...Of All The Bases And How They Were Hit

In my five years of surreptitiously visiting and then a year and a half of actually living in Lahore, I had pretty much defined what were, for want of a better phrase , my 'places of interest'. Now that I've returned to square one in that my status has reverted from resident to occasional visitor, I can draw on my extensive (if I do say so myself) and exhaustive knowledge of what I like to come up with a pretty all-encompassing list of all the things that make Lahore awesome.

Now obviously I can't enjoy or experience the literally dozens of sights and sounds and tastes (especially tastes) that make Lahore what it is on these 3-4 days per month trips of mine , especially now that they will be split between visiting the family in Sargodha and what a friend calls 'Lahoring'. So I've narrowed my list down to a 12-point checklist. If on a trip to Lahore, I manage to check the requisite number of boxes, I can consider the trip a success. And as every new tabulatory exercise like this requires a 'type specimen' - a perfect object with which to compare subsequent similar objects, I can safely put forward my current thirteen day hiatus in Lahore (which unfortunately ends today) as the standard against which all future trips will be measured. Without further ado then, here's......

My Lahore Checklist

•   Visited three closest friends living in Lahore - Check
•   Gotten together with more friends over Samosa Chaat at the Lahore Chatkhara - Double Check *
•   Touched base with the in-laws and close relatives - Triple Check
•   Visited the Data Darbar at least once - Triple Check *
•   Attended a Qawwali performance - Check
•   Eaten at at least two of my favorite places at MM Alam Road - Check
•   Purchased at least a truckload of books - Quadruple Check
•   Had a plate of Do-It-Yourself Gol Gappay from the Hafiz Juice Centre at Anarkali - Check
•   Purchased at least two new Qawwali cassettes - Check
•   Completed all the requisite downloads/updates/fixes that my laptop requires till the next trip - Check
•   Discovered at least one new place of interest - Check
•   Misdirected people asking for directions at least once - Check

A word on the Asteriks in the next post ......