Brotherhood hues: At a mosque; at the Gaddafi stadium; at the Anarkali food bazaar (AFP)

Ever since i can remember, the elders in my family referred to me as a true-blue Hafizabadi. My maternal and paternal sides are both from Hafizabad, earlier a tehsil headquarter, now a district headquarter, 70 miles north-west of Lahore. Hafiz Mirak, who was a general of Akbar, had this town built in the 16th Century.

Having grown up on a heady dose of Hafizabad and what it would have looked like, I secretly nursed an ambition of visiting the land of my forefathers. Thanks to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President Musharraf, cricket provided the ideal excuse for me to arrange a tryst with ancestry.

I practically dragged my cousin Atul Saigal, a senior executive with America Express Bank, along. I was in touch with a Pakistani businessman, Shaikh Qaiser, who hailed from a village called Kaulo Tarar, in Hafizabad district. I had been in touch with him for over a year, had informed him of our programme and requested him to make the necessary hotel bookings.

On April 3, we reached the Ambedkar bus terminus in Delhi at 4 am and after checking our luggage, boarded the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) bus. At 5.55 am, the bus left with about 50 people travelling for the Test match at Lahore. We reached Wagah at 2.30 pm. The immigration departments took over five hours to clear our papers and luggage. We finally reached Lahore at around 8 pm. The bus reached its destination, Hotel Felleti, and we were received very warmly by Qaiser and his friends.

The next night, we headed for Food Street in Gawal Mandi, an unforgettable experience. Tikka shops, salad bars and authentic North West Frontier Province food shops were exhibiting their fare on both sides of the street. Tables and chairs were laid out in the middle of the road where people could sit and soak in the ambience over steaming hot seekh kebabs. The houses above the food shops were well lit to create an aura of old-world charm. The street was marked with synthetic arch gates on both sides. Post-dinner, we had crushed ice with coloured, flavoured and condensed milk. No ice cream in the world could match it.

Next day, I reached Brandreth Road armed with a Handycam and shot footage of my grandfather’s erstwhile office. I must add here that prior to Partition, my maternal grandfather, J.C. Kapur, had an office in the basement of Khanna Building, Brandreth Road, Lahore. His residence was at Sir Gangaram Trust Building, The Mall, Lahore. I interviewed some senior citizens there who remembered my grandfathers, maternal and paternal. They spoke very kind words about my family and reminisced about how good life was when the two countries were united.

That night we left for dinner with an acquaintance of my brother, a dentist. We dined at Sizhuan and my brother stealthily went to the cash counter and paid the bill using his American Express Global Card. When our host, Dr Ameer, learnt of this, he took the hotel management to task for accepting payment from guests. I would like to add here that we were in Pakistan for seven days and not once were we allowed to spend on a meal.

The next morning, we left our hotel at about 11.30 am and went to Mall Road, now rechristened Shahrah-E-Quaid-E-Azam, to see where our maternal grandfather resided, at Sir Gangaram Trust building. We walked the whole length of the mall and crossed The Sacred Heart Cathedral School of which my mother is an alumna. She studied there till August 1947. We finally came to Sir Gangaram Trust building and took video clippings of the entire premises. Then I went back to Brandreth Road, where I was introduced to some of my grandfather’s acquaintances.

On the morning of April 7, Shaikh Qaiser arrived at 9.30 am and we left for Hafizabad, the land of our forefathers. We crossed the mall, Heera Mandi, the Badshahi mosque, built by Emperor Aurangzeb, caught a glimpse of Minar-e-Pakistan, crossed the river Ravi and came to Shahdara.

This was GT Road at its best. We crossed small hamlets and townships like Kala Shah Kaku, Sadhoke, Kamoke, Muridke and finally came to Gujranwala, from where we took a detour and came to the highway which took us to Hafizabad.

Upon approaching Hafizabad town, we crossed a railway line and headed for Dr Hassan’s clinic. Dr Hassan remembered my great-grandfather Dr Daulatram Chopra and reminisced fondly about him. He showed us the erstwhile Chopra residence. He took us to my great-grandfather’s chamber and showed us where he used to practice his ophthalmology. He told us that the same furniture was being used in the chamber to date. He also showed us a metal safe embedded in the wall just as it was when he had left it. Dr Hassan then guided us to Aziz Ali Shaikh (Billu), the elder brother of Muzzaffar Ali Shaikh, a member of Punjab Assembly, government of Pakistan.

Aziz Ali Shaikh was not aware of our arrival. Upon meeting us he asked me my name. No sooner had he heard Chopra that he asked me, “Madanlall or Hiralall?” Now Hiralall was my grandfather and Madanlall his younger brother. He knew about my paternal family from the 13th generation preceding me, which is since the time of Akbar. He informed us that the Chopras were the original settlers of Hafizabad and they brought the Kapurs (my maternal side) to Hafizabad by marrying their daughters to them and giving them huge tracts of land by way of dowry. It was through my ancestor Mokam Chand Chopra, who was a diwan in Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s cabinet that the Kapurs entered the royal darbar. There is an area still in Hafizabad called Taraf-e-Chopra.

Aziz Ali Shaikh showed us the haveli of the Kapurs, which till date was very similar to what we had heard from our parents and grandparents. He also showed us the residences of the Chopras and in fact the lane leading to that house was called Koocha Dr Daulatram, after my great-grandfather. Since we were low on time, we had to rush around, with the whole town practically following us.

We left Hafizabad on an emotional note, as one of the local residents who was with us all throughout our visit, upon entering the old residence of the Chopras, jokingly asked the people sitting there to vacate the premises as the actual owners of the property had arrived!

• The author is assistant secretary, St Xavier’s College (Cal) Alumni Association