City of Sin and Splendour: Writings on Lahore

Lhorr as a Punjabi would pronounce , is a city I have heard about, read about, and dreamt about. Bapsi Sidhwa has chosen articles and stories about the city that provide a portrait of the city along with a feel for life as it was lived at that time. My father studied in Sikh National College in the city, my grandfather visited it many times but with my luck (because of events in 1947) I have to make do only with pen or video portraits of the place.

Arrived in good shape. Had more interesting content than expected.

This book is a collection of short stories, excerpts from novels and non-fiction compiled with the common appreciation for the ancient city of Lahore. It seems as though all Lahoris share a common culture and that was apparent when many of the authors reiterated common cultural nuances of the people, sites to visit, foods, and famous artists, that I was very familiar with from the stories that I had been told time and time again from family members who have lived in Lahore. I definitely recommend this book to those who have roots in this city, but also for those who don't know the cultural significance of this ancient city. Also, I would especially recommend it to those who have not ventured to the old city of Lahore (fortified by the Mughals), which is essentially the heart of the city and where to this day craftsmen practice their craft that has been passed on since the Mughal Empire. The collection is intelligently separated into sections by editor Bapsi Sidwha, a quintessential Lahori, and contains articles from many very prominent Lahoris.

Bapsi Sidhwa opens up the world of Lahore, with a seres of short stories that totally envelope you in the many different worlds of one of the worlds oldest,liberal,intellectual, divinely gorgeous cities...Lahore is where Paris meets India and was the jewel in the crown of The Raj...enough...go read it, you won;t regret it :) I have bought it several times, for myself and to share with friends...Its the closest you cna get to the magic of Lahore without actually getting on a flight..

Lovely book and very well-written!!! I have enjoyed reading it!!! it really makes ypu feel as if you were in Lahore already!!! it is a "must read book"

City of sin and Splendour by Bapsi Sidhwa is perhaps the only anthology on Lahore. There have been many Lahore -Mughal Lahore, Sikh Lahore, British Lahore and destroyed and demolished of post partition era. It is the travesty that the real Lahore was finished by the partition days communal frenzy which crossed all limits of human civilization. The British and the Muslim League were both equally responsible for this great tragedy after Great War and Second World War. At the eleventh hour Mr Jinnah lost control and things went adrift. Either it was will of the Providence or punishment to the people of Indian Subcontinent.It is a very fine anthology of Great City which is very famous for its food, beauty of women, literary culture, its sin and splandour, Hira Mandi red light area,Govt college(now a university) its grand monuments of Mughal and British era, its grand Bazars like Anarkali. Our great Rudyard Kipling spent some part of his life in this great city. It was city of dreadful night, Kim was portrayed on this city. Intezar Hussain has very rightly written about Kipling Lahore although he was from Bulandshahar in India. Hira Mandi by Pran Neevile,House Divided by Ved Mehta Toba Tek Singh by Sadat Hasan Manto, poems of Habib Jalib and Faiz Ahmed Faiz which I relished at length. Ihave purchased the some years ago and only read Awaj de kahn Hai A Portrait of Nur Jahan but a week ago i searched this book and finished it.Some mistake were found in the book. The Penguin has not noticed this and book was not edited to its best.Page No146 ^Following roles in Long Day^s Journey into Night and Julius Caesar, Zia Moheyddin shot to fame in 1960 Aziz in the west End hit a Passage to India. He returned to Pakistan at the request of Bhutoo regime in in the late sixties and set up PIA Arts and dance academy.^ The mistake is that time the regime was of Field Marshall Ayube Khan and not of Bhuto.The book is very interesting and I strongly recommend particularly literary persons. I hope Penguin will take care for next revisited edition.

My grandfather once told me a story of how as a star-struck teenager he ran away from Multan to Lahore to become an actor because the whole world was in Lahore. Unfortunately, he was found by his mother who thrashed his sorry self back to Multan to look after his many siblings. Even after he came to India after partition and moved to Mumbai, he said that he never forgot the grandeur of Lahore. It was a city of splendor, a city of lights, a charming city of so much beauty that it was hard to not be dazzled by it all.“City of Sin and Splendour” a collection of writings on Lahore by Bapsi Sidhwa made me understand why my grandfather fell in love with the city. The city that was the home to two of the greatest Urdu poets “Allama Iqbal” and “Faiz Ahmad Faiz”. The city where Khushwant Singh studied and lived before he moved to Delhi. The city that was known for its culture and socially elite is also a part of the painful memories of a lot of people who were born and lived in the shadow of partition.Ms. Sidhwa in an excerpt from her book “A Pakistani Bride” describes Lahore as “the ancient whore, the handmaiden of dimly remembered Hindu kings the courtesan of Moghul emperors bedecked and bejeweled, savaged by marauding hordes. An attractive but aging concubine, ready to bestow surprising delights on those who cared to court her”. For a reader who has never been to Lahore, it is not hard to be smitten by it after reading such lines.The book is a collection of stories, prose, interviews & records of some of the biggest names in South Asian literature. Ms. Sidhwa has collected the poems of mystical Sufi saints like Bulleh Shah & Madho Lala Hussain. Faiz’s beautiful poem “City of Lights” and Iqbal’s couplets also find a mention in this book. The city which gave birth to Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Kim’. The city that stored the famed legend of Anarkali in its bosom. The city where the alluring ladies of Hira Mandi offered not only their bodies but also a part of their culture to the ever willing patrons, the various authors talk about what they lost, what they left behind and what they are still looking for in and out of Lahore. Lahore is also a food lovers paradise and there are many similarities between the richness of North Indian food and the food found in the lanes of Lahore. I even found the animosity between Lahore and Karachi endearing because it reminded me so much of how people from Delhi hate Mumbai and vice versa.A fabulous book for lovers of Lahore because as they say “Lahore Lahore Hai”.

It's a Much hyped Book. It has some brilliant essays out of 46 and some not so brilliant. There is hardly any inter-linked chapter except they all relate to lahore. For an Indian like me who has never seen Lahore before, it is difficult to relate to lahore as some authors contributing to this book see it. The author calls Lahore a whore; hardly the word which one uses for a city one loves. Then she tells that Badshahi Mosque is largest in the world; which it is not and in her childhood she claims to have seen elephants in the streets of Lahore, which is hard to believe since to the west of Gangetic plains, elephants have disappeared in the sub-continent and are found in Bengal, Assam etc. In the end the chapters are neither arranged periodwise nor matter-wise. It's like reading weekly columns of a Newspaper. There are too many essays numbering 46 and by the time you finish the book; you remember almost very little which can etch on to your mind.