It was a hurriedly conceived trip to Lahore’s walled city with two academics from Europe, one Dutch and the other German, on a hot, humid August evening. We didn’t want it to be just about food but weren’t sure if we could manage to show them a few historical monuments in the evening, especially the newly-restored Shahi Hamam and the grand old Masjid Wazir Khan.

Some strings were pulled to get in touch with people in the Walled City of Lahore Authority (WCLA) that is now amicably managing tours on a regular basis. And we were handed over to their "best man" Javed who would give us a guided tour of all the places we wanted to see.

Javed was already there to receive us at Delhi Gate and took charge from the word go. We were told to get off the car and the driver directed to take the car to the Food Street. The next two hours were spent with the world’s most amazing guide who broke ice with the two foreign guests in no time and saw no harm in introducing himself time and again. A tour guide with 23 years of experience under his belt didn’t seem enough by way of introduction and so there was this additional "I have four children and one wife" that drew giggles from everyone.

It was going to be a customised tour and Javed would make adjustments on the spot. Unlike other places where the guides are confined to one or two monuments, a tour in androon shehr is a walking tour. So the conversation must go on. At one point, he switched to German while conversing with the professor, leaving us dumbstruck.

Javed defies the stereotype of a ‘tour guide’ and one is forced to think just how. He is not the dull and distant guide who appears out of nowhere, utters the well-rehearsed often factually incorrect lines and feels satisfied that the job is done.

At the Shahi Hamam for instance, Javed seemed enthusiastic telling how the hydraulic system works and the years it was built in. Then, he left us to our own imagination -- to imbibe the place soaked in architectural beauty and history.

He was keen to hint and not show, like a balcony up there that ought not to be missed.

The pedestrian journey from Shahi Hamam ended at Masjid Wazir Khan and a magical ride began on rangeela rickshaw, a relatively new addition, that took us to Badshahi Masjid and then the Food Street.

By that time, evening had melted into night and a windy ride in the ‘topless’ rickshaw that played Noorjehan’s Punjabi songs on full volume restored some sanity to the exasperated heat-struck goras.

Sensing the ease, Javed came in his element. He began talking about the eight different CDs he keeps in his brain all the time. This must have been his time to play the jolly and playful CD. He told the guests how lucky they are to have been born having seen Lahore (Jiney Lhore nahin waikhia…). A city where there were eight festivals in seven days (Sutt din te athh melay, ghaar jawaan keray wailey).

By the end of the tour, we knew the age and gender of all of Javed’s four children.

So who is Muhammad Javed, the man who claims to have 23 years of experience as a guide but who can easily pass off as a man in his 20s. I set up another meeting with him. He agrees to meet after "his Chinese language class".

The second meeting clarifies why the endearing Javed is not one of your regular guides. In the next 30 minutes, he captures his life in a nutshell over a cup of tea, actually two.

In his current job as Senior Tourism Officer with WCLA, he is back home literally. This is where the journey began, at his house near Pani wala Talaab and Mian Yousuf Salahuddin’s haveli. As a young kid, he used to see foreigners and the elite emerging out of big cars, speaking a language that was foreign to his ears, before going into the haveli. As he grew slightly older, he came to know this language as English which he thought was a gateway to big cars and high life.

In college, he became passionate about learning this language. He would often go to Badshahi Masjid to tag along tourists and pick a conversation with them "in English". One German tourist suggested he should become a tourist guide and that was the first time he heard the name. He started doing a guide’s work informally till he completed his graduation. Then he got a proper license and started working as a private guide at the Lahore Fort. This was year 1996.

I ask him his age. "45, 46," he says. And then he got a chance to work with Indus Guides for ten years where he met his mentor in Akhtar Mamunka. "I have learnt everything I know from him". He went to the Northern Areas as a guide and handled their marketing side too.

Ten years later, he left the job, started his own company with the name of Deosai Tours, ran it unsuccessfully for three years before calling it quits. Then he joined different tour companies as a private guide and went to North and South -- "Multan, Uch Sharif, Darawar Fort, Swat, Kalash, Hunza and Chitral".

"My experience at the Indus Guides and spoken English helped. I had appreciation letters and word of mouth praise going in my favour -- that’s how I got tours," tells Javed.

The journey went on. Once he met a British couple during basant and offered to take them on a rooftop in the walled city. "They enjoyed the basant and asked me what I did for a living. Since then, I am the recommended guide for the British High Commission and the British Council. I do their tours," he tells with a sense of humility.

He keeps meeting people. Some of whom are writers too. A lady Jini Reddy he met as a tourist in 2012 went back and wrote a piece about her visit to Punjab in The Guardian. She described her meeting with Javed and his family at some length in the piece but he got to know about it a year and a half later from somebody at the British High Commission. "He told me that I have appeared in their famous newspaper and I asked him to send me the link."

Javed worked in the archaeology department as the protocol officer before he was hired by the WCLA some three years back. He wanted to work with "a visionary like Kamran Lashari". Actually, this is like home for him and that is why he is so comfortable doing what he does. "I don’t look at it as a job," he says. Well this much we can see. The job he does is not that of a tour guide, it carries within it the ethos of Lahori culture, hospitality, warmth and wit.

What we didn’t know and what he wants to share with me now is his ancestry. Javed is the son and grandson and nephew of tabla players. As we begin talking about the food and music that inhered in the walled city, he tells me: "I have a certain link with music. My father Bulley Khan and my grandfather Qadir Bux used to play tabla. My uncle Beebay Khan used to perform in Bombay before partition and sent money orders to his family here."

As a child and at school, Javed thought there wasn’t enough respect for his family profession. He wanted to earn it through "a foreign language, communication skills and history". But he could well have earned it through his music, he realises now. He is making his two sons learn tabla, singing and harmonium.

"I am lucky that Mohammad Iqbal urf Paaley Khan, who is among the best tabla players of the country, is teaching my son," he proudly says.

As the recorder was switched off, the discussion warmed up even more. The next meeting was promised at Javed’s house in the walled city.