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.