This is the hashtag, if you’re social media-savvy, that you need to be pushing and watching out for: #rastabadlo. Change the route. It’s the call to arms being issued by Lahoris to come out and help save everything our city stands for: heritage, a sense of community and, put simply, jazba. Nobody can trump a Lahori for enthusiasm or warmth. Or can they? Many of us seem to have been overtaken by a dispiriting sense of futility either because it’s fashionable to seem blasé or they genuinely don’t think they can make a difference. But clichés aside, this isn’t about you or me. It’s about something bigger than us all, and yet it’s also as simple as loving the landscape you grew up a part of.
It’s as simple as wanting to protect what is yours, and as Lahoris this ancient, unique city belongs to all of us, and as the home of several
UNESCO world heritage sites, Lahore belongs to the world too. Instead of being at the forefront of the drive to protect and preserve, our government is bent on destroying Lahore forever, and putting that on us. It’s all for you, the people, they say expansively. This Orange Train is for you, this Metro Bus is for you, it’s all for the awaam. Whose best interests are served by spending billions of rupees on public transport systems that do not solve traffic problems in a long-term way, are systematically wrecking the environment and bilking us of our basic rights as citizens.
Did you know that it costs ten million dollars a month to subsidise the Metro Bus ticket? I’m all for accessible public transport—I even learned how to drive a rickshaw, I support it so much—but to me, if a government has ten million dollars to spend on a bus that only goes down one stretch of one road, then why do public hospitals not have more than one X-Ray machine? Why don’t the ultrasound machines have the special paper they need to print out results? Why aren’t all our children in schools instead of in workshops or on the road selling and begging? And why can’t the LDA re-wire their electric pole wires instead of chopping off the tops of the trees the wires cross?
The Orange Train is another disaster in the making. The entire route is not the problem—after all, the train has to go from somewhere and end up somewhere else. The issue is the part of the route that endangers the Shalimar Gardens, Chauburji, Buddu’s Tomb and a whole host of other ancient monuments that are integral to the essential fabric of Lahore. Can you imagine a train station a few feet away from the GPO? Because that’s what the government is planning for Mall Road. The train crosses Shalimar Garden in a way that the gardens themselves are almost completely obscured by concrete pylons, and the movement and vibrations of the construction and then running of the train will, no doubt, systematically weaken the delicate, centuries-old structures inside the gardens. The fountains will never work ever again as it is, thanks to this government knocking down nearly all of the original waterworks of the gardens during its tenure in the nineties.
It seems they want to finish the job this time around.
The Chauburji, similarly, is now surrounded by heavy machinery that is digging pits over twenty feet deep into the ground. What was once a princess’ grand pavilion in the middle of lush green woodland is now a central part of a vibrant city. That is how urbanization works—Gulberg used to be the equivalent of Bedian, now it’s central Lahore and in another few years Bedian will be more central. Urban sprawl one understands. Wilful and avoidable destruction of ancient monuments one does not. To erase the character of this city, so that our children don’t know the difference between our ancient, beautiful Lahore and an upstart, soulless city like Dubai is something I truly cannot accept. Lahoris are made of finer and better things, surely.
The issue with all this ‘development’ is not of privileged car-driving people against public transport. Many of the car-driving people behind the rallies and awareness programmes are ones who hop into a rickshaw or onto a bicycle when need be, and so we know how important a shady tree is when you’re on the asphalt (the temperature difference is enormous), or what bridge is easier to cycle up (Sherpao is next to impossible). The signal free corridors and overpasses exclude motorcyclists, rickshaws and cyclists because they don’t have the power to go up them. The Orange line will, no doubt, provide relief for hundreds of people taking it, but it can just as easily be routed in such a way that the people benefit from improved public transport and the architectural integrity of the city remain intact. It’s not difficult, and there are scores of trained professionals who are willing and able to help the government develop exactly such a system. For the money—the Orange train is amongst the most expensive in the world—we could probably have had a top-notch underground subway like they do in London or Delhi. Why do we have to use the most outdated and unimaginative ideas to improve movement in a city that has always been a hub of creativity and cultural innovation? How sadly ironic that our government, led by true-blue Lahoris, can’t seem to realize or understand how important it is to save our virsa and our environment.
According to the Pakistan Medical Association, a child dies every minute in Pakistan from respiratory disease. It defies the imagination, what that means. In the time it took you to read to this point, several children have died from something like tuberculosis or pneumonia.
This is not another lefty liberal tree-hugging scenario, this is a call to arms. Everything we care about is being endangered. If our government thinks it’s all right to break the law they are supposed to uphold, if they think it’s okay to put our children’s health in irreparable danger so they can make money on the side, if they think it’s not a big deal to take away our cultural inheritance, then they need to be given a wake-up call. Rasta badlo.
