LAHORE: The Walled City of Lahore Authority (WCLA) is organising ‘Dastan Goi’ in the Royal Kitchen at Lahore Fort whereas the story of Lahore will be narrated by Badar Khan in Urdu while the recently conserved Royal Kitchen will be opened for the public for the first time, Pakistan Today has learnt.
Storytelling has been a known tradition and culture of the subcontinent and started during the Mughal era when the travelers from far-flung areas would hold small gatherings and narrate the stories and their experiences.
An elderly resident of Bhati Gate Ziaud Din told Pakistan Today that the culture was disappearing and television, mobile phones, films and Google had taken over the traditions.
He said, “The storytelling cannot be replaced by these new tools of technology as what we learnt from our elders by listening to their stories cannot be taught by technology. Our children are busy with games and social media apps and are not interested to listen to the experiences of the elders. In old times, people used to gather in open spaces, tharas, barber shops and other places whenever they got to know that some traveler would be going there. The storytelling sessions lasted for three to five hours and sometimes till the sunrise. This was how we learnt about the world from our elders. With the passage of time, the open spaces reduced, the Huzoori Bagh was closed for public, technology took over and thus this tradition started fading away. Now the younger generation has no time for us and our old stories.”
WCLA Historic Research Assistant Director Samina Fazil said that when they were looking for storytellers from the walled city they were unable to find any. “There were difficulties in finding such people who could hold storytelling session with the tourists and the younger generation was not much aware of this culture of the city.”
While walking inside mohallahs and streets of the old Lahore we do see people sitting together but they do not share much as the art of storytelling could not be passed on to the new generation. We do not see this culture inside the old city now, which was once very common,” Samina added.
Storyteller, writer and director Badar Khan informed Pakistan Today that this was a dying art and he was trying to revive it. “I have been traveling to India as well and most of the places inside Pakistan for holding storytelling sessions just to revive this fading away art. Now people are getting interested in this and I am hopeful that we will be able to attract the new generation as well. I have seen that the culture of bed time stories which our parents narrated to us in our childhood has also vanished and now children sleep while playing games on cell phones or tabs. This has increased the gap between the parents and children and we are not realizing the gravity of this situation,” Badar commented.
The purpose of holding the event was to revive the gone culture of storytelling, WCLA Deputy Media Director Tania Qureshi said. “The conservation of Royal Kitchen was completed a month ago and now we wanted to open it up for the tourists and public. We thought to hold events there as it is a little outside the Fort’s main area and storytelling was something which started in Mughal era, therefore, we planned to launch the Kitchen with this activity. Previously the Kitchen was a no-go area inside the fort with collapsed structure and waist high wild plantation. We removed all the plantation, debris and conserved the structure and now the place will be opened for public as well,” Tania commented.
WCLA Marketing Director Asif Zaheer said, “To my surprise, people gave an excellent response for this event and we plan to hold this activity regularly now. This is a vanishing art and we will soon be involving the people of the walled city as well in this activity, although it is a hard task to find them.”
This will be the first of its kind activity inside the newly conserved Royal Kitchen of Lahore Fort and a gathering of almost 250 persons is expected in this ticketed event and the people will have a chance to see the conserved Royal Kitchen illuminated,” Asif added.
WCLA Director General Kamran Lashari said that along with the preservation and restoration of heritage buildings, the authority aims to preserve the intangible culture of the city. “When we talk about intangible culture we see that most important was storytelling, and that is why we have started this activity,” Lashari concluded.