Saturday, January 17, 2009

Day-trip to LUMS

I've been meaning to write about this for a while now... so finally, here goes!
I was back in Karachi for Ramadan and a little bored, so I decided to pay a visit to my brother at LUMS. The flight was short and sweet although the guy sitting next to me asked about my entire life history in the course of an hour and a half!

My brother's roomie from Multan was nice enough to pick me up at the airport and drive me to campus. Lahore is beautiful! Especially compared to Karachi, it's really clean and green and I love the red-brick architecture... the buffaloes near the airport added a bucolic touch :P

The campus itself is gorgeous... very well-maintained and probably one of its kind in Pakistan. The students seemed content... and I was impressed with the diversity; bearded fellows with baggy shalwars hanging out with the ultra-modern Defence crowd and girls in Hijab with their counterparts in skinny jeans, dangling earrings, high heels and lots of kohl. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were few exclusive cliques... people seemed happy to meet and mingle.




Academic Block

The library was well-stocked with books and periodicals (I always judge a university by its library!) and seemed like a popular place to make-out... I saw several couples fawning over one another and I felt like such an aunty... lol. Then I ran into a few friends from Karachi so they showed me around the girls dorms. When it's hot most people sleep in the common room (it's the only place with AC) so they line the floor with mattresses and get ready to snore. Also, guys are not allowed within a mile of the girls' dorms :)

After iftar at the masjid, I attended a talk by Sharmeen Obaid. She's doing some really interesting work on the Oral History Project interviewing old people about their memories of partition backed up with photos and documents.

The campus really came alive at night... (I guess no one goes to bed in Ramzan, post-taraweeh). People were playing volleyball and soccer, a guy was strumming his guitar and singing along and people huddled in groups smoking sheesha and having chai.


LUMS cats

For sehri we went to have omelettes at the "Super Store" with "aaloo-da-paratha" :) It suddenly hit me how much I'd missed out on by being away for college; having a solitary sehri and sometimes sleeping through it, having a hurried iftar and not really being able to do the extra prayers due to midterms and papers... Guess you can't have everything in life.

On the way to the airport we got caught in an andhi (a dusty wind storm) and the driver nearly lost the way but thankfully we made it in time for my flight.

Rose Garden at LUMS- The roses are timed to bloom around convocation in December

3 comments:

  1. Hello Gaia! I'm a LUMS alumni but I think I couldn't have summed it all up as well. Kudos!

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  2. that's great! when did you graduate?

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  3. That will reveal my age, won't it! ;-)

    BSc 2004.

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