Claiming Responsibility Towards Our City Spaces
Consider for a moment if you woke up on a hot July day, already late for work. Disheveled and tired. There was no electricity all night. And all you desperately needed, was a cool shower to wake you up, to start your day right, to knock some sense back into your head. But the pipes run dry, your mouth feels coarse and your heart sinks — the water is gone!
Now imagine if that was every day, for an insatiable amount of time. How drastically our lives would change.
Recently, all of us have been bombarded with the news that by 2025 Pakistan’s water resources shall fail us. We’ve all read the posts on social media, even shared the pleas to conserve water. But it is high time we realize that “sharing” a post just isn’t enough, action is required and it is required right away to prepare us for what’s coming ahead. So my friend Shiza initiated an idea, and we decided to take a shift from our lazy weekend routine and spent part of the day in a refreshingly novel manner.
World over, Sundays usually illustrate a variant sight of city life, with more people taking over the streets compared to motor vehicles. Unfortunately, when we toured the streets of Lahore in search of vacant spots to plant trees, we could mostly find remote wide avenues, minimal pedestrian traffic and dull displays of empty streets owing to the scorching heat. We began the day early, by making a trip to model town nurseries and bought neem plants, filled water bottles and started planting trees on the sidewalks of Lahore, mainly around the area of Johar Town. We selected places that we were sure the authorities kept watered, as well as those that were on the daily route for Shiza and Irum to easily water and keep check on.
We learnt two very valuable lessons that day. The first; planting a tree does not take very long and can be a fun activity to do with friends on a day out. The second; our people are amazing! Three girls alone by themselves on a hot day in the middle of the street would have raised some eyebrows, invited some smirks and unnecessary attention. Initially my natural instincts told me to be a little cautious but with every man we met I was proved wrong. We had a man leave his rickshaw, walk across the road to come and help us in the scorching sun in Ramazan. We had a shopkeeper send a boy from across the road with a bucket of water to help us water the plants as well as ask us if we needed anything to drink. We had people guide us on how to properly plant the trees as well as people just leaving us alone, to do our thing. Three girls on the streets of Lahore and no harassment whatsoever!
The entire experience was eye-opening on many levels and we wanted very much to share this experience with everyone we knew so I posted a picture on my public Instagram. The response I got on that was equally overwhelming, with a lot of support and over ten more people willing to join us next time we go! If more and more people plant enough trees, plan healthier activities and consider not spending all of their luxury time in restaurants or at the movies, we can make a real difference.
We are extremely excited to go back again with more people the next time and we want nothing more than for everyone to share the beautiful experience we had on that unforgiving day in June. You are welcome to join us or do it with your group of friends!
Mahnoor Malik, is an independent Visual Artist and Illustrator.
Shiza Ali, is a practicing Architect.
Irum Ijaz, works as a Client Partner at FranklinCovey Pakistan.
