THE chorus has somewhat died down. Initially, much was made of the NA-120 election being a fight between women. Much symbolism was associated with the coincidence that both the big parties, the PML-N and PTI, had fielded women in the constituency, the perceived novelty of it all augmented by the presence in the race of a woman no less than Sajida Mir.

The last mentioned and the least threatening of the three ladies happens to be a candidate of the rebel PPP headed by Naheed Khan with her husband in as supporting a role as allowed by the circumstances. Ms Mir was, over the years when the PPP was a force to reckon with, a regular feature of a bunch of hard-to-distract women who have all but departed from the scene with the gradual ouster of the PPP from Lahore politics.

If the cast provided an opportunity for any women-centred news feature somehow the promise has not been fulfilled, which is rather odd unless we have achieved the impossible: We have fast-forwarded to a stage where two women taking each other on in a political contest of national importance is generally considered not a remarkable occurrence.

Admittedly, this is rather offbeat for a conservative watcher like this writer. In a lucid mood, you can use these three characters from three distinctive backgrounds to carry home whatever viewpoint you might favour to dish out to readers at this moment in time. The woman out to rescue her family. The one vowing change and reform through a ‘middle-class’ thrust. And finally, a fading out, vague, shy, almost a hint of a presence of a worker which can be exploited to add effects to your usual lament about dying traditions. And you could then go on to investigate if or why aren’t the ‘sisters’ campaigning this time.

Recall that this was one exclusive part of Lahore where woman held court until a couple of generations ago.

To each of these ladies their cause, but it is not impossible to argue that it is fate which has brought them to an area which had some special and exclusive corners reserved for women only. Indeed, recall that this was one exclusive part of Lahore where woman held court until a couple of generations ago.

Long before actor Rani’s door-to-door canvassing in the area was largely instrumental in sending then husband Sarfaraz Nawaz to Punjab Assembly in 1985, there sat the queen of England in the middle of the Charing Cross square lording over young kids frolicking around her statue into the night. The place was famous back then as malka da but (statue) or malka ka but in Urdu. It was a midway stop before the Lawrence Gardens for a bunch of regulars living off The Mall. Alternatively it was open and airy enough to attract evening visitors of its own in summers.

In time, they came to remove her from the throne bang in front of the Punjab Assembly which of course had its own seats reserved for women to give the whole grand exercise in governance and public representation a more balanced and wholesome appearance.

And if that was an existence too dependent on the choices of the overwhelming male population of the assembly, there were inside the same electoral constituency institutions that could be explored for some real emancipation by learning … places such as the National College of Arts, the Punjab University, not to forget the Fatima Jinnah medical college and a handful of mission-run schools.

The authorities did do whatever they could easily conceive and pull off to ensure some kind of superficial equality, yet there were no-go areas and there were issues where the progress was slow. It was for example painfully odd how the people in the vicinity could do little to get rid of the whole lane of Safya clinics at Safanwala Chowk — which was an ill-concealed euphemism for safaya or abortion.

We allowed much else to ensure that this area, with so much potential to do justice, did not offer women any special deals. Worse, having been the venue of the famous WAF protest whose participants were beaten up by police during Gen Zia’s times, the neighbourhood has recently been the city of the murder of a young woman looking up to the high court to let her live, and live of her free will. She died right at the court’s doorstep.

But then, remember how a ladies’ club also functioned somewhere near around here and how a peenganwala or the swings park inside the Lawrence Gardens meant solely for the ladies had the overcurious boys at the wrong end of the equation: they wondered how it looked and felt on the other side of the fence.

Does it, did it always, fall in the same electoral constituency we have been focusing on here? Maybe yes, maybe no. In any case, it was situated close enough for those who had the guts to admit that not too much faith could be placed in an exercise heavy only on tokenism and opportunistic symbolism. The real women roamed a few kilometres down, in the busy streets of Anarkali.

Anarkali in NA-120. What a gem. What a true symbol. Shall we say a woman sacrificed at the altar of royal Mughal ego, an old indefatigable resident of the area being contested by two women, one an agent of continuity, the other pledging a new country?

The lady’s mystique has survived attempts at scientific research to dismiss her as a myth. She is very much available to be used as a captive icon.

Long hidden physically behind the facade of the ‘Civil’ Secretariat Lahore, if anyone cares, Anarkali has the potential. Only she is held up by a Lahore which may still be too obsessed with male heirs and manly power battles to be seriously thinking about how to truly share it all with the women of the house.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2017