Lahore in a Moment

I’ve trawled through more streets than I can remember; seen and witnessed what is, I suspect, not an insignificant part of the spectrum of the human condition. But despite having being verbally abused more times than I can count and narrowly escaping physical assault a handful of times, the seemingly thankless hobby of street photography has me hooked.

Exciting and slightly unnerving in equal measure, you often find yourself pushed along eddies that lie just below the surface, a metaphysical jet-stream; and you don’t always know quite where you’re headed. This submersion – the journey that transforms an alienating lens into just another inconspicuous part of the scenery, is what is ultimately challenging and exhilarating.

Amongst all the places I’ve crisscrossed, hoping to find that one image that hooks the soul, I find myself drawn to the undroon shehr (inner city) of Lahore over and over again. Maybe it’s because, as I walk these twisting labyrinthine paths of the old city, I’m not always certain that the world I traverse could ever be reeled into a camera; circumscribed by the succinct words of a photograph.

The physical bulwarks to the city may be long gone – the imaginatively named gates that used to guard it have long eroded, but the heart of the old city of Lahore still beats to a pace and rhythm remarkably insular and all its own.

Despite the modern trappings that have penetrated the inner city, you get a sense of being immersed in an ageless milieu; a concoction of metropolitan urbanity and rustic ruralism that seems to blend to form this character that is so hard to define. For its hundreds of years of recorded existence, the ancient city of Lahore has much to show. And these streets would be captivating enough for their architectural beauty – but for the human aspect: a way of life that has evolved in these winding ways that is far more arresting than any physical edifices.

The narrow alleys of this Lahore lie in perpetual dark as the towering houses flanking these passages almost touch the sky high above. As tunnels through a hive, the paths are claustrophobic, dark and musty, but with an atmosphere pulsating and electric.

I walk alongside a water-carrier as he does his rounds carrying an animal-hide bladder, like the countless others who have done the same in generations before him. Cutting across the inner recesses of the city, we witness enterprise at its most natural and fluid; it courses through the air and through the very veins of the people. The smallest of dark nooks reverberate with the clatter and bang of machinery squeezed into the karkhanas (work houses) that abound everywhere. A kite-maker straightens reeds on a thoroughfare bonfire as other vendors slalom through, hazarding their wares with characteristic unconcern. Even mendicants assiduously collect and roll balls of scrap plastic with a purposefulness that almost defiles their garb of henna-dyed asceticism.

Quite expectedly, this crucible produces a way of work distinctly its own. Walk through the right street just before the break of dawn and you come to old Lahore’s most famous lassi shop. Under the golden first rays percolating through the Lahore mist, the proprietor, a wrestler of suitably impressive proportions sits regally (in spirit if not in attire) amongst vats of lassi . He opens the little street side-stall at the break of dawn, only to close when the quota of sixty glasses is exhausted – often in under an hour of hyperventilated jostling and pushing by a crowd fighting to collect their share of the nectar.

Fighting sleep after the tall glass of lassi , I walk around the corner and happen upon an ikhara . This is the traditional wrestlers’ training school, where boys train to be pehlwans (body builders). They dig the earth, only to fill it back again and then start afresh, over and over again. Watching them train covered in soil, the gymnasiums of the outside world look so remote, even alien and plasticy by comparison.

Indeed, all this frenetic activity of the walled city seems to be embellished with an incredibly earthy palette, one that is rich and ornate in colour. And of colour, none more varied than the streets of Lahore’s red-light district, where amongst the Mughal havelis (mansions), those practicing the oldest profession live in surroundings befittingly archaic. I reach the fringes of the traditional quarters of the courtesans, and watch transvestites and eunuchs attached to the oft romanticised establishments of pleasure walk daintily through markets selling a dizzying array of traditional musical instruments. This is, after all, an area that was long the centre of the cultural universe of the Punjab.

Hopelessly lost in these markets abounding with sensuously-moving hijras , I flag a rickshaw driver. During the short ride, he nonchalantly peppers his discourse with risqué advice as we twist and turn through alleys, towards a destination I look forward to with some trepidation. I’ve read and been told much about where we’re headed, but when we reach the inner recesses of the Heera Mandi (also known as the Shahi Muhalla), I’m not quite sure what to make of it. I certainly can’t share the driver’s blasé self-assurance as we drive through dingy lanes that I could span with my arms. On either side, gaudily bedecked women stand silhouetted against doorways left invitingly ajar. The naked bulbs illuminate far too well the peeling paint; disrepair evident on the walls and the women who stand just within them.

The contrast that photographs need can be messy in real life, removed observers of images we are often oblivious to, even appreciating the suffering that transforms itself into a thing of beauty when etched onto film. When you stand amongst these images in the real world, even just momentarily to gleam off an ephemeral moment, a sliver of time, you forsake that concession.

As images go, that alley was certainly a powerful image, the sort that sears itself into memory. But looking at what I can only describe as disturbingly vacant stares, the otherwise dispassionate and removed photographer in me flinched. I hardly took pictures, the shutter was largely silent; but not for want of images.

While that street was harrowing, it also taught me that with white comes black – as in great photographs, so in life. These streets are, in a way, just a refraction of life in general, albeit from an extraordinary prism.

For all the black and the white, in this world of unusual confluences, they sometimes almost mix – and the transition can be both jarring and contiguous. Indeed, Heera Mandi borders Aurangzeb’s renowned Badshahi Masjid – one of the largest mosques in the world. The sacred and the visceral that clash elsewhere, are adjacent here.

On my last day, as I walked back out towards the Delhi Gate just before twilight, I ducked one last time into the Wazir Khan Mosque. I watched as a wizened old man performed ablution purposefully, slowly, at the glimmering, molten pool of the breathtaking Mughal-style mosque with the sun setting behind him. It was a perfect tranquillity.

Outside, barely a stone’s throw away, the organic traffic jam of the timeless, pendulously-moving bullock cart, horses and the innumerable humanity surged through tiny streets under a miasmic din.

The image personified in many ways what is most attractive about this strange, exciting microcosm of the inner city: the contrasts – frustratingly, only a handful of these could ever be caught on film.