Adil Saleem
This is the photo of a ‘paan farosh’ at Daman-i-Koh, Islamabad. A few days ago I went there and was quite amused to see this classical getup. In the background a song was playing with the wordings: “hameN tou loot liya hai husn waloN nay …” .
Note the amazing variety of things on display in this paan shop. Despite all the entertainment, the poor guy had to endure the Islamabad’s cold evening due to his kurta-pajama outfit.
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I am amazed at the decoration here. Among other things I noticed a model of an ambulance, and a sword handle in the photo.
The picture in interesting, but a little cartoonish. Artificially colorful. Kind of like the overdressed doormen outside hotels, the guy is wearing ridiculous clothes which are not really what the classical getup was but is someone imagination of what it could be.
I guess its all for sun and to attract attention, which is OK because this is marketting.
Yes it is definitely a marketing stunt but very eye catching.
Even though very colorful and eye-catching, I find this shop very incongruous in the Daman-i-Koh (Potohar) setting. I wonder how much business does he do daily. Next time, when I go there, I am going to ask him.
MQ, Teri khabar ne bekhabur mujh ko kia.. ok a little too much pathos but good to hear from you. Is it Asma’s wedding that has old timers including myself visit this site? :)
Isn’t paan itself an incongruous thing in the Daman-e-Koh?
The man, his ridiculous and cartoonish costume, and the idea of selling ‘Paan’ at the beautiful setting of Daman-e-Koh, Margala Hills is out of place and indeed incongruous. He belongs to ‘Chandni Chowk’ in an other capital in an other country and not in Islamabad. Only thing less disgusting than chewing ‘Paan’ and spitting in public is the habit of chewing ‘Tobacco’ and ‘Naswar’. Good to see MQ and Andan Ahmad once again at ATP.
Adnan Ahmad:
That’s a great line: “teri khabar…”. Whose is it?
Yes, it seems that the ” birds ” have not flown away permanently. They still hover around the ATP “birdbath” to see if there is any inviting feed they could pick on.
This shahi paan dude used to be in Anarkali Lahore….a few years ago. He then moved to Daman-e-koh. He is business minded and knows how to generate traffic to his paan shop.
lolz
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Great post and a superb photograph. I’m so glad to see it. I recall legendary Urdu poet Akhtar Sheerani’s friendly panwala.
Gone are those days but still, this sort of culture and his style, even if its cultivated and just for the sake of publicity, its marvellous.
Adil Saleem sahab mubaarakbaad ke mustahaq haiN.
my cousins and i stopped by a paan shop in islamabad. after we got our paans some thing pleasant abd surprising happened. it took us a while to figure out that we were showered by rose petals by the man in the picture 0 if you find him mywebalbum:
http://picasaweb.google.com/raziamay/Islamabad#5300761720561912914
i wonder if this is the same shop as featured in this post.
(i don’t know if the link to my web album worked or not. i wish there were a preview available here)
I am very sorry to see that ATP has censored my post which was written as a well wisher of ATP.
It was this mindset I was referring to precisely.