ESSAY
Lahore Between Two Trains:
Then and Now
by Faizan Ahmad – Photography by the author, Art by Eman Farhan
I moved to Lahore in late 2013. I came from a small town called Basirpur, the kind of place where everyone knows your father’s name and news travels faster than the bus. By late afternoon, the bus stand is empty, and by maghrib the market is closed. The streets get so quiet you can hear a motorcycle coming from far away. At night, the stars sit close and bright and if a car passes, you already know whose it is before you see the face.
Lahore felt like another world. Even at night, it was never quiet – horns blaring, bikes and buses still running. The lights were so many, so bright, you couldn’t find a single star. The air was thick, smelling of petrol, kebabs on hot coals, and that wet dust smell after rain. Roads were wide and kept going, turning under big flyovers. The buildings were so tall, I had to bend my head all the way back just to see where they ended.
I was new in the city, I didn’t know how to belong. The Metrobus had just launched at that time. For twenty rupees, I could go from one end of Lahore to the other without asking anyone for help. I still remember that first ride, standing in line, copying how others swiped their card, pretending I wasn’t lost. Once onboard, I stayed near the door. Everyone else looked like they knew where to get off. Nobody asked where I was from. In my hometown, a stranger is like a public event. In Lahore, you could disappear and no one would notice.
Slowly, I started speaking to my fellow passengers. Just small questions at first about their life and dreams. But Lahore doesn’t like small talk; the talk jumps to real things. People told me about their happiest day, failed exams, rented homes, and how they moved to the city.
A man I spoke to said that his father had left for Australia when he was nine months old and came back fifty-two years later. “The happiest day of my life,” he said. “He never made another family. We were always his only family.” Another told me about the time he saw a child running in front of a tanga and jumped off his bicycle to save him. “I’m not a hero,” he said. “That’s just what we are here for, to help one another.”
I started writing these simple stories and also taking photos with my phone camera, of hands holding tiffins, of tired faces, and sometimes of the city outside the window. There was no project in my mind. I was just doing it because I had to travel in the Metrobus regularly for my university.
The Metrobus felt more than just a public vehicle. It was warm and messy and a little too congested. You could hear a phone call you weren’t meant to hear. Sometimes a child cried for four stops straight, and no one complained. Sometimes, an uncle scolded a boy for chewing gum too loudly.
The people traveling with me were all regular folks. Normal people who worked hard for themselves in the face of all the challenges, who talked about cricket matches, discussed wedding ceremonies of their relatives, and politics from their local councils to the national and international level. For me, these people were the reason “Lahore, Lahore Aye”. Over time, I started to recognise some faces. The woman working at the metro station. The boy in a school uniform who always got off at MAO College. The silent man who looked like a retired professor and always carried a cloth bag.
Those rides from late 2013 to 2019 turned into the Lahore by Metro book. At the time, I thought I was just collecting stories. But I was also learning how to approach strangers. How to wait. How to watch the city.
After graduation, I started working and moved to the other side of Lahore. I got a car. Started rushing between meetings. Stopped looking out the window. A few years went by like that.
Then in the summer of 2022, I was back on the road for a project documenting the lives of flood victims. I travelled to several villages of Sindh and covered those stories. I sat beside people who had lost homes, animals, memories. I started turning those stories into a book.
And when I returned to Lahore, I felt bored in my workplace. I found myself on the Orange Line as it was near my house. Not to document the stories, but just to feel the presence of people again and to hear their stories.
It’s a beautiful train, better than the Metrobus, clean and air-conditioned. Quiet. But it doesn’t feel like the Metrobus where I had spent five years. Perhaps it is the four to five year gap that has made the city more modern, and I now miss that older feeling, even among the same kind of crowd.
People sit with their heads down, eyes on screens. They don’t talk. Even children don’t fight. Everyone is scrolling past cooking hacks, Dubai visa tips, wedding dances. There are always TikTokers lurking in the train. The city moves, but the people are paused. The train is cleaner, faster, colder, silent and sleek. People are dressed better. More women are travelling alone these days. There are CCTV cameras, digital screens, and recorded announcements. Everything is working smoothly. But the mood is different.
It’s not that people are colder now. Just quieter. There’s a kind of tiredness on faces that you can’t describe. Maybe it’s the economy. Maybe it’s the notifications. Maybe it’s something else.
A shopkeeper told me he earns Rs. 70,000 now but still can’t cover his expenses. “Zindagi pehlay asaan thi,” he said. “Ab sab kuch mehnga bhi hai, aur halka bhi.” Back in 2013, people making Rs. 30,000 per month still had time to smile. They’d say Allah ka shukar hai and tell you a joke. Now, people earning double seem more tired.
One day I saw a girl reading a digest. Not on her phone. A real printed digest, folded and hidden under a notebook. She turned the pages like she was stealing something. And I realised it had been weeks since I had seen anyone read. I didn’t speak to her; she wouldn’t have spoken back. That’s not how this train works. But I watched her smile once at a line, and that was enough.
It’s easy to blame the train or maybe time. It is 2025, not 2013, which was when I’d moved to Lahore for the first time as a villager. Maybe I have changed too. I turned thirty. Maybe I don’t talk to strangers the way I used to. Now I am more careful of people’s privacy, I think before approaching passengers. Maybe people were happy to talk to that young boy in me back then, and now I have grown and people hesitate to share stories with me. But I still ride the train, the bus. Mostly on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Still hoping someone next to me will break the silence. That someone will remind me of what this city sounds like when it’s not afraid to speak. I still don’t know if this is another book or just a way to feel less alone in a city that’s stopped speaking. I’m still listening, still waiting.
Faizan Ahmad is a Lahore-based photographer and story-teller. He is the author of Lahore By Metro and the editor of the book Mawakhat. His work has been published in The Guardian, BBC Urdu, Express Tribune, Daily Times, and The News and has been exhibited at Lahore University of Management and Sciences (LUMS) and the Lahore Metro Station.
Eman Farhan is a writer and artist from Karachi, Pakistan. He graduated from Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture with a BFA in 2024. Their work appears in Lakeer Magazine, The Blue Orange Project Magazine and The Karachi Collective. He is a finalist in the National Youth Poet Laureate program in English, affiliated with Urban Word, NYC. He loves David Cronenberg movies and his cat.
About the Photograph
Title: Bas Yun Hi
2024
“A small moment of curiosity in Block 2, where a rickshaw driver left his light on. At night, Karachi has bathed me in its warm streetlight. It has also left me out in the cold under fluorescent light bulbs. This is a small ode to walking in the street and stopping along the way. The title is a reference to Schehzad Mughal’s song, ‘Bas Yun Hi’. The music video depicts him walking along Clifton Bridge.”