Our Nazimabad Neighborhood.

Now that I was going to school, my parents allowed me to play outside the house and explore the neighborhood. If I stepped outside and looked to my left, I could see the minarets of ‘Masjid Khirul Amul’. The lot adjacent to the left of our house was officially ‘vacant’. However, it was occupied unofficially by a behari family who had put up a ‘Jhuggi’ (Temporary housing). They were friendly people always willing to help. They kept a few hens and got very excited when they found an egg. I remember waking up one morning by an excited voice announcing ‘Amma Murgi ney unda dee’. The owner of the voice was Aslam, a boy slightly older than me. They also had a small shop inside the Jhuggi were kids could by toffees and biscuits and other such treats. One day after buying my treats, I lingered and stuck up a conversation with Aslam. He was going to school too but to a different one than mine. One day I saw Aslam playing a game his elder brother. There were black and white squares on the board and there were black and white plastic pieces of different shapes. A few pieces looked like a horse’s head. I asked what it was. Aslam told me it was ‘Shatranj’ and proceeded to give me my first lesson on a game I play to this day.

Towards the right of our house was a big house with an actual lawn. They also had a huge cage with colorful small birds by the dozens. Unfortunately, the children in that household were all girls, all of them older than I. In addition, they were not friendly. They also had a huge black dog. We were all terrified of this dog. Sometimes the dog was out in the street with a collar and no leash; it would chase anything that moved. Cars, bicycles and even kids very a fair game. One day as I was running back towards my house as Ammi had called, the dog started running after me. Terrified, I ran hard. However, he kept gaining ground and the passed right past me. Only then did I realize that the dog was not running after me but rather it was racing me. We did not know what its official name was but it soon got a name in our household. Our Dadi Amma was visiting us from Lahore. She spoke some Urdu, but felt more at ease speaking her native Punjabi. We on the other hand spoke Urdu only. When she saw the big black dog, she remarked ‘aye te sher wunger lukda aye’ (It looks like a tiger). What we understood from her sentence was that Dadi Amma had called the dog ‘Sher Mungal’. Therefore, from then on we called this neighborhood dog Sher Mungal.

My favorite part of the neighborhood was the triangular piece of land created due to a fork in the road. The left limb, going towards my school and the right limb curving back and disappearing from the view. The neighborhood boys hung out here. The older ones played cricket with the real hard ball. Us younger either ones watched them play or when the ground was available played our version of cricket with a tennis ball. Sometimes we had a ‘wrestling match’ when a new kid came to the neighborhood. As part of his ‘initiation’, he would wrestle a kid. Since I was the skinniest boy in the whole neighborhood, the first match would normally be with me. Typically, the introducing boy will have one arm over the shoulder of the new boy and introducing him to the group. After a brief introduction, the introducing kid will ask me ‘tum is say lar sakoo gey?’ After I would reluctantly agree, the ‘wrestling match’ would begin. It was not much of wrestling though, for it primarily comprised of pushing and shoving until one of us fell to the ground. As soon as that happened, the match was over. The fallen kid was helped up and we all became friends. I lost frequently in these matches. Unable to gain much weight possibly due to my desire to run much of the time, I decided to focus on running and dodging. I could evade almost any pursuing kid with my body dodges. This skill would come in handy at school when I played a game called ‘Save’ and football. But more on that later.