In the second, expanded edition of Dr Ajaz Anwar’s Lahore Reincarnated, the text is appropriately peppered with his watercolours (unfortunately in black and white) and his father’s inimitable cartoons. The cartoons address a spectrum of concerns: Pre-Id Impressions, social inequalities, political infighting, bureaucratic dithering, inundated streets in the Monsoon and the indifference of those responsible, Summer Fashions, absence of medical aid at even the district level, the strain on parents to meet their children’s demands, the creative activities bicycles were put to, the flogging of journalists in 1978 by the military regime. Some cartoons are quite atmospheric, like that in Tea and Other Addictions. It captures the bohemian lifestyle once amply ensconced in Pak Tea House and Coffee House on The Mall.

In the 1960s, when my family returned to Lahore, the city had two English and two Urdu dailies and one newsweekly, Chataan (Rock). The last was edited and published by the firebrand Shorish Kashmiri (1917-1975). The journal was known for its provocative content that frequently challenged Ayub Khan’s dictatorship. Of the two Urdu dailies, Imroze toed the official line and Nawa-i Waqt took independent positions. Of the English dailies, Civil and Military Gazette was an older mid-Nineteenth Century publication where Rudyard Kipling, who was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, apprenticed as a young reporter. By the 1960s, it had lost its pre-eminence, and The Pakistan Times was the more widely read daily. Father ordered two dailies, The Pakistan Times and Nawa-i Waqt. Shorish Kasmiri being his friend, sent a complimentary copy of his weekly every week.

Nawa-i Waqt was hard to read and understand. Though I managed to cover eight years of Urdu courses in one year, this was solely due to the painstaking and strategic tutorship of Mr Naqvi of Lawrence College. Nawa-i Waqt’s headlines were of little interest to a twelve-year-old.

The Pakistan Times one looked forward to for the antics of Nanna. One could relate to this young imp. Besides, the drawing in a few strokes conveyed so much. It was not fussy like Mir Sahib. The attraction soon became addictive. From Nanna to his mother in a chador, from his sibling, Junior, to his father with wavy hair, the cartoonist himself became an extended part of the family; someone one met every morning. The rare days on which they did not appear, one felt that something vital was missing.

As a visual arts genre, cartoons in the present form emerged in 18th Century England. With the wide spread of printing presses, journals, broadsheets and newspapers mushroomed to cater to the growing needs of the reading public. The pictorial satire of William Hogarth (1697-1764) spawned political cartoons and comic strips. Figures were rendered in unrealistic or semi-realistic styles where some features of the face or parts of the anatomy were exaggerated for satirical and humorous ends. Artists James Gillray (1756-1815), Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827) and George Cruikshank (1792-1878) became known for their sharp political and social comments. With Punch magazine, starting in 1843, the cartoon acquired such regard that numerous artists and cartoonists acquired fame and fortune. From there the idea of lampooning the pompous and the political became popular and spread to other parts of the globe. During the Raj, Punch had an effect. In emulation, several similar magazines sprang up in South Asia. Among them The Delhi Punch, The Punjab Punch and Urdu Punch.

In Pakistan a few cartoonists stood out. Cartooning is a double onus. First, one should be a fine draftsman, able to translate the expression of his characters, in all their human variety, in a few telling strokes. Second, he should have a keen eye to see through the bogus and the ridiculous. Ideally, there should be no accompanying text. Let the lines speak. If it is essential, the words should be kept to a minimum. In Anwar’s Nanna, one sees the calibrated balance of both. The drawing is crisp. The comment is crisper.

Lahore Reincarnated is a remembrance of times past as well as a mirror to many issues of time present.

Some of the cartoons in Lahore Reincarnated are rendered in some detail, such as Buon Festivale! (p. 136), Tut! Tut! (p. 162), the ones accompanying The Wait for the School Bus (p. 5) and The Troubled Fishermen (p. 40). The best, however, like humour itself, are pared down to the irreducible essential. These, in a few lines, convey the satire of the situation. The cartoon accompanying the article The Foul-Mouthed (p. 9) shows a profound understanding of the Chinese-Japanese composition mode. The crowded foreground area, with a mix of grownups and children, is balanced by the blank of the angular wall over which Nanna looks. Anwar truncates the figures to his advantage and uses negative spaces to convey distance, height or depth. As such he engages the reader and leaves him to fill in the blanks. Similarly One Buffalo’s Milk (p. 210), Soda Water and More (p. 198) are timelessly comic.

Nanna acquired a PhD; the man, not the character. He grew up and began pursuing matters more academic. His boyish capers gave way to causes of conservation, Lahore’s architectural heritage and writing a weekly column highlighting state indifference. Humour and satire may have fallen on deaf ears of those who infest the power corridors. Perhaps the learned doctor’s arguments and exposés would resonate where they should.

I began collecting cuttings of Dr Ajaz Awar’s articles, afraid they would go the way of all ephemera. But when the conservation-minded academic conserved them in book form, one realised that he was practising what he was preaching. The story-telling technique makes the book accessible. It draws even the casual reader in to share the author’s life, times, impressions and experiences. One learns of his life: teaching at the National College of Arts, Lahore and Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, studying in Istanbul and attending a conservation course in Rome and myriad pursuits. The emphasis, however, is on the city he has cherished since childhood.

This book is a Lahori cousin of the French masterpiece Remembrance of Things Past by the renowned author Marcel Proust (1871-1922). Along with the author’s personal affairs, one encounters British Raj (1849-1947) buildings, many of which will now only be remembered from his accomplished watercolours. In addition, he sketches the lives of men and women who peopled its streets; some well-known, more not known, save for these vignettes. The reader meets Taj, the blind, many migrants who settled here, following Independence, Master Ji, the carpet-weaver who started a roadside school under a tree in Nihalchand Bagheechi, the author’s classmates and pets; Noor Din, who ‘repaired and rented out electric fans’ and was known for his vintage car; Latif who owned a bicycle workshop frequented by all including Christians, Parsis and Anglo-Indians; the destitute flute maker and player; animal performers; street photographers; sweet-meat sellers and greengrocers; singers and musicians; freedom fighters and activists for female rights; street crier who shouted the main news of the day after a drum beat; and wrestlers. Tens of other characters with their quirks and concerns populate these pages. Often these verbal cameos of the city’s masses eking out a living sparkle with humour as if emulating his father’s visual wit.

He writes of when bullock carts and tongas were seen on the city roads and bulls and cows roamed the streets; when old British cars and station wagons and bicycles were common; when a tonga or rehra, both animal-driven, were used to tow motor vehicles; preparations for Eid al-Azha when buying a goat or ram became a delightful challenge for the entire family, and its aftermath of choked drains; when an East Pakistani Bengali had a shop selling a variety of hats, including the iconic, pith helmet worn wherever the British ruled; when the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) was an active organisation.

He touches on sensitive subjects such as the importance of the mother tongue and the Punjabis’ active indifference to it; oppression and suppression of journalists by dictator after dictator; falling standards of education and institutions; political frictions; climate change and its effects on the masses and the menace of plastic bags; the changing urban profile generated by encroaching population and the proliferation of slums; the pollution of clear, fish-sporting Ravi River to a sewer or ganda nala.

Lahore Reincarnated offers indispensable material for researchers of local history and for academics who may wish to write a social history of this ancient city. English Social History (1944) by GM Trevelyan (1876-1962) and the relatively recent A Social History of England (1983) by Asa Briggs (1921-2016) provide a template. Dr Anwar offers valuable material to incorporate for a meaningful examination of the complex social and societal linkages that engender, sustain, degrade or fragment a particular milieu. Thus Lahore Reincarnated is a remembrance of times past, as well as a mirror to many issues of time present.

Lahore Reincarnated

Author: Dr Ajaz Anwar

Publisher: House of Nannas

Pages: 226

Price: Rs 2000/-

The reviewer’s latest work is a novel, Second Coming, published recently