A YOUNG man carefully wipes off the counter, collecting everything in a bowl to throw away. The green net on his head contains any hair that may fall. Delicious, smoky scents of spiced chicken tikka float into the air. On the other side of Zakir Tikka, a well-known barbeque dhaba, two men work fast, slapping naans into the blazing tandoor. Their heads too are covered.

Muhammad Noman, the restaurant’s manager, walks around checking things. “Whatever Ayesha Mumtaz did, it was for the better,” he says.

At the mention of Mumtaz, silence falls in the kitchens of Lahore’s restaurants and cafes. Barely a single place escaped the Punjab Food Authority (PFA) raids, where officials led by the authoritative Mumtaz went in to survey the cooking and storage areas and often ended up sealing the place. Now, after she has applied for leave of 104 days, some of Lahore’s restaurant owners heave a sigh of relief, but others are still tense.

“It’s a good thing that she set some rules,” continues Noman. “While some of us tried to follow hygiene standards, most of us did not.” He kicks some trash — crumpled up paper and cardboard — into a corner. “Before [the raids], we used to clean up once in a day, when service was to start,” he admits. “Now, we clean it twice, including when we finish up at night. Since we just began our day, the cleaning is still being done,” he says. This branch of Zakir Tikka, in Moon Market, suffered one of the raids. The place was sealed for six days and reopened after court summons and a heavy fine.

The neighbouring Krados restaurant, also a dhaba with more or less a similar menu, works in a more relaxed manner. The man at the tandoor wears a ragged cloth on his head, while the others do not even wear that. The manager immediately begins to murmur apologies.

“It won’t happen again,” he says. He yells at the burly, muscular man at the tandoor. “Cover your head, you idiot,” in response to which he gets only a blank stare.

But Mumtaz’s infamous raids did not just target dhabas. She also had sealed and fined several posh restaurants, many on the well-known M.M. Alam Road, and even some in the biggest hotels. And unlike all our appreciation for what she has done, many owners and managers have serious objections.

The manager of a restaurant that wished not to be named says that they were sealed because they stored ice cream in the same freezer as meat. “It was a one-off incident; otherwise we are very particular about safety and hygiene,” he says. “And we did not like the way the whole group just barged in and started surveying things as if only a surprise visit can determine everything about the restaurant.”

He thinks for a moment, then: “She could have simply warned us, if not about coming to visit then at least giving every restaurant prior warning describing a fine or penalty if something was against the rules.”

Owners also protested against the PFA action, saying that they had businesses to run. Another owner of a Gulberg-based café says that seeing a “little bit of dirt” should not have been the cause of being shut down, and then being given a court notice. “Seriously speaking, no place is germ-free. There is a little bit of dirt if work is being done,” he says. “What does the PFA seek to achieve by such strict rules?” He says that Mumtaz had begun to exercise too much of the power given to her.

“If you have power, sometimes it starts to get to your head, especially if you are becoming something of a celebrity,” he says. “When her reputation began to be that of an iron lady, she began to enjoy it and the raids increased.”

Perhaps the last nail in the coffin was a leaked video showing Mumtaz shouting at someone at the Ramazan Bazaar: her demeanour is that of an angry policewoman about to get into a fist fight. In fact, at one point she is held back by someone. No one knows what the fight was about.

One restaurant owner, though, has some sympathy for Mumtaz. “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” she says. “But if a man abuses, it is considered run-of-the-mill stuff; people respect him. But if a woman dares yell at a man in public, suddenly she becomes rude and unpopular. The same is the case with power. Look at the way our political representatives behave — even those who are at top positions. Do they not wield power?”

But Ajmal, a roadside vendor, says that it is important to keep things in check. Wearing a crisply starched, lilac shalwar kameez, he is sitting on the floor chopping potato chips. “She also focused on roadside vendors, including my stall,” he smiles. Then he points to his small stove, which is basically two round steel bowls in a stand: they shine clean. “Look at how hard I’ve scrubbed them,” he says. “I completely agree with what the department has done.”

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2016