HARKING BACK: Of Siddhartha and Daman and the old Lahore bookshops

On this Sunday morning as our readers will mostly be reeling from their sumptuous Eid pastimes, it might make sense to a few to spend their Eid holiday among books and sculptures and meeting some very interesting people.

My idea of a useful day off is to combine a delicious ‘halwa-puri’ and ‘lassi’ breakfast from the walled city, followed by searching for some of the finest books that you can find at a very good price. Once this is achieved a visit to the nearby Lahore Museum is called for, so that you can spend as much time as is possible watching the world’s finest collection of Gandhara sculptures, including the irreplaceable ‘Starving Siddhartha’. Mind you an existing political leader tried to steal it, only for an honest bureaucrat to sound the alarm. I would then head home to some good tea and a short power nap followed by some visiting. It is after all Eid. The night then demands that a good book be read. This is what Sunday after Eid in Lahore should really be all.

Let us start with the old walled city, where once every ‘mohallah’ had an ‘Anna Library’. Many might not know that even the great Ustad Daman worked in one such library at Taxali Gate. It might be a good idea for 12 small projects to be set up again in each of the 12 main gates (minus Roshnai Gate) of the old walled city. Even in the old days it were the housewives that did the most reading. Even a five-marla house in any ‘gali’ would do. Maybe they can be named after a donor - that is if our rich and famous are interested in books. You must allow a bit of cynicism on Eid, after all election time follows.

Where did Ustad Daman have his ‘halwa-puri’? It is the same place from where Syed Babar Ali still invites his ‘special’ guests to his ‘haveli’ on Bazaar Hakeeman. If you face the Lahore Fort on the Ali Park Road you cannot miss the huge Taj Mahal Sweets shop. Outside you will see fresh ‘halwa puris’ being made. It is a class act. Once on a visit as a student to Ustad Daman’s hallowed house he told me that whenever any special visitor came early in the morning, they would walk to this shop.

Once free I would suggest that you head to the Mall-Nila Gumbad crossing. On the pavements are thousands of book on a Sunday. A thorough scan of all the books available is suggested before you decide to buy. Among the classics I have managed to buy was a collection of E.M. Foster including ‘A Passage to India’, and then the almost unreadable ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce. The Leo Tolstoy’s classic ‘Anna Karenina’ and Dostoevsky’s ‘Karamazov’ are prized possessions. Also a collection of maps of Lahore and the Punjab as also Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. Also the ‘History of Lahore’ by Baqir, as well as by S.M. Latif. So you need patience and you never know a prized treasure might come your way.

Just opposite the famous Pak Tea House under a huge tree you might find a well-known gentleman by the name of Saifullah Khalid. Every second-hand book seller in the area uses his free consultancy, and if you happen to be invited to his house you will be shocked to see some of the finest books, each a treasure in its own right, stacked from the floor right up to the roof. Three such rooms are an amazing sight to behold, and mind you he has actually read them all. If ever there was a ‘national treasure’ he is one such person. You just have to start a conversation about any book and he will reel suggestions to read five more. Yet he remains a recluse and has the habit, much to our annoyance, of sometimes disappearing off the radar.

The question is who sells such rare books to these people. It should not come as a surprise that when scholars pass away, invariably their families sell them as waste paper (raddi) and they end up on the street of such shops. But as long as people buy them, there is nothing that can be done. Wise people should donate their books to a reliable library.

So after going through all the bookstalls, it makes sense to walk to the Lahore Museum. In my college days in the company of a very fine human being we would visit the museum every day. Ironically the students of the Fine Arts Department ran a collection to pay for our daily entrance fee, which would cost just four ‘annas’ in those day. But then we learnt so much about what the museum holds, which I now realise has collections to match any museum in the world. Today very few tread there, except from faraway rural schoolchildren.

So once free from there it is best to head home, have some strong tea, and take a nap. In days of past my father would take a book to present the children. As Sunday is after the ‘great eating carnage’ as we used to call it, my grandsons merely dress up all fancy and take to their iPads to play games. I invariably cannot restrain myself from suggesting that they read a book. I do get strange looks from them. They avoid the Lahori sweets and prefer exotic snacks. No wonder this year I have threatened a holiday in a forest where there is no internet connection. But the young always are a step ahead. They say they will bring along scores of computer games. Checkmated again.