I visited Bahawalpur for the first time in the mid-1970s to meet some of my mother’s relatives. These relatives had moved from Delhi to Bahawalpur at Partition in 1947.
We were in Multan for another relative’s wedding. And so we decided to visit also those in the nearby town of Bahawalpur.
It was a warm winter morning when we crowded into a car and embarked on a dusty road to our destination.
Once in Bahawalpur, we looked for the house and finally arrived at a massive wooden door on a busy street. We knocked on the heavy wooden plank of the door. A smaller door inset in the big one slowly opened and we stepped into another era.
Men in kurta pajamas, women in ghararas and churidaars, scrambling around the house as if on a grand theatre stage.
Shahjahanabad today
Not that such attire was alien to me in Karachi. I lived among people wearing churidaars and ghararas, shervanies and Aligarh pajamas. I was already familiar with an environment where the cluttering of the pandaan and clinking of the saroota accompanied all conversation in the house. Dupattas were dyed with the orange stem of the Har Singar flowers in the backyard of our house every spring. However, all that happened in cosmopolitan Karachi, inside houses with architecture of the modern city.
This house in Bahawalpur, overflowing with inhabitants wearing flowing ghararas and quilted sadries over kurtas made of thick handloom, was different because of its architecture. There were arched doorways, heavy creaking doors, painted ceilings and an open-air courtyard in the centre of the house. One room had a white marble diwan and an amazing gold painted ceiling. Though it was now tarnishing here and there, the gold still glimmered in the dim light of the room.
Har Singar flowers
It was a rambling old house and it must have belonged to some family that crossed the border to the other side at the same time as the present occupants crossed the border to this side.
These would have been people just like my mother’s relatives. After all, my mother’s relatives had traveled from old Delhi, or more specifically Shahjahanabad, leaving behind their belongings, their memories and their ties. They then entered an abode that once belonged to a people who were complete strangers to them, a people fleeing the carnage, just like themselves.
The cluttering of the pandaan and clinking of the saroota accompanied all conversation. Dupattas were dyed with the orange stem of the Har Singar flowers in the backyard of our house every spring
Now, a populous family lived together in the house in Bahawalpur. Two brothers, their two wives, their eight children now all grown up. Some were married with children of their own. Those children were now running up and down the stairs, laughing and screaming. The two brothers had two sisters. One a widow, one never married, now both old and nostalgic, remembering their own childhood in a city faraway. In the same house there also lived some other nondescript relatives, old ladies who were called “aunts”, old men who were called “uncles” and far flung “cousins”. Nobody really remembered how they were related to them. All just happen to be living as a family.
The domestic help in the house had migrated with them from Delhi. Their quaint language, their very Delhi nomenclature, all lived in this haveli.
The cuisine served in the house was exactly what they ate generations ago. They all wore exactly the same type of garments that their forefathers wore in Delhi. The context of their lives and the customs were all as if you had entered a haveli in Shahjahanabad. The ustani-jee who taught the children in the Delhi home had migrated with them too! Her hair, now like a cloud of white candy floss, was covered with a chunna dupatta. She was wearing an immaculate white kurta clasped with buttons, where the kundan was now foggy and the gold around them now almost black. She still lived with them in a room on the first floor. Ustani-jee wrapped in her shawl, her diction, her pronunciation, her acid tongue, her attire – these had all migrated with her from Delhi. Just like the two sisters of the two brothers, she participated in the everyday household affairs quite enthusiastically. Defying her age, she now taught the grandchildren of the children she had taught in Delhi.
A busy Shahjahanabad street
When material wealth and emotional ties were left behind in faraway Delhi, in Bahawalpur many traditions and cultural norms were saved inside this cocoon built zealously around the family.
It was as if a heavy air hung around the rooms of the house, ever telling stories of the past. The present occupants were oblivious of the stories trapped in the rooms of the haveli, but like a true old Delhi family, they were very well aware of the presence of a jinn in the secluded room on the top floor! Tales of the jinn were often narrated late into the night.
That winter afternoon, as we entered the house, we saw the takht in the center of the courtyard which hosted the two sisters. They were reclining on gao takkias as they chatted. While one was chopping betelnuts with her saroota, the other was lazing under the balmy sun. There were many other people running chores in the courtyard. They were hurrying about, going in and out of different rooms that opened into this space in the centre of the house. People were going up and down the staircase. People were bringing in large wheat bags from the main entrance. One “cousin”, using a bamboo pen to practice calligraphy, kept improving the nib of his pen, rubbing it against a corrosive stone. One of the brothers was sitting on a mondha, listening to the radio. One “uncle” with black spectacles was reading under a tree.
In the courtyard of Shahjahanabad's Khazanchi Haveli
Our arrival added to the already high-voltage activity in the house. More chairs were called for. Amidst joy, tears and embraces we all settled down in a circle. And then it happened as it always happens when families meet after many years: a never-ending session of conversation, meandering through diverse topics. Stories after stories were told. News on the welfare of other relatives in various cities was exchanged. The conversation moved and expanded from the welfare of relatives to gossip about them. There were complaints about not being invited to certain events in their respective cities. There were claims of not responding to invitations by certain members of the family.
A serving of nargisi kofta
And finally there was a showering of immense love on each other and sharing of the pain of longing. Promises were made to meet more often. The joint frustration of living in two cities so far apart was expressed.
All this emotional upheaval, a veritable sentimental roller-coaster, happened in one long afternoon.
At lunch I remember been served a large nargisi kofta, which was difficult for me to finish. My mother reprimanded for leaving even a morsel in the plate – for this was frowned upon. Her aunt was strict on table etiquette. Leaving food in your plate was definitely in the domain of bad manners. I passed on the kofta to the person sitting next to me.
As we bid goodbyes, offered our adaabs to all and stepped out of the small wooden door set in the big wooden door, I felt as if an enchanting episode ensconced in a bygone era came to an end.
The ustani-jee who taught the children in the Delhi home had migrated with them too! Her hair, now like a cloud of white candy floss, was covered with a chunna dupatta
No matter how much I read about the city later in life, Bahawalpur for me remained a little piece of Shahjahanabad hidden away from the modern world!
Many years later, it was in the early 2000s in Islamabad, I with my family was invited to a large dinner hosted by a relative from that very family in Bahawalpur.
I was meeting many of these people for the first time after the 1970s. Some were very surprised as to how much I resembled my mother now. But none of them remembered my visit in the 1970s.
The sumptuous buffet served that evening was delicious. The hostess told us that the two sons of the same cook who had come with them from Delhi had cooked the food for that special family evening.
Years later, I heard the old house in Bahawalpur was sold. The developers who bought it simply tore it down. The next generation gradually moved out of Bahawalpur. They now live all over the world, dressed in contemporary attire, speaking a contemporary language, enjoying the cuisine of the countries that they live in.
I wonder if they still carry a small portion of Shahjahanabad deep down in their hearts.
