Lahore

An open letter to the city of Lahore 

Lahore,

Are you a city? For me you are an emotion, a nostalgia, a memory, a longing, a desire, a hope, a home. Didn't you have a twin sister, whom people called Dilli? If you have Badshahi masjid on a hill and the Lahore fort opposite to it, didn't the same reflect on the other side of the coin? Jama masjid and Red Fort opposite to it. There were days when your people were together with that of the people in Dilli. And suddenly one day you were separated from her, who knew someone would be called upon, who would draw a certain random line and you would be on this side of the line and her on the other side. It's not about the line it's a matter of two separate countries.

Thousands of people called you home. How many of them were born in Lahore and you had seen them grow and prosper. You had seen the old age, you had seen the unity of the people that resided within you.

But things started to change as came the epidemic which people call 'partition'. People migrated on the other side, on their way they were killed many of them and some survived, some thought they would come back to their home, they would come back to you they thought. People settled in the other country but some of them or majority of the first-generation partition survivors couldn't accept the new lands as their home. Home for them would be the past, it would be you: Lahore and majority of it would be the elderly aged people who would have this feeling buried in their hearts as they had spent their whole life in Lahore. The people who shifted to the other side, you were a home, a longing, a desire and still a hope for many and I am one among those.

You weren't abandoned after your people left to the other side. The people from the other side and from the other religion came to settle there and once again you flourished as a city. You saw new faces, new families; new businesses started from scratch on both the sides.

It's ironic that you and your twin sister are just half an hour apart by air still the people are so far away from each other. Lahore-wale and Dilli-wale seem to be so much apart and far away from each other. They can't even meet each other, meet their loved ones; to go back to their loved ones, go back to their homes, places and relations, but yeh Qoum Mazhab Sisayat ki baatein! These are big things, and we can't win over them.

Lahore do you miss your people as they do? Do you too want to see your people back and meet them?

One day I would be visiting you. Visiting the places that witnessed the past. But I would be there to witness a surreal historic moment: Mohabbat Zindabad- The Jai Singh Show- Lahore. I want to earn so much money and confidence that I would be able to buy my own return tickets and visa and sit amongst the audience and listen to my favourite artist and witness what would it feel like!

From,

A girl awaiting to visit Lahore.