iPhone | iPad
Android
Huawei
Flagship carriers Emirates and Etihad have issued a statement as some flights in Munich were either cancelled or diverted
KT APPDOWNLOAD
If Ever I Decide to Go Anywhere, I’ll Go to Delhi…
Some times when I sit back, close my eyes and try to recollect memories that comprise a care free and untroubled part of my life, a sizeable portion of it hovers around a place called UP.
My mother migrated to Pakistan from India in 1947. She could not have been more than 13, a child really, but the experience must have been so intense that it remained firmly engrained in her memory forever.
The family’s ‘in-the-nick-of time’ escape from their Keeling Road residence in New Delhi with just their lives and the family jewels tucked inside the burqa worn by her mother, a younger sister fainting at the sight of drawn swords of marauding Sikhs, the overnight stay in Lal Qila, their faithful Hindu dhoban who bought freshly washed clothes to Lal Qila for onward travel to an unfamiliar land and the heart wrenching story of a destitute Pathan selling his pagri (head gear) for a roti (bread).
The fabric was bought by her mother
to hurriedly stitch a frock for her
youngest sister.
These and many similar tales peppered her conversation until it reached a stage where we all knew them by heart. We also got fed up and sometimes staged a protest of sorts by getting up and leaving with a “not again” whenever nostalgia got the better of her.
And in her last days it was more often, than seldom. I often wonder what was so special about UP that she never got over it. Whenever my uncles and aunts, now permanently settled in USA, would suggest to her about going abroad for a vacation and visiting them for a change, she would always retort, “If ever I decide to go anywhere, I‘ll go to Delhi and Rapri” and we would exchange knowing glances because we all knew about her morbid fear of air travel.
Me, the Convent bred and urban to the core, forever complained about why she insisted on telling everyone that she was from Rapri, a small village near Agra. She would always correct me that she was not from Rapri……Rapri was hers’ and I would concede defeat.
This line was borrowed from her late father who used it to great effect whenever he was ragged about his zamindari background in Aligarh (University) by his tennis playing, city bred pals. Rapri was slightly in the backwaters those days and I presume, it still is.
However, memories are not about brand names and shiny cosmopolitan dwellings. They are about a moment in time where one is made to feel loved, cherished, protected and prized. And on all these accounts, it appears that her time spent in Delhi and Rapri (UP) was permanently etched in her memory.
And I have heard it all…..the Birla Mandir sojourn, her friend Kamla singing to her on a firangi contraption called telephone and her indulgent grand father smilingly ignoring it – young girls using telephones was unheard of and wasn’t the done thing then, the wonders of Connaught Place, Jugnu, Anmol Ghari, Sehgal, Noorjahan, haveli entrance to accommodate an elephant passing through, dacoits disguising as overnight guests and leaving in the morning without looting out of respect for the gracious hosts (the area was notorious for dacoits who sheltered in the dense forests), family elders predicting doom — a radio that would show moving pictures, heaven forbid! (television), jalebis and balushahis for breakfast, the play grounds of M.B. Girls High School, buying the entire village with sacks filled with rupee notes mounted on donkeys, an errant uncle running away from the house and spending the night at a mela (carnival) only to return the next evening with friends for another joyous night out and discovering that the mela never happened……the last time the mela was held there was some sixty odd years ago, as recollected by villagers living nearby, Eids, Diwalis, the mangoes, the monsoons, the saints, the sufis and the mithai loving jinns.
With age, the distinction between facts and fiction slowly eroded.
Stories, events, fantasies and folklore intertwined themselves and what |
was left behind was a flavour of an era gone forever, except perhaps in the
annals of time.
Fast forward to year 2009!
Sipping green tea with lemon after a spectacularly heavy dinner at a friend’s place, someone suggested that I visit Malaysia this year with family, as it is relatively cheaper option than Europe or North America, and much more fun. And before I could contain myself, I blurted, “If ever I decide to go anywhere, I‘ll go to Delhi and Rapri.” Many a conversations in the dimly lit room stopped dead in their tracks and quite a few eyebrows were raised, incredulity writ all over.
Surprising as it may sound, but I knew exactly where this came from.
Irfan Qamar is a Karachi-based banker. He can be reached at irfanq@dibpak.com
More news from
The adjustment applies to a section of the road extending from Ras Al Khor Road to Sharjah in both directions
The actor had been depressed over the past couple of days, his father told the police
Some will go on cruise and take a trip abroad, while others will stay home and pick up new skills
Several activities are also lined up throughout the day, from art and drawing workshops to origami-making sessions
Brazilian Fabio Lima strikes twice in Dubai club's emphatic 4-0 victory at the Hazza Bin Zayed Stadium in Al Ain
Jon Rahm, Wyndham Clark, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods were among the stars packing their golf bags and leaving the famed Kentucky course after a testing second round on Friday
The breach occurred during one of the busiest travel periods for the airport in southern Germany