A cross-border love story: In Peshawar, efforts to pay tribute to a Bollywood l…

Muhammad Umer Malik, 22, a software engineer and part-time tour guide in Peshawar, is too young to remember, but has heard over and over the story of when Bollywood’s Kapoor brothers — Rishi and Randhir — visited Pakistan in 1988.

“It’s the stuff of legend,” he says. Because in these dusty streets of Northern Pakistan, forgotten by time, lie the roots of that family. Their home, Kapoor Haveli, was once the tallest building in the city’s Dhaki Munawar Shah neighbourhood. It was there that Raj Kapoor was born, in 1924.

Less than 200 metres away is the ancestral home of another legend of Hindi cinema, Dilip Kumar. He too was born here, and given the name Mohammad Yusuf Khan, in 1922.

Kapoor Haveli’s arched windows and green jharokas [or over-hanging balconies] and the intricate floral and geometric designs on its facade are typical of Peshawar’s heritage architecture.
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KP Directorate of Archaeology and Museums
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In a strange twist, the two homes are right near the 2,000-year-old Qissa Khwani Bazaar (or Market of Storytellers). The Bazaar once served as a camping ground for the caravans of travelling merchants. “Sometimes professional storytellers held court here, telling tales for the entertainment of the travellers,” says Umer.

You can still sign up for storytelling lessons here, and it’s where Umer received his first such instruction, which drew him into the history of his hometown and thereby the tours he’s been conducting for tourists and locals since 2017, along with his friend.

Last month, the provincial government in this Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region decided to purchase the ancestral homes of both the Kapoors and Dilip Kumar and restore them, potentially turning them into tourist sites. The homes were both declared heritage sites of national importance — an evocative move, given that there is still a ban on Bollywood films in Pakistan, following escalations along the border in February 2019.

Already, they are big draws. The Kapoor mansion, down from six storeys to four, is said to have originally held over 40 rooms. “It’s locked but you can see through the cracks and crevices,” Umer says. “In the courtyard, you can see the world as it once was. Arched wooden windows, green jarokhas [or over-hanging balconies] and intricate floral and geometric designs on its facade — all in keeping with the city’s old styles of architecture.”

The move to restore these homes is being celebrated in Pakistan as much as it may be in India, Umer adds. “There are few left today who can remember these actors in their streets, but some are still old enough to remember a time when they met the Kapoors and the Khans.

Intermission

“We want to revive Peshawar as that transitional bridge between India and Central Asia. We want to highlight the fact that these legendary actors are from Peshawar, Pakistan, and went to India and became stars,” Khyber Pakhtunkhwa director of archaeology and museums Abdul Samad told Wknd. “The actors and the family too want their heritage to be remembered. Peshawar has been a centre for multicultural activities for the last 2,500 years, but unfortunately, we were forced into turmoil. Now that our situation has significantly improved and we’re receiving tourists from all over the world, we want to act.

“We want to revive Peshawar as that transitional bridge between India and Central Asia. We want to highlight the fact that these legendary actors are from Peshawar, Pakistan, and went to India and became stars,” says Khyber Pakhtunkhwa director of archaeology and museums Abdul Samad.

”Both homes have been sold to private owners over the years; their current owners wanted to demolish them, but were stopped by the regional Department of Archaeology, under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Antiquities Act of 2016.

The revival of these buildings is part of a larger plan to revive Peshawar. “We have already restored about eight heritage buildings in the last few years,” says Samad. “We have started the process of purchasing these two landmark properties. The next step will be to restore them to their former glory and revive these buildings to adaptive use, into a museum with the Bollywood contributions of Dilip Saab and the Kapoor family in focus.”

Bytes and pixels

When the government announced the restoration plans last month, Dilip Kumar, now 97, had a request for “the people on the internet”. Send me pictures of my ancestral home, please, he tweeted.

Dilip Kumar’s childhood home in Peshawar is incidentally less than 200 metres away from Kapoor Haveli. When he heard of the makeover, he shared on Twitter his own memories of the sitting room where the family gathered for high tea and the large room where the women prayed. “The house is of great sentimental value to my husband and I have shared his pride and happiness during a visit to the property some years ago,” his wife Saira Banu told Wknd.
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KP Directorate of Archaeology and Museums
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Fans from Pakistan responded with scores of photographs of the now-dilapidated home, a phantom of its former self. In the Twitter thread, he responded with memories of his own: “I have memories of the sitting room where the family gathered for high tea in the evenings, the large room where the ladies prayed… I am at once full of fond remembrances of my parents, grandparents and numerous uncles, aunts and cousins… the spacious kitchen… I can vividly recall the piggy rides on my grandfather’s back and the scary stories my grandmother cooked up to forbid me from wandering out of the house alone.”

Speaking to Wknd, his wife, the former actress Saira Banu, 76, said, “My heart fills up with joy each time I receive news about the ancestral home of Yusuf Saheb in Peshawar. It has come up so many times in the past and I have appreciated the tenacity with which the government is pursuing the mission. The house is of great sentimental value to my husband and I have shared his pride and happiness during a visit to the property some years ago.”

One of these visits was in 1988. “He was so emotional when he saw the house where he spent his lovely childhood in the comfort and security of a large, refined family. I wish the provincial government success in its efforts and sincerely hope that this time the dream comes true,” Banu says.

“I can hardly believe it was our ancestral home. We had such humble beginnings,” Randhir Kapoor told Wknd. He remembers that visit from 1988, he adds. Rishi and he were shooting for Henna (1991).

It was Rishi who brought back to India a fistful of earth from the courtyard. A fistful of Pakistan that remains, beloved, in India, just as the two families’ homes do on the other side of the border.