R.A. Bazaar… ر۔آے بازار

Located in Lahore’s cantonment, the ‘Royal Artillery Bazaar’ is an old dwelling housing general bus stand, markets, residential area, mosques & seminaries, civil defense centre and post office. History says that this bazaar was meant for soldiers of the then Royal Artillery of Indian Army. My fascination with R.A. Bazaar runs more then 20 years back when I came to stay with my father in Nisar Colony which is a posh area in cantonment situated on Shami Road. This colony houses retired Generals, politicians and other big wigs besides housing serving army officers. There is a funny incident involving my father. While on LPR (leave preparatory to retirement), he went for an interview seeking job. The employer asked his place of residence. He replied ‘Nisar Colony’. Hearing this, the employer smiled and said ‘major sahib, I don’t think you need to do a job’.

Coming back, R.A. Bazaar is located near this colony. When we came to Lahore in 1987, we initially stayed in my grandfather’s home at Ravi Road opposite ‘Minar-e-Pakistan’. My father used to drop me to school located in cantonment and on the way back a sepoy named Sajjad used to take me home on No. 1 Volvo bus. The bus ran from R.A. Bazaar to Sanda, if I remember correctly. We used to go to R.A. Bazaar for routine shopping and sometimes to eat ‘peshawari chappal kebabs’. There are two such shops still serving these kebabs with ‘naans’ and ‘chatni’. Being a hardcore ‘kashmiri’ my father used to prepare his own special beef masala complete with 12 ingredients for the kebabs and had it fried by the shop. The post office of R.A. Bazaar has also a fascination for me. It is a small sized post office and is probably housed in a pre partition building. In fact, there are some military buildings around R.A. Bazaar inscribed with year of construction as far back as 1846. Nearly every post master of this post office had a good acquaintance with my father. This ritual continues to date. There is a ‘papri chaat wala’ and an old ‘cobbler’ around this post office. Some of the dwellers of R.A. Bazaar came from Delhi and speak typical Urdu. Police Station of R.A. Bazaar is located at one end of the bazaar. Once or twice I went there to hand over a cycle thief. When I got selected as a magistrate, my antecedents and character was verified by this police station courtesy my father since the police guy could not write English!

Not to mention the civil defense office in R.A. Bazaar would render this brief without spice. When we shifted from Nisar Colony to Askari Colony, we used to catch a lot of stray goats wandering in and around our home eating away with impunity the newly planted samplings. These goats if caught (I perfected the art after much practice) used to be initially locked in home and then transported through our vintage Mini Morris car to the civil defense office (cattle keeping is prohibited by law inside residential areas). After payment of Rs. 50 as fine the goats used to get free. However, one day tired with handing over goats for free and in need of money, me and my brother sold two of them to a mutton shop in R.A. Bazaar for Rs. 1200! To date I repent this sinful act. There is also a seminary located in front of this office. When required, I offer slaughters for the kids who come to study and memorize Qur’an. These kids are masters of sacrifice. There is a lot of fruit available in the bazaar which also has a big cycle market where mostly the soldiers come for repair of their cycles. Some ‘hakeems’ also live here. It is not known how effective or affective their practice is.

R.A. Bazaar unfortunately became a victim of terrorism few months back. Twin bombings claimed quite a few lives. But the life goes on and for me it remains a favourite place of driving past or roaming about with some nostalgia.