Crumbling Away

thank you for liking the article =)..yes Landa Bazaar is near the Delhi Gate area, on Circular Road. I have visited the landa bazaar..and have been wanting to write about it for some time...
I dont know about the blind woman rape and its shocked me really! =|...
Even though areas like the ones ive described are called dangerous, but i have been in and around lahore on local transport and often with 'girls-only' group, I have never felt in danger, you just have to be careful, dress and act like the people of that area.
I would also like to add that the people of the Inner City are amazing, they r loud, cheerful and funny...

another interesting thing is our photgrapher experienced was when he was taking pictures of the old city homes, an old, old woman came out of her house and start shouting and screaming at him not to take pictures of her house. He was stunned, and later found out that she behaved that way because her house was once featured in a newspaper and the very next day LDA came over for inspection to demolish it because it has become too dangerous to live there. She has nowhere to go, nor will the government be able to replace the home she lives in YET it is dangerous...
Its just so sad...

The shopkeepers asked us to read the board, which the Culture whatever Ministry has put up outside the Bhatti Gate. Another wave of disappointment overcame us when we could not find the ‘board’ that revealed the history of Bhatti Gate. Hidden behind layers and layers of political and religious invitations and advertisements was the history of the Gate. Like the Gate itself, the board had been tampered with, damaged and left to rot. Surprisingly, the shopkeepers and people who lived in the Bhatti Gate area were oblivious to this fact.

An old man helped us remove the dusty advertisements as a public service and also so that we could read what was beneath it. However, we were surrounded by dozens of dangerous-looking men by then, who asked us not-so-politely to take our unholy hands off the grimy papers that held God’s name and Ayats from the Holy Quran…Ironic, isn’t it?

Sadly, there are those who take things for granted. And maybe the shopkeepers were oblivious to the invisibility of the board because they were more concerned with their own business than a visible icon of their history.

Speaking of Bhatti Gate and dangerous men, it has not been a safe place for women to be at, and especially alone for a very long time. It was at this gate if I'm not mistaken, or in its environs, almost three decades ago that a blind woman was raped - I'm sure there were others - but I remember this woman's case specifically because I was back in Lahore around the time, and it caused a huge uproar in the city. Not only because a blind woman was raped, but also because under the laws that Zia ul-Haq pushed for, the blind woman was to be punished for being violated.

Yes, aarzoo, ironies have abounded there for quite a while now. . .and beauty doesn't always remain unmarred.

aarzoo, thank you so much for writing this. I'm from Lahore and I still have some memories of the old city, having left it as a teenager. I lived in the "newer" part though, and as a child didn't see as much of the older part as I would have liked. My late aunt worked as a doctor in the environs of Delhi Gate, at a clinic called Delhi Gate Clinic. If I'm not mistaken, LanDa Bazaar is also in that area. . .

Someday I would like to revisit all these places again, or actually see some of what you did. :)

well, actualy i have been to India on a school trip. Saw all the places in Delhi -Chandni Chowk, Red Fort etc..It reminded me of Lahore, the sounds, smells..almost everything.
Thanks for liking the article =)

Thank you .. made me want to visit Lahore. Hopefully, one day.

I don't know whether you are aware but Old Delhi was set out in a similar fashion. It too has a number of gates - Mori, Dilli, Ajmeri, Kashmiri, Lahori, Kabuli and a couple more.

Then there is Chandani Chowk - a market and residential area in Old Delhi named after the reflection of the moonlight in the stream that flowed through it. The stream disappeared under the road the British built over it.

The people living in some of the old crumbling havelis claim to have roots going back to the Mughal era.


Hope you get to see it someday.

a