Commercialization!
By Shoaib Hashmi
Where is our
knight in shining armour? It was always my friend
Zim who had his flashing sword perpetually unsheathed,
and the fire of righteousness burning bright in
his eyes, ever ready to defend the honour and chastity
of Model Town. And we haven’t heard from him.
Or maybe it is just that with half a dozen newspapers
to plough through each day, I have missed out. There
is nothing to do but take up his banner and wave
it.
In case you hadn’t noticed, us Model Town
Wallahs are rather proud of our little community,
and rather possessive. It was the very first of
Lahore’s ‘planned’ suburbs, and
it is still a pretty sight from the air, a perfect
square, a mile on each side, with an intricate and
symmetrical arabesque of blocks and streets, which
are still old style shady bowers on the ground.
After a first flurry in which the place was about
one third built up Independence came and it stayed
frozen in time for another thirty years, populated
mostly by retired old fogies left over from the
old world. But the other left over was the tradition
of lots of fruit trees in the extensive gardens;
and the urchins had a ball pilfering all the seasonal
fruits. Now they are all grown up men, and they
can still rattle off long lists of which house in
which block had the best loquats and lychees and
jamans.
Till forty years ago, the place still had the mindset
of a small and close-knit neighbourhood. When we
moved here, the dry-cleaning establishment didn’t
bother to give us a slip for the garments we left.
They knew we were the new people in G-Block and
that was it -- besides he’d had his share
of grapefruit from the garden in his childhood,
and that was a bond. Being only partly occupied,
it was also a very quiet place. I remember standing
at the gate for half an hour, with an infant in
arms to show him something moving -- and nothing
moving came by!
Then suddenly Lahore expanded twenty miles beyond,
and the place was full of smoke and traffic and
oodles of noisy rickshaws. We muttered for a bit,
then protested and the resilient ‘Society’
promptly banned the entry, or passage of rickshaws
through the place. They lined the outer streets
and revved their engines all day. Also we’d
forgotten that half the people work in town, and
they couldn’t get home! The rickshaws have
sneakily slid back in, and just to divert out attention
the Society came up with a new one.
Some time back Kamran Lashari and his DHA had got
on to a good thing. They gave over all the green
strips in the thoroughfares and the squares and
traffic islands to banks, phone companies and makers
of sherbets hungry for publicity. They were allowed
to put up discreet little signs, and in return they
planted lovely gardens and flowerbeds and Lahore
grew lush and pretty.
The original planners of Model Town were wise men,
and they left a hugh empty tract right in the center,
which Governor Jillani managed to extract from the
clutches of local vultures and turned it into the
nice park it is. They also left large empty tracts
between the blocks, which were communal playgrounds,
and places for the locals to play their hockey and
cricket matches.
The news is that the Society too handed over two
of the grounds to a phone company. They mowed the
lawns, replanted the flowerbeds and installed bright
yellow plastic chairs, and that was all right with
us. Then -- the rumour is -- they lost their marbles.
It seems they decided that as they were paying good
money and mowing and installing yellow chairs, they
had squatter’s rights, and they would turn
the places into private clubs, restricting the use
to members -- selected by them. That is the talk,
and Zim is not shifting his butt and keeping us
informed! So the place is up in arms, and we are
polishing up our protest placards screaming ‘Commercialization’
and girding up our loins to do battle. So stay tuned
for the next breathless installment!
