NEW DELHI: Earlier this month, the New Delhi-based descendants of Sir Ganga Ram undertook a dream journey to Pakistan. This was nothing like the cross-border visits they had paid earlier. It was a journey that would cap a two-decade-long search for a memory called home.
“Staying in the house that was part of the compound where my father, his siblings and cousins all of whom were grandchildren of Sir Ganga Ram lived was indeed magical and something I had been searching for since my first visit to Lahore in 2004. My father had visited Lahore in 1986 for the centenary of his school, Aitchison College, built by Sir Ganga Ram, and had found that there was a flyover built over the space on Jail Road, where he remembered his house to be. He described the compound to be large enough for him to have learnt driving there, with multiple homes to house the rather large joint family. However, he found that the compound had been divided and many smaller structures were standing instead. Little did he know that there was a small piece of the home he remembered, tucked away like a hidden gem,” Parul Datta, Gurugram-based great granddaughter of Sir Ganga Ram, told this correspondent today.
Her hidden gem now stands restored to its past glory with Lahore-based interior designer Omer Nabi completing the renovation project which the current leased owners of Sir Ganga Ram’s family home had commissioned to him.
What’s more, Parul and her family have just returned from Lahore where they were guests of Faraz Zaidi and Ali Hassan, who now own the property, which was Sir Ganga Ram’s family home. His family lived here until Partition, after which, like many refugee homes, this was lost to decay and disrepair too. Until, of course, it was saved.
Nabi described the project as personal. He says he was born in Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.
“It was truly a dream come true to be tasked with the renovation of his family home and I did it lovingly,” the designer told The Tribune, underlining the shared legacy of Sir Ganga Ram, famously called the Father of Modern Lahore for his contribution to the city’s architecture.
The current character of the house, the designer says, matches the original which blended colonial and neoclassical.
“The restoration process, for me, was not difficult. The spaces spoke for themselves and I followed that trajectory. A gem that had existed and was crumbling, and despite tampering by the new owners after the Ganga Ram family migrated to India in 1947, the space called for its own aesthetic integrity,” says Nabi.
The interventions involved reinstallation of terrazzo floors in the house and restoration of its courtyard and terrace.
As for Sir Ganga Ram’s family in India, they say they are blessed to have found their family home. “The highlight of our Lahore trip was being able to stay as guests of Faraz Zaidi, who became family the first time we met him. In trying to correlate the home with our parental home, I remembered my mother’s directions to the house. The location of the present haveli exactly matches that description,” says Radhika Seth, Parul’s cousin.
Parul for her part shares a lament and a wish. “My singular regret is that no one from the generation that lived in the Lahore home is alive to see it anymore. It leads me to the thought that there are so many of that generation who are alive and would love to visit their roots on both sides of the border. Can we rise above divisions and open our hearts and homes to them,” she asks.