Prologue
I, Khurshid Anwer s/o KB Sh M A Hamid, SI, SQA, DSc, promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I was born on March 10 at Head Khanki, a canal headworks near Gujranwala, where father was SDO irrigation, and to stay true to my promise, I have no memories of the place. The year was 1929 when the New York Stock Exchange crashed through the floor, casting a shadow on my future finances.
My first memories are of Head Palla near Bahawalpur where I must have been all of five years going on six. The canal colony bungalows were large and cool, similar to the ones I was to live in later at Morgah. As father moved up from being SDO to XEN to SE, the canal colonies kept changing, and with them their environs:
Lyallpur - neinun se neinan mila ke, pyari chabb dikhla ke:
Montgomery - ik bangla baney naira.
Ferozepur - hum ko hein pyari hamari gallian.
Amritsar - taskeen ko hum na roein jo zouq-e-nazar milley ***
Also the bungalows kept growing larger, one bungalow had a whole side let out for a wheat field, another had a large grove of mango trees right in our backyard. Every day began with the mali bringing a huge basket full of fresh vegetables, in all hues of green, give me vegetables any day.
A few memories of Head Palla: when father was to bring his new1935 chocolate coloured Chevrolet car from Lahore, mother had us five, or was it six, children stand on the front lawn to wave to him as he drove past straight to his office, for me since then there has been no car like a Chevrolet.
Then father brought our very first radio from Lahore to join our gramophone with it’s stack of 78 rpm black vinyl records, mother thought she could replay any program on the radio just like the records on the gramophone.
There was electricity but no fans, a long cloth ‘punkha’ two to three foot wide, extending across the room, was suspended from the ceiling, a rope tied to the punkha was taken outside to the verandah through the wall and a servant would pull and release the rope to move the punkha throwing wave after wave of cool air down on the occupants.
The huge steel gates at the headworks would be shut down for seasonal purposes and we would play on the dry river bed under the shadow of the giant steel wall formed by the closure of the many gates, with water peeking through in small quantities from the sides and bottom of the gates. It was a very eery feeling knowing that a thirty foot high wall of water was trapped behind the gates with the potential of sweeping every thing before it. The very heavy machinery which operated the steel gates, put the germ of love for machinery in my mind.
The next move was to Model Town when father became Under Secretary at the Irrigation Secretariat; for a year we lived in ‘G’ Block while our house was built on two six kanal plots 113 & 114 F, the house on one and a tennis court and an orchard on the other.
The very first song I practiced on father’s harmonium in Model Town was Noor Jehan’s - tu koun si badli mein merey chand hai aa jaa., my introduction to Noor Jehan, which was to last a life time.
The back of the servant’s quarters presented a wall in the back yard against which I first practiced playing tennis, before graduating to the tennis court on the front lawn and from there to the Model Town tennis club.
I started my schooling in ‘New School’, a predominantly girls school and was shunted out after class IV, then to Minerva Public School also in Model Town, then father got transferred to Amritsar and I joined Cambridge College, actually only a school, topped my class in the matriculation examination.
There are many happy memories of both these excellent schools. At the annual prize giving ceremony at Minerva I was given the task of arranging all the prizes near the rostrum, I saw a story book which I so wished I had earned as a prize, to my pleasant surprise my name was called out as the best student of my class, and that same book was given to me. Perhaps the starting point of my fascination with books. I judge people by the number of books they have in their homes, all kinds, also by their love of music, love of pets and of the outdoors.
The Model Town of my teen years is remembered particularly for the very colourful Diwali and Dusehra festivals. At Diwali, lit up ‘deevas’ in their thousands would be lined up on the parapets of all the houses including ours, creating a fairy land spectacle. Our Hindu friends would send us figurines made of sugar in the shape of mythical religious objects. At Dusehra we would enjoy watching the towering effigies of Rama, Lakshman and the monkey God Hanuman with his lethal tail and the spectacle of Rawan going up in flames. I so wish the Christians, Hindus and others are encouraged to celebrate their religious festivals in the open, like before.
Once a cyclist set up camp in the club ground for nonstop cycling over three or four days, what a festive occasion that was with music blaring all day and night. I heard this song so many times, I started liking it:
‘changa banaya ai sanun khilona
aapey banaya te apey mitaiya’.
The Irrigation secretariat used to move to Shimla every summer and this afforded us children seven glorious summers in that jewel in the crown of India, right up to partition. The memorable part of our journey began at Kalka where we would arrive by train from Lahore, then the narrow gauge train chug chugging 65 miles to Simla, past the famous Solan brewery.
From the Shimla railway station, our considerable numbered family would start on a long trek much like some mountaineers off to conquer a peak, with half a dozen coolies trailing us with our steel trunks and hold-alls. The destination every year would be to a different villa in Simla East, the residential side of that fabulous hill station. I can remember only a few names of the dream places where we spent the best seven years of our teens, youth and childhood respectively; Benmore (overlooking the tennis courts), Holly Oak (probably the highest spot in Simla), Wellington Villa (a winding approach downhill and back uphill).
Girja Maidan in Shimla west, also called ‘the Ridge’, where every one in Shimla, or so it seemed, would gather in the evenings, overlooking the Mall, also overlooking the Ladies Park where the chowkidar would not allow us boys within range; the multi-tiered Lower bazaar hidden behind and below the Mall; the cinema house just around the corner from the Girja, where we saw many movies starring Ronald Colman,Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, Diana Durbin, Judy Garland & Shirley Temple; the winding road on one side of the Girja going a couple of miles uphill to Jakhu Mandar, the habitat of hundreds of monkeys, eating ‘channas’ out of our hands, which I also ate on the quiet; Mashobra, a family picnic spot, six or seven miles walk for the parents, boys on rented cycles, girls on the hired ponies/horses age wise; the name Sanjauli rings a bell vaguely, as does Anandale, a long tunnel connecting some place to some other place, water dripping from the roof, wall mounted electric lights, in a locality whose name I would love to recal; my first ever ‘buffet’, a tea party for officer’s children on the lawns of the Viceregal Lodge, walked past the Vicerene to shake her hand.
The last but the ultimate memory, our mountain climbing, where each peak was the last that had to be conquered before turning back, to find yet another beyond it, needless to say we never made it to the ‘last’ peak; then the many valleys that beckoned us, we in our foolhardy fervour kept going down until we hit bottom, forgetting what goes down must also come up; to dip our feet in the heavenly cool water of the frothing hill torrents, developed in me a life long love for them, can not drive past one without lingering; the many, many amateur photographs - ‘khabi hum khoob soorat thai’, now nestled, sepia coloured, in some put-away albums. I would give my right arm (no, left arm) to go back to Shimla once, before I say good bye to this middling planet of a trivial star.
I joined F C College in 1944, a college with neat clean environment, excellent American, Muslim and Hindu professors, a big library where I first started reading Time magazine, alas unreadable now. As a member of the Muslim student’s federation, stood guard shouldering a double barrel gun, for two days and nights at Mamdot Villa where the Quaid was staying and was under threat from the Khaksars; even had to face a very scary false alarm, whether it was the cold or the fear, but I remember shivering. Had an audience with the Quaid, but could not get close enough to get his signatures on his portrait; I used to dabble in pencil sketches, the better ones were of Kamini Kaushal, Shobana Samarath, Arlene Dahl and Richard Greene.
And then the final stop, the Engineering College at Moghalpura in1947, the year father became the first Pakistani Chief Engineer of the Punjab irrigation department, on his way to finally becoming the Chief Engineering Advisor to the government of Pakistan. In the college all the Hindu and Sikh professors had left, recent pass-outs had been inducted as professors, not the best way to teach a difficult discipline like engineering. The eventful period there requires a whole episode by itself but I will have to skip that.
Before the final exam we went on a protest march to demand postponement of the exams; a rather healthy friend sat on the cycle bar in front of me, the bar snapped under his weight and I fractured my nose; instead of getting the exam postponed, my studies suffered and I had to undergo R.I for another year; fially I became an engineer, the rest is history.
Now a rendering by one of the three queens of Pakistan:Malika-e-Mauseeqi, Malika-e-Tarannum & Malika-e-Pukhraj:
‘taskeen ko hum na roein jo zouq-e-nazar miley, huraan-e-
khuld mein teri surat magar miley
saqi gari ki sharm karo warna aaj ham,
har shab piya hi kartey hein mae jis qadar milye
apni gali mein mujh ko na kar dafan baad-e-qatl,
merey patey se khalq ko kiyoun tera ghar miley
tum ko bhi ham dikhlaeinge majnun ne kya kiya,
fursat kashakash-e-gham-e-pinhan se gar miley
ai skanan-e-kucha-e-dildar dikhana,
tum ko kahin jo Ghalib-e-ashufta sar miley’.
