No description of the cultural life of Lahore can be complete without mentioning the Arab Hotel. Once the old-fashioned baithaks (sitting rooms of the orient) had gone out of use, the literati wanted a place where they could meet, eat and talk. For those ‘orientalists’ of the 1920s the Mall was too Westernized, distant and costly. By chance they started patronizing a small, unclean restaurant on Railway Road, opposite the gate of the Islamia College. A clean-shaven but dirty Arab from Kuwait, known as Bhai Aboud, ran the shop and was happy to serve kebabs and tea to his intelligentsia even on doubtful credit.

Soon the ‘club’ grew in numbers and in the quality of its customers. Chiragh Hasan Hasrat is said to have been the pioneer, and he brought in his friends and colleagues. Gradually it had a glittering membership: Abdul Majeed Salik, Ghulam Rasul Mihr, Akhtar Shirani, Syed Imtiaz Ali Taj, Professor Bokhari, Maulana Salahuddin, Husain Mir Kashmiri, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Khizr Tamimi, Ashiq Batalvi, Hafeez Jullundheri, Abdul Majeed Bhatti, Madan Gopal Mittal, Sahir Ludhianvi, Abdullah Butt, Hameed Nasim, Zaheer Kashmiri, Shad Amritsari, Davinder Sathiarthi, Bari Alig, and others. On the upper floor was the workshop of the famous calligrapher, Pir Abdul Hameed, who inscribed the Quran for the Taj Company.

Slowly as Lahore became more modern, comfortable and moderate-priced, places opened on the Mall, the Arab Hotel group shifted to the West End. The diaspora began in the late 1940s, and was complete in the 1960s with Bhai Aboud’s growing interest in women and speculation. In 1965 or 1966 he died and the ‘club’ vanished. For a quarter of a century the Arab Hotel was a sparkling intellectual tavern, the equal of the best in the 18th century London. When and if a proper chronicle of the cultural history of Lahore is written the finest chapter will be on this ‘hotel.’

In about 1946 most of the Arab Hotel group shifted to the Nagina Bakery in Nila Gumbad and stayed there for a decade. But its coherence and strength was sapped by the proximity of the Coffee House, the Tea House and the Cheney’s Lunch Home. Today both the men and the places have completely disappeared. The Arab Hotel is an unidentifiable spot, the Coffee House was closed down and nobody seems to know when, and the Tea House has vanished and its traditional clientele has moved to other places. Thus, not only has Lahore’s culture disappeared from view but its original landmarks have been obliterated. Progress is a terrible thing.

KK Aziz Coffee House of Lahore

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Two brothers, Arabs from the Trucial states, as the Persian Gulf sheikdoms used to be called, came to Lahore many years before Partition and made it their home. Across the road from Islamia College, they opened an eatery they named Arab Hotel. The restaurants of those days were not like the restaurants of today. The Arab Hotel was more like a shop, with five or six wooden chairs placed against small tables. There was a clay oven at the back of the shop, which faced a small kitchen where curries and kebabs were prepared. The place would get very hot in summer and smoke from the clay oven would waft into the eating area. Pakistan had yet to come into being.

After the Japanese invasion and occupation of Rangoon, Bari Alig and my brother who used to edit the newspapers Sher-e-Rangoon and Mujahid-e-Burma, respectively, escaped from Burma with their families, walking to the safety of British India through the treacherous Burmese jungle. They finally managed to arrive at Amritsar and Lahore. I, a young boy, was one of the escapees. We had close family relations with Bari Alig and Maualan Charagh Hasan Hasrat, who had both moved to Lahore. Since my elder sister was married and living in Lahore, I began making frequent trips to that city from Amritsar. As it was, I was in love with Lahore. Once when I was about to leave for another trip, my older sister, whom we called Chhoti Apa, asked me to meet Hasrat sahib and ask how his wife, Zeenat Apa, was doing. Since Hasrat was often to be found in Arab Hotel, that was how I came to be there for the first time in my life. He was sitting with a cup of tea, chatting to someone at the next table. The great literary gatherings that Arab Hotel was known for had already become a thing of the past when I first set foot there.

In the words of Agha Babar, “The Arab Hotel regulars included Hasrat, Noon Meem Raashed, Akhtar Shirani, Hafeez Jullundheri, Muzaffar Hussain Shamim, Krishen Chander, Hari Chand Chadda and Bari Alig. The occasional visitors included Hakim Muhammad Hasan Qarshi, Raja Hasan Akhtar, Maulana Salahuddin Ahmed, Prof Ilmuddin Salik, Dr Syed Abdullah and, sometimes, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan. However, it was Hasrat who was the life of the party. Arab Hotel was the hub of Lahore’s intellectual activity. News reached Arab Hotel before it hit newspaper offices. At the end of 1939, I shifted to Temple Road and Hasrat became embroiled in family matters. Bari Alig left the area to start living in Old Anarkali. Raashed went to Multan, Akhtar Shirani to Tonk and Hafiz and Krishen to Delhi. Life as one knew it at Arab Hotel came to an end.”

Gopal Mittal, recalling those days, writes that one of the most fascinating frequenters of Arab Hotel was Bari Alig, who wrote in Urdu but was a great advocate of Punjabi. He once said, “When a Punjabi speaks Urdu, it sounds as if he is telling a lie.” He wrote that most of the regulars were writers, poets or journalists – all of them poorly paid. Often salaries were not disbursed in time, and, on occasion, not at all. But their straitened circumstances never got them down. They were content with what little they had and their spirits always remained high. Arab Hotel was a “ghreeb-nawaz” establishment, treating its customers kindly and providing them with food for very little. You could breakfast on two kebabs, half a nan and a cup of tea for very little, Half a plate of curried meat and a nan made up a good lunch. The regulars looked after one another. If someone had no money, that did not mean he went without food or drink. There was always a friend to pick up the bill. Unquestionably, the leader of the Arab Hotel regulars was Maulana Charagh Hasan Hasrat, who had worked with Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in Al-Hilal. He used to write a light satirical column for Zamindar in those days.

After Pakistan, the intellectual focus of Lahore moved to the Coffee House, Pak Tea House, Lord’s and Metro. Both senior and younger writers and journalists would frequent these restaurants, the older ones talking about earlier times, the younger crowd more involved with the world in which they were making their mark. In Lahore’s Charing Cross where the WAPDA House now stands, there used be Metro Hotel, which like Faletti’s and Braganza hotels was an English-type facility. Metro had residential rooms on the first floor and a restaurant on the ground level with a dancing floor where a girl named Angela used to dance under a spotlight on given evenings. I would often find Hasrat, Muzaffar Ehsani, Waqar Ambalvi and Zahoor Alam Shaheed sitting around a table at Metro, drinking tea and conversing. I say conversing because they did not chat; they conversed.

Others were to be found at Lord’s down the Mall, and outside Regal Cinema, there was Café de Orient, a restaurant that served excellent food. Among those who frequented Orient were Hamid Nizami, Meem Sheen and a couple of other seniors. The Mall was a quiet place, its silence only broken by a passing car or tonga, but only for a while. Naqi Building, which housed Lord’s, also hosted the workshop of the master piano tuner of Lahore, Lobo. When Duke Ellington came to the city on a State Department goodwill tour and played at the Open Air Theatre in the old Lawrence Gardens, it was Lobo who tuned his piano to perfection. The maestro was impressed. In the evening, one would sometimes hear the stray sound of music emanating from Lobo’s workshop.

Lobo is dead and gone and Lord’s, Café de Orient and Metro have disappeared. The chairs and tables they used to put out in the evening for their regulars, are gone – as are those regulars. Naqi Building has been subdivided into a hundred tiny stores and sales outlets. What used to be a large single store is now several stores selling every kind of junk you can think of. The calm and peace of those days has fled, as have those days and those people. No tonga goes gently trotting down the Mall with the middle-aged driver half stretched on the back seat letting his horse do the road at the pace that pleases him best. Back in those days, the sound of the horse’s hooves on the road’s metallic surface could be heard on a quiet evening as far as Tollinton Market. All that remains now is a fading memory of those days and even that has to be summoned from the recesses of the past. But that is the way the world goes.

A Hamid, the distinguished Urdu novelist and short story writer, writes a column every week based on his memories of old Lahore. Translated from the Urdu by Khalid Hasan

Khursheed Kamal Aziz (KK Aziz)
Khursheed Kamal Aziz (11 December 1927, Ballamabad, British India – 15 July 2009, Lahore, Pakistan) better known as K. K. Aziz, was a Pakistani historian, admired for his books written in the English Language. However, he also wrote Urdu prose and was a staunch believer in the importance of the Persian language

The Coffee House of Lahore: A Memoir
K. K. Aziz
Before his death in July 2009, KK Aziz had accomplished one mission that he had set for himself, i.e. to write about the Lahore Coffee House, the glorious nursery of ideas. Luckily, despite his failing health, Aziz finished a draft that was meant to be a shining part of his autobiographical kaleidoscope.

KK Aziz and the Coffee House of Lahore: Chris Moffat
During a recent trip to Lahore, I visited the Sang-e-Meel bookshop on Lower Mall Road in search of K.K. Aziz’s The Coffee House of Lahore. Happily, the store was well stocked with the late historian’s final work, and I spent the afternoon reading the text at a table outside the nearby Tollinton Market. 

Book Excerpt: Coffee House of Lahore by KK Aziz
the 1920s onwards, perhaps since event earlier, Lahore was the most highly cultured city of north India. From here appeared the largest number of Urdu literary journals, newspapers and books and two of the best English language dailies. The Mayo School of Arts was flourishing. The Young Men Christian Association was active and its premises and hall were used by all communities for literary and social activities.

Muhammad Hasan Latifi: The Coffee House of Lahore by KK Aziz
He was one of those remarkable men who arrived in Lahore in 1947 as a part of the flotsam & jetsam of the partition of the Punjab. His acute sufferings began with the ravages of the great migration & ended with his death 12 years later. The story of his life needs to be told in some detail.

Zaheer Kashmiri: The Coffee House of Lahore by KK Aziz
A flamboyant personality, consciously outrageous, bent upon having his say on the subject of his choice, and colourful in his deportment and dress. but all this served as an outer cover (perhaps a disguise) for a heart palpitating on the plight of the oppressed and a soul full of fellowship in sorrow… As an Urdu poet his reputation stands high. 

Dr. Abdus Salam: The Coffee House of Lahore By K K Aziz
Among my contemporaries and colleagues in Government College, companions in the Coffee House of Lahore and friends at these places and elsewhere there is only one genius, and that was Abdus Salam. Salam was the son of Chaudhri Muhammad Husain, a schoolteacher of Jhang and Hajirah who belonged to Faizullah Chak near Batala Muhammad Husain was a jat and Hajirah a Kakkezai.