On a late Sunday night, from a home in upscale Lahore, comes the faint din of Bryan Adam's insufferable love. Unsurprisingly, there are young women inside ready to be misled, scattered around their men in a good ratio of one is to one, though at the moment it's not clear who has the rights on whom. The childhood friends who passed through the same high-end Lahore school and the lovers they collected outside the alumni are in a tight familiar group talking all at once and drinking.
A few hours ago, a bootlegger had come and delivered liquor here, a popular way of accessing it in a country where only minorities like Christians and diplomats are allowed to consume alcohol. The most common crime in this country is not conspiring to kill the kafirs but drinking. With the coming of General Musharraf's somewhat practical governance, those rare house sniffs by cops and the more common street checks to seek out drinkers for eventual fining, imprisonment or Islamic lashing have virtually been abolished. So, the drinking in this home goes on smoothly with no external pressure, a get-together like anywhere else, with stately boys-to-men types in smart clothes and girls who have freshly waxed their upper lips.
When a slender girl leans to fetch something from the table, her kids' section T-shirt slides up a little, revealing a fish tattoo on her almost white back. The fish is excellent art but it's also our first view of a bare back in over two weeks, if cricketers during net sessions are excluded. Modern girls in Pakistan's cities do walk the streets wearing what are called 'western' clothes but they are sadly not a regular sight. To find some pleasing economy of clothes and stiletto-tipped legs, acquaintance with a Pakistani is essential, because it's homes that become pubs, transient, but as loud, young and physical as in the rest of the world.
The get-together in this house, however, is only a dinner ritual. "This is not a party, we won't be dressed like this for a party," says a girl, pointing at her plain shirt. Standing beside her is a girl in perfectly tight jeans who introduces herself as "Zee Q" which is short for something long. She is one of Pakistan's top models. Fashion shows here are not very different from those in India but of shocking mini-skirts and swimsuits, she says, there are none on the ramp. There are these undying conservatives who oppose the shows but unlike in India, she says, "no fashion show has ever been disrupted."
Among the young men in such places who want to discuss world affairs, General Musharraf is very popular. They admire his battle against the mullahs. Some dream that he will bring about a day when the pub would come to Pakistan and replace restaurants that dress like bars. From outside, Gun Smoke looks exactly like a pub, declaring in huge fonts at the door, "It's Smokin..." because brilliant marketing men all over the world believe including 'g' after 'Smokin' will estrange the young. But Gun Smoke serves no liquor. As compensation, one can have unlimited groundnuts and throw the shells on the floor. The aisle is filled with such shells. And on the menu are such exotic offerings as "Ultimate Margarita", a non-alcoholic cocktail.
A few metres away, Cafe Zouk is what teenagers call "the happening place". In a corner is a counter with bar stools where short-sleeved hunks sit majestically and have Coca-Cola. But Zouk is so popular that on some days owner Ahmad Khokhar has to "lock the main door from inside to stop people from entering". On New Year's night, he converts the restaurant into a dance floor. "But it is all in private," he says. "Dancing is still not accepted by society."
Lahore and Karachi do not sleep, though it's not clear what keeps them awake. In public places, all that people can do is eat till early hours and strangely, they do that.Of all the unsleeping nooks in the cities, Lahore's Heera Mandi has the best excuse for staying up. It's an unlawful, indestructible red-light area in the shadow of a mosque that Aurangzeb built, a soft-lit world of painted women cluttered with men who are passing through. Named after Heera Singh, a friend of the 19th century Maharaja of Lahore, the market with its narrow winding lanes used to be culture itself. Even today, the nautch girls, the music and the restaurants remain. Only respectability has moved out.
On any given night here, especially closer to midnight, many strands of full-volume music fill the lanes. There are small open rooms where over 50 people sit and watch Indian cable television, all channels except Indian news being available here. In some rooms three TVs show three different channels with the audio of all three on. Impoverished men play pool and snooker with astonishing skill, the tables sometimes as small as a carrom board. Frantic betting goes on around the pool tables. A thin, delicate man on the road with flowers in his hands blocks a car's way. The driver is getting frustrated but finally he gives the man twenty rupees. The delicate man leaves in search of another car. Life goes on.
Small rooms at the foot of ancient buildings flank another narrow way. Inside these rooms with wide open doors, there are highly decorated girls on cheap sofas. These are the nautch girls. Once they were tradition, now they are only considered expensive prostitutes. When we enter, the musicians on the floor get up and quickly shut the doors. They begin to play their beaten instruments. The girl begins to dance atrociously, seldom meeting the eye but admiring herself in a mirror that's behind us. She is fully clothed while dancing and there is nothing sexual about her movements. Two thousand rupees for her dances. A local may have bargained for better.
In one corner of Heera Mandi is Cooco's Den, a restaurant run by an artist who says Pakistan has not accepted him because his muses are prostitutes. "I cannot help it. I come from that background." The women in his family were nautch girls. When he started the restaurant nine years ago in his old ancestral home, it failed, "because educated people didn't want to be seen in a red-light area". But all that has changed now. Most of the world's famous who land in Lahore visit Cooco's today. A few days ago, Jinnah's daughter Dina Wadia ate here. Urmila Matondkar has been here.
