The Friend's Corpse and the Firefly (Jagno)

 The Friend's Corpse and the Firefly (Jagno)

         Seeing the banyan tree falling, but could not save it. Many childhood memories were associated
with it. We used to swing on the branches of the same banyan tree. The city expanded and we
who loved Lahore went on shrinking. Many decades passed. Neither the house nor the streets
nor the neighborhood remained. The "invaders" who invaded Lahore from other cities took away
the beauty of this city.

Today we are in the minority and in the "immigrant" majority, we have become strangers in our own city. In the summer nights, people hang their feet on the mandir and wait for the "carriages", the jingle of the bells hanging from the necks of the bulls, the waving lanterns, the tops of the bulls and the drums of the "carriages". Nothing is forgotten.

Where was the power to endure these painful moments like a cut stem of a banyan staring at me.

What can be more agonizing than seeing the cut "corpse" of your child's partner with wet eyes? The familiar one was the only one left, all the others have faded into time. In the eighties, Multan Road used to be a busy road, the banks of which were full of kikar and tahli trees. had not started.

 

When the trees were cut down and concrete jungles were formed everywhere, where did these friends of ours go? Progress has swallowed everything, we are left, our time has passed, perhaps leaving us to lament. Until the beginning of the nineteen nineties, "Progress" did not cause such havoc. During college days, friends would secretly go to watch a movie with their friends. One had to march on foot from Assembly Hall Chowk to GPO.

 

How quiet Mall Road used to be, especially in winter nights, many times we would reach GPO Chowk but no vehicle would pass. Counting vehicles used to be used in Lahore like today, four or four vehicles were not seen in a house. When I entered the field of journalism at the end of the nineties, there used to be two fights in the Lahore Press Club, one of Saqlain Imam Sahib and the other of Huma Shah Ji. 

 

In those days, a motorcycle was called a "vehicle" and a person who owned a motorcycle was considered rich. Today, a sea of ​​hundreds of vehicles can be seen in the city. The last time I went to America, I spent a visit to the family of an in-law relative. He sat outside with a chair all night and watched the fireflies. 

 

Today, even human beings are difficult to find, so the Firefly left us crying. If you want to see squirrels, you have to go to the zoo or two or three big parks in Lahore. The ashes of my banyan friend's "corpse" flying in the air or the furniture of a big man's house will make us cry and sigh like old memories. The city of gardens was destroyed in the name of "progress". 

 

  It seems that no one paid attention to the cries of the love-struck lovers of Lahore. After reading the news of establishing a city on the banks of the last sign "Ravi", he wrote several letters to the governments, may God forgive him. Ravi Bank National Park has been destroyed, thousands of ancient trees have been sacrificed to "development", not even a trace of Ravi's "vines" is left today, "development" reigns everywhere. 

Driving in the old city of Austin, the capital of the American state of Texas, is also prohibited. The government spends millions of dollars every year to restore the old city to its original form. Instead of improving Tange, we eliminated it from the beginning and replaced it with "Ching Chi". 

It is not a joke that the Punjab "Development and Planning" department constructed its own building in front of the Secretariat. After the building was completed, it was found that they forgot to keep the parking space. A few years ago, after the construction of Kalma Chowk flyover on Ferozepur Road was completed, it was found that two pillars have gone right in the middle of the stretch leading from Gulberg to Barkat Market. 

When this happens to the planners, then to the rest, then Allah is Hafiz. Some people call a political family the "Messiah" of Lahore, while those who love Lahore call it the enemy of the city of gardens. Why are mega projects made? It will be discussed in detail some other time. For now, let's just say that the bigger the project, the bigger the kickbacks.