fill your bullet flask with chilled water and glucose; tuck in a pack of disposable ear plugs and half a pack of coin tissues in your shoulder bag, along with a cheap medical mask; all this to get into an urban jungle, and get out in one piece, body and mind. You have decided to explore the walled city of Lahore on foot. You either choose a Sunday to have an uninterrupted look at the urban fabric or some workday to float with the social flood on the streets.

You choose a gate that was apparently used by the rulers of a great Indian empire for entering into the city. They say Dilli gate is called Dilli gate because it faces Delhi. You cannot really see that unless you have attained an elevation of a few thousand feet. But if you are acrophobic, then all that you can see it facing is the Lunda Bazaar -- a place that offers the best quality canvases, if you are into painting. You will find it in various sizes, textures, and ratios of cotton. Or if you are into some production with a tight budget then may this be the Universal studio's warehouse for you. Just jump in with your costume designer. However, if this is your first time then make sure the designer is not a lady, and if that is not an option then pray she is attractive, and if your zodiac sign has no mercy on you then you can always add an extra hour for haggling. Even if you are not into any theatre or film production, this market is still very useful for what Shakespeare called a stage. But then you will have to act accordingly, even though if you are not in Rome, you can act like Romans while wearing their trash. All you need to do is just look down on those who cannot afford Marks & Spencer; learn some English, never mind the correct pronunciation, and there you go, being accepted and respected like a first class citizen. Enjoy being a gora saab in the third world. This is the Idiot's Guide to re-Colonisation

You look at the variety of outfits in multitude of forms, materials, colours and fashions and recall images from your school days how your fellows would fool crowds and sponsors by getting their entire ranges from here, dismantling them and then re-stitching them into some Frankenstein fashion. The trick is to cover the jumble of dresses and models of all heights, shapes, and proportions with appropriate lighting, loud music, and fog machines.

Here you can get fresh canvas bags, designed and made to your taste, for very nominal price and once you have what you want, you can gesture to all the Gucci's, and the sort, a V, an L, fare le corna, or any finger of your choice, depending on your level of achievement and contempt.

There is an antique coin seller sitting on the ground in front of a heap of coins of modern times too, but mostly they are the heavy bronze ones found in the foundations of centuries old buildings of the walled city, which are demolished to make room for the ever-growing demand of high-rise commercial buildings.

The vegetable bazaar near the Dilli gate has farm-fresh vegetables and fruits, where the ones with foreign names are not as expensive as in the posh areas of the city. There are fish, mutton and poultry. The smell and sight of the meat business are not very welcoming. The bazaar is connected with a street that has a treasure trove of pottery and some other beautiful handmade collectables.

You feel hungry after a while and you can choose from a variety of chickpeas, ranging from spices of Mexican proportions in pools of crimson red oil, to the ones moderately spiced. There are some barbecue stalls offering chicken spare-parts and a couple of Afghani food joints in Lunda Bazaar crossing that branches out to the scrap metal market. You can try any of these only if you have a military grade stomach and immune system or if you don't mind finishing 'War and Peace' in a single sitting while getting rid of the load.

A local soul guides you and you find a four decade old mutton channey wala in a street just before the Dilli gate next to the pottery and meat street. The small shop has a few tables with wooden benches and a line of frames with images of gates of the walled city of Lahore. The food is not bad; the ambiance -- well, one does not have much of a choice. This is not the sort of food that one can enjoy while on iPod.

You finish your food and come out of the street and there you are, right in front of the Dilli gate. You need some pro-level footwork to avoid being hit by the flux of traffic and the manure on the tarmac that is emitted by the oldest form of transport still used heavily in the maze of the streets -- bulls, horses, and donkeys that pull various sorts of cargos, stuck in the urban jungle with their masters. Their emissions can be hazardous to us, another animal species, but are not a threat to the planet, rather are an essential part of the eco-system, unlike the human genius. Relatively no noise pollution either, except for the rhythmic stamping of the horseshoes. On these streets the number of carts pulled by animals is almost equal to those pushed by humans.