‘Pran Nevile has tried to ‘re-invent the atmosphere that existed in the first half of this century’ in Lahore: ‘a lifestyle, a certain mode of thought and living, now dead and gone’. Since it is a revised edition, it includes a chapter about Government College, and ‘Epilogue’ and an ‘Afterword’ also bearing the author’s latest perceptions of the city of Lahore which he was visiting after a lapse of fifty long years.’
‘The author gives a moving picture of the details of his journey to the Indian city and the event. He describes the locale, its cultural heritage and the hospitality of his hosts in the characteristic travelogue-writer’s tone and accent.’
Lahore: A Sentimental Journey
Author: Pran Nevile
Publisher: Ilqa Publications,
12-K, Gulberg 2, Lahore
Pages: 242; Price: Rs.395/-
Ga’ey Din ki Musafat
Author: Shahid Hameed
Publisher: Ilqa Publications,
12-K, Gulberg 2, Lahore
Pages: 263; Price: Rs.695/-
Chandigarh Tak (Safar Nama)
Author: Muhammad Athar Masood
Publisher: Fiction House, Lahore, Karachi, Haiderabad
Pages: 95; Price: Rs. 300/-
Lahore: A Sentimental Journey is a record of its author’s reminiscences of 1930s and ‘40s pertaining to the city of Lahore where he was born and bred and which he had to bequeath in the wake of Partition of the Indian sub-continent into two independent states. Similarly Ga’ey Din ki Musafat is noted teacher, scholar and translator Shahid Hameed’s biographical narrative extending to the early days of his eventful life. AndChandigarh Tak recounts writer, bureaucrat, and art critic Muhammad Athar Masood’s journey to Chandigarh, the newly-emerging joint capital of the states of East Punjab and Haryana in India. This review is intended to cover these three publications.
‘Dedicated to the literary virtuoso Intizar Hussain, the book offers the reader a glimpse of its author’s early life encompassing a few eventful decades of the pre and post Partition era. The narrative is factual but it is couched in a fictional style which serves to enhance its readability.’
Lahore: A Sentimental Journey
Pran Nevile, the author, is an old Lahorite. An ex-diplomat, he now writes on Indian art and culture as a freelance writer. In this book he has written about his ‘personal insights’ into Lahore, the city of his birth. He has tried to ‘re-invent the atmosphere that existed in the first half of this century’ in this city: ‘a lifestyle, a certain mode of thought and living, now dead and gone’. Since it is a revised edition, it includes a chapter about Government College, and ‘Epilogue’ and an ‘Afterword’ also bearing the author’s latest perceptions of the city of Lahore which he was visiting after a lapse of fifty long years.
The book comprises 23 chapters in addition to the Epilogue and Afterword. The chapters nostalgically highlight shopping in Anarkali, tonga-drive on the Mall, kite-flying, house-top flirting in the walled city, sports and games, the distaff concerns, the cinema, singing and dancing, prostitution, dress and fashion, eating and drinking, teaching and learning, pimping, minstreling, mendicants and mafias, quackery and sex tonics, the author’s studentship at the GC, public transport, betting and gambling, jockeying, people and politics, bureaucracy, the fall-out of the 2nd World War, some impressions of the author’s revisit or ‘sentimental journey’ to Lahore in December 1997, and finally his narrative about his latter visits to Lahore (2005-14) on different commemorative occasions in the twin domains of art and culture. The tailpiece to the book comprises some fourteen Punjabi folk songs, with annotations in English, reverberating with homesickness and nostalgia.Illustrations in the book add to its bibliographic value. Verily, it presents Lahore as ‘a city of mesmerizing contradictions and chaotic splendour’.
Ga’ey Din ki Musafat
Dedicated to the literary virtuoso Intizar Hussain, the book offers the reader a glimpse of its author’s early life encompassing a few eventful decades of the pre and post Partition era. The narrative is factual but it is couched in a fictional style which serves to enhance its readability.
The narrative is sub-divided into 69 untitled chapters, each covering one or two interesting anecdotes involving men and matters of no little significance. In a candid but curt accent tinged with irony, the author seeks to relate history from a quasi-subjective angle with a conspicuous touch of iconoclasm.
The author seems to enjoy an enviable memory even in his late eighties. His description of events dating back to his early childhood, adolescence and adulthood, is graphic, and spicy too. His knowledge of the world is vast but variegated. History, culture, education, literature, books, travel, sports, emigration, agriculture, politics, reminiscences, warfare, international relations, and the Partition of the sub-continent, constitute the textual content of the book.
A host of popular social, political, literary, and academic figures of the pre-Partition era are vividly portrayed (and a few of them even good-humouredly!) in it.
A discreet reader might be disposed to question the validity of some of the author’s assumptions in regard to persons and events but taken as a whole, the work succeeds in its attempt to re-write the plaintive history of the events culminating in the creation of Pakistan.
Chandigarh Tak
Muhammad Athar Masood, author of the travelogue, is a man of diverse interests. He is a scholar of Persian, a connoisseur of the musical art, and a dedicated civil servant. The present book is a short travelogue that contains the particulars of his journey to the Indian city of Chandigarh, the joint capital of the states of East Punjab and Haryana.
The rationale of the visit is woven round an invitation to the author and some other SIPA members from the Indian National Theatre, Chandigarh to attend the 37th Chandigarh Sangeet Sammelan being held in town in October 2014, reciprocating an earlier gesture of the Sanjan Nagar Institute of Philosophy and Arts (SIPA) inviting them to the Sanjan Nagar Sangeet Sammelan held at Lahore in March 2014.
The author gives a moving picture of the details of his journey to the Indian city and the event. He describes the locale, its cultural heritage and the hospitality of his hosts in the characteristic travelogue-writer’s tone and accent. His flair for music and the arts is amply illustrated in the narrative.