And so ends the first week in Lahore. It’s coming to the end of summer, so the heat is slowly abating, or at least I am acclimatising after that sudden jump from Melbourne winter. Of course what remains – 30 degrees at 9am – is still enough to slow all movement, human and otherwise, but that’s fine too. It’s easier to stop and smile when there was never much danger of going anywhere in the first place.
I have been staying in the University Guesthouse this last week. It is close to school, and a single bus ride [on the curiously named New Khan Metro] from the main art/ gallery/ museum district. The Lahore Museum has a particularly good collection of artifacts and miniatures, all displayed with a charmingly ad hoc sense of conservation and curatorship. As with the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, there is the definite sense that you find your own wonders here. Indeed the local name for the museum is the ‘wonder house’.
The staff at Beaconhouse have been incredibly friendly and helpful and have made the transition into Pakistani life as easy as one could hope. I have met many of the tutors and David Alesworth, the foundation year coordinator, as well as the Karachi based artist Mahreen Zuberi, with whom I will share the teaching of drawing to the first year students. I look forward to seeing how the students develop over the next few months. I am sure there will be surprises on both sides.
Also this week I begin my studies in miniature painting at BNU. It is a second year elective taken two nights a week. Mahreen tells me that we will be taught the basics of materials, preparation and style, and then how far we take it depends on how hard we work.
And finally I can now count to sixteen [sola] and agree [ji or acha] in Urdu. Cussing will have to come later, so for now khuda hafees!
