Hungry Tide

There is just one entertainment in this city, Lahoris tell you, mystifyingly more with pride than with complaint: eating. The plaint, it becomes clear fast enough, is really a clue. To know a certain Lahore, view it from the appropriate dinner table. So there is the Lahore of Mohsin Hamid, Moth Smoke’s supporting cast of men and women in their Pajeros on view as they wait for tables at MM Alam Road.

There is the city opening its arms to a variety of visitors at its food street in Gowalmandi. Look, said Sunny, as we strolled in—four very sleepy Indians, agog that life really begins to stir here past the midnight hour, Sunny and a fellow Lahori, determined that we experience their city at its pace, and one Karachiite, contemptuous at the city’s self-obsession. Look at that sign there, Vidya Niwas, it has been retained in its Devanagari original. And there, the directions flow, there is a menu card in Gurmukhi. Yes, Lahore’s street food comes with intimations of bilateral warmth.

But it is at Cooco’s Den tonight that all of Lahore is visible. Our rickshaw ride revealed an enduring way of this city knowing itself: Lahore embraces its history and its demography in the directions it gives. A day ago, we

were told to get to a newspaper office with a choice of addresses in hand: “Your taxi driver will know one of these: Guru Mangat Road, 7-Up Industry Road, or Pepsi Road.”

Lahore is ever in combat with efforts to rename its streets and landmarks. Last year the city government gave up on a huge renaming effort. And, Sunny reminds us, even those like Ferozepur Road and Charing Cross that had been rechristened are known by older appellations. Besides thrilling oldtimers, with gleaming plates of Bawa Dinga Singh Building, Sir Ganga Ram Trust Building and Ram Galli, there is still a habit here of referring to the secretariat as “Lord Saab ka Daftar”. So, when there’s a dental hospital on this back street to the Badshahi Masjid, why not refer to its real utility? Ah, the sociology of Lahore through its street names.

On this mid-week late evening, as the strains of Rangeela Re breeze up to the highest terrace, the tak-a-tak of the barbecue men on the street below barely audible, Cooco’s provides a 360° vista. Out yonder are the lit minarets of the mosque. Back there are the streets of Hiramandi, where Cooco’s owner, the painter Iqbal Hussain, grew up. And on the various levels of this sharply vertical tower are pieces of a composite past: Jallis recovered from abandoned homes after Partition, statues of Ganesh and Mary.

Hussain has come a long way. His depictions of the prostitutes of Hiramandi once invited howls of outrage. Today, they have been plucked off Cooco’s ample walls for an exhibition elsewhere. The restaurant is mentioned in a special box in the latest edition of Lonely Planet.

And the food. For a vegetarian like me, there’s naan, chana, dal, raita. Well, some things will never change in Lahore.