A Multi-Faith Street
THERE is quite a lot more to Abbottabad than what its Anglicised name and its fame as a hill station would indicate. The fact that this slightly high altitude town, ringed by verdant hills, has still retained its former name is quite a tribute to Sir James Abbott, the first deputy commissioner of the erstwhile district of Hazara in the 19th century British India. But a hill station it may no more qualify to be called in view of a plethora of reasons.
During the last three decades, Abbottabad has seen an incredible increase in the number of people inhabiting its cramped environs. The pressure of population has led to a no-holds-barred construction spree and the resultant disfigurement of its former serene landscape. The rush to get rich overnight through piling concrete here, there and everywhere is so intractable that green hills with tall conifer-trees are being bulldozed with a kind of contempt heretofore not known. This bizarre mindset has seen the construction of dozens of ungainly multi-storeyed plazas and motor workshops.
But Abbott Kaka, the avuncular title he earned during his stay as the area’s administrator in chief, and the poor state of the hill station appear to have dominated the discussion at the expense of many other interesting existential aspects attached to the place.
The old Abbottabad bazaar surrounded by a series of interconnected dark narrow streets and a place called Nawansheher (new town) were and still remain the main business and residential centres. In the olden times, these two areas were inhabited by Hindus and Sikhs in considerable numbers. Partition in 1947 changed the demography of the area, perhaps for all times to come.
The busiest and indeed most fascinating of these old places is the Gurdwara Galli in the Abbottabad bazaar. It is astonishing that this highly interesting little street has attracted such little attention in the media. As the name suggests, this street is home to a pre-partition Gurdwara.
The old building still stands its ground but it no more serves the intended purpose and has since been turned into a market of sorts filled to the ceiling with plastic wares of common use. Luckily, the inscription at the entrance in Sanskrit denoting the name of the Gurdwara has withstood the winds of change.
At a little distance from the Gurdwara is a mandar with its unique architecture. A public sector school has been set up inside this former place of worship but a tour inside the building would reveal that this extant building still retains its old aura of religiosity. It has undergone some minor alterations but its grandeur appears to have survived the tide of times.
A Dawoodi Bohra place of worship is a relatively new addition to this very small street which is no more than one hundred metre in length. This cream-coloured place is a tall slim structure which stands out for its newest type of architecture in a place where all surrounding buildings are old, some on the verge of near collapse.
Dawoodi Bohra who have a minuscule presence in the area are among the oldest inhabitants of Abbottabad. Attending to their daily chores, women folk of this community could be seen strolling in the old bazaar wrapped in their distinct burqas. Apparently running small businesses and shops, Dawood Bohra men are invariably referred to as ‘seths’ in the area. Their place of worship is also called as ‘sethoun ki masjid.’
The existence of a mosque of a particular Muslim sect in this bustling street points to its multi religious character, notwithstanding the fact that the gurdwara and mandar exist only in names. One finds it hard not to imagine how interesting it would have been if the original owners and inhabitants were still occupying these places of worship in an exemplary display of mutual respect and amity.
As one proceeds towards its west, the Gurdwara Galli ends abruptly and spreads into several other streets of similar size where the city’s vegetable and fruit sellers could be seen and heard engaged in a raucous competition tempting the weary shoppers with mouth watering prices. Butchers, some sullen others not so angry, could also be seen sitting beside massive pieces of buffalo meat strung from the hooks.
The upper portions of quite a large number of these shops serve as the residential quarters of the locals. Some of the narrowest streets in this locality still bear the plaques at their entrances from the pre-partition days indicating the total number of houses. These plaques are indeed like relics pointing to how relatively planned and organised life was in older times.
Abbottabd’s Jinnah Road, literally at a stone’s throw from the Gurdwara Galli, is the place where tourists in the happier days from the warmer places could be seen strolling in the evening. This place had a classical touch about it. There were a couple of stylish cafes in this locality where tourists would relish mutton and spicy chicken dishes. Attached to the two cafes were a couple of paan and cigarette shops whose owners have recently been barred from selling paan.
More than anything else, the paan shops were an address. People shopping in the area or waiting for their friends and contacts would indicate the paan shops as a meeting point. A melancholy looking Mushtaq, owner of one of the two shops, says with a pang that the district magistrate had banned the sale of paan. ‘Paan in this part of the country wasn’t an addiction but a flavour that some would love to enjoy after a meal,’ Mushtaq explains. With a wry smile, he informs that there were just about a few dozen paan-buyers in Abbottabad and that he catered mostly to tourists in summers.
Mushtaq’s paan shop was the nucleus around which life in the old Abbottabad bazaar moved. On its back side was the Royal cinema and right in front of it was the Empire cinema. Taj Mahal cinema sat at a short walking distance across the road. It was a sign of the time that the cinema houses had their names etched in grandiosity. Sadly, all three have licked the dust.
Officialdom in Abbottabad, apart from attending to banning the sale of paan, could be seen razing old buildings to provide for the construction of clumsy looking plazas. How long can the heritage in the Gurdwara Galli escape the axe is a question that keeps troubling the mind!
