We do not normally give importance to places or cities in term of notables they have produced in almost all fields. Take Sialkot for example. Sialkot has given us Allama Iqbal and Faiz Ahmed Faiz to say a few names. Lahore has given us hundreds of poets, dramatists, actors, literary people, revolutionists, writers and men of letters. Peshawar has given us Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor etc to mention just a few, who have made names in art and culture. These cities have to have something to incubate such people.
Let me talk of Pak Tea House in Lahore. Pak Tea House was the place on The Mall Lahore which has given us hundreds of notable people. These people used to assemble in Pak Tea House in the evenings and narrate their works. Pak Tea House was a very inexpensive place to visit. Sialkot had a culture that people used to gather together over a glass of ‘lassi’ or tea in ‘Qahwa Khannas’ by the road side. Iqbal and Faiz, and hundreds of others, used to assemble there after their long day of manual work to enjoy and promote and appreciate these people. These particular places were institutions in themselves. They were crude places but the works and people they have produced goes down in the history of mankind.
Today, we have dispensed with this culture and finished these places to replace them with modern structures. Our youth has no time to visit these places or, alternatively, we have no places for them to visit. We have now markets and other public places where our youth go for teasing girls or females who come out for shopping. Where are institutions like Pak Tea House? Where is that sense of simplicity, innocence and modesty? We have copied others in the West and have lost our entity. We are neither Westerner nor are we Pakistanis or Easterner. We want liberation but the taboos of Islam restrict us at every step and we all seem to be caught in a web of dos and dont’s. We don’t do anything nor do we do what we should; hence totally useless and redundant we have become.
AMJAD H MIRZA
Lahore
