“At the Lahore Karhai” by Imtiaz Dharker portrays the nostalgia experienced by Indians living

outside their home land. The poet herself is of Indian origin but has been brought up in
Wembley, a county in England with comparatively larger population of residents from Indian
origin. The poet’s cultural background helps her to do justice to the emotions and feelings she
has tried to express through her poem.

The poet narrates the old memories surfacing from within her heart as she travels down to the
Lahore Karhai, Wembley, an Indian restaurant in the area, and she feels a powerful nostalgia
erupting from within her. The fact that she calls it a pilgrimage itself expresses how meaningful
this journey went down to be for her. She compares her journey to that of truck drivers back in
India, driving their trucks on The Grand Trunk road, across Punjab to Amritsar, and then,
drenched in sweat, swearing, getting down at a dhaba with an expectation to get food that
tastes like home. She is also a trucker, only of a different kind. Instead of trucks, people like her,
the Non-resident Indians, years away from their home in Sialkot and Chandigarh, bear the
weight of the rush and chaos in their lives for some extra miles, and then at moments like these,
they too stop, at restaurants and places which promise them the feeling of home, with a hope of
getting a break, and giving a chance to the memories reverberating in their heart to come to life
and fill their environment with nostalgia. With such a feeling does the poet enter the doors of
Lahore Karhai, expecting the taste of her mother’s hands in the bread she is about to break.

She describes the company that she has got around her on the lunch table—a Sindhi migrant,
who left her home back in Lahore, sitting with his wife who prays to Krishna everyday, “the
keeper of her kitchen and her life”; an Englishman too young to be influenced by his domicile
and instill that feeling of superiority, and two girls representing the typical Bombay culture with
their confidence. She further goes on to say that that winter taught them to wear their past like
summer clothes.

As they swoop on the divine meal on a great day, memories from past rejuvenate in the poet’s
mind. Every dish she tastes reminds her of someone back home. The tarka dal reminds her of
Auntie Hameeda, ever bite of karhai ghosht brings to life memories of Khala Ameena, and the
gajjar halva synonymously reminds her of Appa Rasheeda. The warm naan reminds her of a
second person singular “You”, perhaps referring to her soulmate. As she brings another bite near
her mouth, her hand stops halfway to witness the divinity and nostalgia of the moment. The
smiling face of the owner’s son, the look of the cook preparing the kebabs, and the fact that all
people on the table feasting together--Kartar, Rohini, Robert, Ayesha, Sangam, and she herself—
sharing their past, bounded together by the bread they break—the nostalgic meal. She wraps up
by saying that activities such as these, such traditional feasts, are rather excuses for
remembering our long-forgotten past. On a normal day, they would have preferred Chinese, but
the tradition and nostalgia such a feast encompasses within itself is unparalleled and is perhaps
more important a reason than the food itself why people such as her, Truckers of different kind,
go for such a pilgrimage once in a while.