If the street had a number, I do not remember it, since it was always “our street”(“hamari gali”) for us, the younger ones. It was “gali kay larkay”, the boys of the street, or “gali kay log”, the folks of the street, or, sometimes even “gali ki izzat”, the honor of the street, something for which there had been many a fight. Nowadays, it is “purani gali”, the old street.

There was a strong feeling of camaraderie among the people of the street, in spite of coming from different backgrounds. The Chaudhries, living right in front of us, were from Lahore, and Chaudhry sahib, a lively idiosyncratic person, used to read the newspaper loudly, as if he was reciting the Koran, with the pitch drowsily going up and then coming down again. However their family and ours were like one, and my sister, who was a healthy bubbly baby, was always at their house, being pampered by the daughters. The whole family is now settled in Canada. Once in a blue moon one of the daughters pays a visit at my parent’s.

It was a strange assortment of families, for example, that of Syed sahib, who was a very pious gentle person, who along like his sons was always hurrying towards the mosque, to say his prayers. The eldest son is now a director in some government organization, the second is a commodore or a rear-admiral, while others are gainfully employed in the country or abroad. Syed sahib passed away a couple of years ago, but just a week before his decease, my wife and I went to see him in the hospital, and in a rare expression of feelings, I bent down to kiss his hands, when departing, since I had a strong inkling that it will be our last meeting. His elder sons still visit my parents for whom they have a lot of respect, and humour my mother, by talking about the plum tree in our garden, which r gave a bountiful crop every year, and which was expeditiously distributed among the neighbours by my mom. One of the brothers says that once we had left, they never tasted a single fruit from that tree.

Then there was Thanvi Sahib, a brother of the famous Ehtasham-ul-haq Thanvi , the religious scholar. His one son became the minister for religious affairs in an earlier Musharraf cabinet , another equally illustrious son is running some Islamic research center, both of them obtaining their early education through the alternate Islamic Education system, popularly known as the munshi, fazil system, practiced in madrasas. Both have brilliant minds, and in spite of the drawback of not attending the traditional education system, proved their capabilities, demonstrating the fact that brilliance makes its mark notwithstanding lack of opportunities, and also demonstrating how the madrasas have changed in Pakistan in the last forty years, from centers of learning and research into incubators for future terrorists.

There were other families, some of whom came from liberal or feudal backgrounds, but got good education, and joined government service. They had no time for spiritual persuits, and lived a social life which was out of place in the street of middle-class government servants, their behavior often creating tensions and conflicts with other people.

We lived in that street for three years and then shifted to other more well off localities, but never found the feeling of kinship with our neighbors, like the one we found in that street of sector G-6/2, back in mid-sixties. My parents now live in f-8/1, and they have cordial relationships with the neighbours, but the magic that existed in that street of G-6/2 is just not there, and my mother, who is now very old often laments about it. Until recently the last of the older families was still living there, but recently they shifted to their newly built house, and with their departure our only remaining link with our old street was broken.

All the houses are still there, but our memories are only ghosts, that live in those houses, or haunt our minds. That street symbolized values that still existed in the mid-sixtees, reminiscent of the pre-partition days. All the elders were a witness to the great divide. Some had immigrated, while others were locals, but they all shared common values and were all heavily influenced by their common experiences during the Pakistan movement. The affinity they had for one another was passed on to the next generation, and it is not surprising that this generation still keeps in touch with one another, even after four decades, however as time passes, the matrix which held together the whole nation is weakening, new transnational ideologies originating in troubled harsh foreign lands are making inroads, creating differences among the population, and the people from the good old street could not remain impervious to the changes overtaking the society, and are finding it difficult to keep up the relationships that existed before.