Advani with his family at Parsi Colony on Sunday. (PTI)

Karachi, June 5: The bungalow is gone. Three carpets, a wooden cabinet and a steel almirah are all that survive from L.K. Advani’s years in the house.

That didn’t stop the BJP president, though, from a trip down nostalgia avenue as he stood before J.J. Luxury Apartments, which has replaced Lal Cottage of his childhood, in Karachi’s Parsi Colony today.

With the pressure on real estate, most of the sprawling havelis in the locality have been razed to make way for apartments. Advani’s ancestral home was one of them.

Lal Cottage, which Advani’s father had bequeathed to his son, has morphed into a five-storey block of 39 apartments. Each floor has eight flats, owned by the Memons of Gujarat.

It took weeks to locate the building after the Karachi authorities found that the original address supplied by the Indian high commission ? 37 Mirza Kalech Begro, Jamshed Quarters ? was non-existent. Finally, they zeroed in on Iqbal Hussain Jivani.

Jivani’s father, who had migrated from Gujarat, had bought the bungalow from Abdul Jalis Mohammad, who was sold the building by Advani’s father, Kishanchand Dharamdas Advani, on September 6, 1947.

Since the Advanis had just migrated to India, the sale deed was executed through a power-of-attorney holder, Narendradas Vensimal. Jalis, an Arab, sold the property to Jivani in 1974 and left for Saudi Arabia.

The sale deed, signed on November 1, is written in English, the language that was then used for official transactions in Pakistan, and not Urdu. The price was Rs 80,000 and the stamp value Rs 2,378.

The stamps bore the imprint of the Indian government since Pakistan did not have its own for some time after Partition.

According to Jivani, the bungalow had six bedrooms, each with an attached bathroom and a private balcony with trellised balustrades. There was a little garden and a room that was locked when Jalis sold the house.

Jivani’s family presumed it was the prayer room, though Advani told journalists his family was not into religious rituals and only recited the Guru Granth Sahib.

Parsi Colony ? like Delhi’s Daryaganj, where President Pervez Musharraf’s ancestral home, Neharwali Haveli, stands ? is witness to the vicissitudes the elite of India and Pakistan have been subject to. Both were privileged addresses before Partition and have since been overtaken by the migrants. The only high-profile resident today is Mohammad Hussain Mehanti, a member of the National Assembly.

Parsi Colony, which had two streets of houses owned by the Sindhis, is a misnomer because only a handful of Parsis remain while the Sindhis have left. Jivani insisted it was part of Karachi’s “A class” residential areas and was blessed with uninterrupted water and power supply.

Advani found no living remnant of the house he had left in 1947.

Jivani said he was told of the house’s illustrious connection in 1978 when Advani had come visiting as the information and broadcasting minister.

“My father showed me the news clips,” he said. But for the other residents it was news this time when they were told a week ago by the Karachi police that a celebrity from across the border would be in their midst. Since then, Mushtaq Memon said, the cops security-checked the building twice a day.

Kamla, Advani’s wife, was not so lucky in her search for her ancestral home. She had the address but when she went to the place, not only the house but even the landmarks had vanished.

Was she disappointed? “No, I am not, because this is my home,” said Mrs Advani. Lal Cottage was where her husband was born.