The first seven years of my life were spent in the quiet, antiseptic imperial town of Shimla. The only animals I ever saw there were pet dogs on leash, ponies at the mall, and monkeys on Jakhu hill.
Relocation to Lahore thereafter was like waking up to a perpetual fair. There were cousins and friends galore —with the sounds and smells of litter and sewerage which they generated. Tongas, bullock carts, bicycles and some buses took us around. Dogs, cows and buffaloes had free run of the city. Cows were white because they were full of milk. My parents were crazy to buy a black buffalo instead!
For some years after 1940, we lived in my maternal grandfather’s house — 7, Infantry Road in suburban Lahore. Called Kothi, it stood conspicuous amidst wide open spaces.
At the shrine
Across the road, there were carpets of green farms, and beyond them the railway track. In the midst of lush greenery was the dargah of the Sufi saint, Mian Mir. Invited by Sikh Guru Arjan, he laid the foundation stone of the Golden Temple at Amritsar in 1588.
My father was a regular visitor to the shrine. He made us bow to the tomb and tie a thread each on the marble trellis surrounding it. It was an adventure to cycle through narrow strips by the side of farms without falling off the bike.
Quite often, we cycled up to the railway track beyond the shrine, when two trains were due to cross each other. It was a test of nerve to remain standing between the two tracks while the trains thundered past each other.
Once, a boy accepted the challenge to lie on the track while a train passed overhead. He won two rupees, which we all pooled together as a prize for his feat. However, he suffered some burns from the falling coke of the engine. The tracks were thereupon declared out of bounds for us.
Closer to our house were some jamun trees owned by an old man. During the season, some boys used to climb up and shake the branches, while four or five held a sheet to catch the fall. We got caught sometimes and received a sound thrashing.
Swim in the open
A bout 200 metres from our house flowed a small feeder canal. We learnt swimming there and even dared diving from the culvert wall. Some evenings, we took a basket of mangoes along. The basket was lowered into the water to cool the mangoes. Thereafter, one of the seniors would start throwing mangoes in the air. The fruit was to be caught before it fell into the water. By way of equity, no one was allowed to catch more than one mango. On holidays, both banks of the canal were dotted with picnicking families.
In 1946, I started cycling up to my high school near the mall through a shaded avenue called Thandi Sadak. We were part of the sloganeering and cheering crowds whenever a leader like Nehru or Jai Prakash Narayan visited Lahore.
There was not a worry in our lives on 7, Infantry Road. In late 1946, my father was transferred to Rawalpindi. That was the last the family saw of Lahore. When rioting broke out in 1947, we were given refuge by a Muslim family for a month, till we managed to board a refugee train. It just sped past Lahore.
I have made two pilgrimages to my childhood since then. In 1962, the refugee family from Amritsar occupying the house received me very well and even paid off my cabbie without my knowledge.
In 2005, my wife and I could not locate the house. Then, a boy came along and asked helpfully if we were looking for Peeli Kothi. I nodded and he led us to a building under demolition. ‘Here’, he said, ‘we bought it for development’.
I took a picture of my crumbling Camelot.
(Narendra Luther has written extensively in Urdu and English, including a novel. He is a well-known historian of Hyderabad.)
