Roshanlal Bhatia's ' Age of innocence'

Old Karachi: tram on Bunder Road

An octogenarian in Mumbai shares fond remembrances of Karachi, a city he loves but may never again see
By Roshanlal Bhatia

The news that India and Pakistan are liberalising their visa regimes has cheered me up, but it has come a bit too late for me. I was born in Karachi 85 years ago and haven�t been back since. All my siblings before and after me were also born in Karachi years before Independence and Partition. Our parents were migrants from Sialkot who had come to the city in the first decade of the 1900s.

My father ran a popular, successful sweet shop and restaurant called Dhannamul Halwai near the Bolton Market tram terminus on Bunder road and Lakshmi building, which had come up while we lived there. Our neighbor was Habibullah Khan, a trader who had business links with China and other countries, whom everyone called Khan Saheb. Since we were the only Punjabi families in the neighborhood, we were very close to each other. Children from both our families were in and out of each other's homes and kitchens all the time. Khan Saheb had given strict instructions to his family not to force or encourage us vegetarians to eat meat.

 

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