Yeh Faisalabad Hai

Nadeem Saheb:

I ``own`` Lyallpur, a city from which I was kicked out (``migrant`` in your terminology). As a child, I remember it as a graceful, cultured city where we bathed in the canal, went for long walks, had several schools and a college, celebrated festivals like holi, diwali, ramlila, visakhi, gurbpurbs, lohri and basant with great fervour. We loved it so much that you will still see shops in Delhi named after Lyalpur.

But I digress. Faislabad is now truly an ugly city. GOP seems to spend all its money on Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi, leaving other cities to its own devices. I was surprised when I visited Faislabad Railway Station two years ago; it was almost unchanged from the time we took a train from there in 1947, except for a name change.

BTW the textile industry was not started in Lyalpur by those who went there after 1947. There was a large and successful branch of Delhi Cloth Mills there in 1947. The Pakistan governmetn confiscated the property from its owners and renamed it Lyalpur Textile Mills. I do not know what happened to it afterwards. But for that embryo planted by my parents` generation, Pakistan would not have a flourishing textile industry today. It wouldn`t hurt to give a little bit of credit where it is due, even if the recepient of the credit is the cunning, devilish, scheming, untrustworthy hindu bania.

Dost-mittar ji

My fathers family too `own` Faisalabad, as thats where they first went to when they were kicked out of Jullunder! My dad too has memories similar to yours of Lyallpur. It has changed so much to become a big dump, with a big `pindoo` mentality. The city has grown so much it is at the doorstep of our pind.

As a child i remember seeing the lovely old Sikh and Hindu architecture of the city and our mohalla, we used to love going to our tayas` houses where one room would lead to another then another and then another, and the roofs were so high. Still the old tight alley ways are there, but the houses have been replaced by `modern` style houses. Nowadays you see this architecture in the old part of Chiniot. Faisalabad is fast losing this architecture which needs to be preserved.

In Harcharnpura, there is an old Havelli now owned by a Shia family it is still in its original form and well maintained, with red brick and lovely designs.

If you go to Kaiseri gate theres some kind of fountain that still has Gurmukhi writing on a plaque, we used to look at it strangely and wonder who would have read it. Along the canal theres a Hindu temple or its remnants, i remember driving by it, but i think there is a shop there now, as all of that area is highly prized business real estate now, though the temple roof is still there and you can see deities carved on it in white stone.

The city needs to be cleaned, the canals are dug up and just left. Its so inconvenient when you have to go thru the city, theres so much traffic. The rich in Faisalabad are really rich and keep themselves in lush `colonies` preferring to go to `D` ground (which is also not clean, but cleaner than the rest of the city).

Theres so much money there, but the elite ppl haven`t really done anything for their city which is a shame, as they are the ones in a postion to do something, however they are not really culturally inclined.

And for a city of 5 million, theres still only 2 flights a day to Karachi, as there were when i was a kid, the city has got bigger but the prosperity has stayed only within a few hands.

ally#2

Aa andleeb mil ke karein aah-guzaarian
Tu hai-gul pukar tau main pukaroon hai-dil!

Faislabad is not an exception. Any city that grows fast in an unplanned manner, and this is true of most subcontinental cities, meets this fate. As for the lack of air flights out of Faislabad, that would be natural as it is only a short drive from Lahore airport.

Talking of Harcharanpura, I remember visiting it a couple of times as my eldest sister was married into a family in that mohalla. If I recall, it was somewhat less prosperous than our Guru Nanak Pura. My father had bought a 12-marla or kanal plot of land (ahaata) there, I presume, for investment.

Nadeem,

Did you graduate from DPS around 1984-86?

Thanks,

haideri

#3

Sorry for the typo in the first line, which should read:

Aa andleeb mil ke karein aah-o-zaarian
Tu hai-gul pukar tau main pukaroon hai-dil!

DM,

Harcharnapura is next to the sabzi mandi, and usually plots there would have been for investment. I think now they have changed the name to Khalidabad or something like that, but most ppl still call it Harcharnpura.

Vaisey 10 yrs ago, Lahore airport wsan`t very big and everything went via Karachi anyways. But the fact is, Sialkot, a much smaller city has a new airport built by private investors and its also not too far from Lahore. The elite ppl of Faisalabad dont really care that much about their city!

Very well written, very informative.

Sometime ago I visited Faisalabad and everywhere I went, the water thru the taps was almost muddy. The people told me that that is how the water was in that city since it came froma canal. They were drinking it without giving a second thought. Bottled water was not introduced yet, so I had top drink soda all the time. I promised that I would never come to that city again.

Lyalpur name is famous in East Punjab......many busineses and colleges are named after ``Lyallpur``....i.e. ``Khalsa College Lyallpur``....or Lyallpurian di Hatti

It seems we always long for our childhood homes......not an hour goes by that I think of the village in Pb I was born.......and the city I was raised in......