Never too far from the roots

In the neighbourhood where we grew up, almost all my childhood companions have left. I, who was expected to be one of the early ‘departees’ to distant shores of rosy promise, have as a result of assorted fateful twists, stayed happily on. Every once in a while, I post a picture of the area on social media – an especially brilliant sunset, or recently of a place transformed under a thick blanket of snow.

Of the many comments that poured in, several were from those with whom one had run around as a child. Some commented on the little changes that had taken place over the decades, and others waxed eloquent on the beauty of the snow-scape. Without exception, all missed their childhood home, the idyll of innocence and the happy years of growing up without a care in the world.

This set off an expected chain of thought, and I went back to my father and the oft-repeated stories of his growing up in Lahore. The city that he and numerous ancestors had called home. My father, Amrit, and his close friend, Prakash Krishna, who owned one of Lahore’s finest bookshops, Ramakrishna and Sons (he later went into the book business in New Delhi), were among the last Hindus to leave Lahore. They came away with their lives through quick thinking, bluster and sheer good luck. What, at least my father had to show for those days, was a gunshot scar on his leg and a memory seared forever. Yet, he chose but rarely to speak of that moment, but could go on for hours about the beauty of Lahore, growing up in that city and like Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, hurriedly climbing upon that massive siege gun, the Zam-Zammah, that stood outside the museum, before they were shooed off.

Through his mind’s eye, even I would travel to the magnificent mansion that my grandfather had built, share the succulent kebabs carried for a picnic to the Shalimar Bagh or pedal with him on his cycle to Government College where he studied, and then briefly taught till Partition took place.

Once he was on this side of the border, he almost cauterised the bitterness, the sadness, the tragedy of leaving. Time and again, he got opportunities to revisit Lahore and relive, if briefly, those treasured moments. He never took these red-carpet chances. His answer was always the same, ‘I have very happy memories of Lahore and I would like to leave them at that.’