Hur do Chir haveli (Salt Range Punjab)

by Salman Rashid

Raja Afrasiab, the Sarangal Gakkhar, lives in a lovely old haveli of the classical design in village Hur Do Chir in the Salt Range of Punjab. I had imagined this meant there were two neighbouring villages where chir trees grew, but I was wrong: there wasn’t a pine tree in sight and there was only one village of this name. Nor too did Afrasiab know the origin of the name. He told us, however, that the village was formerly called Soga Dutt, apparently after an early local influential man.

We had left the Mandra-Chakwal road at village Sahang and motored through undulating country to fetch up in the village and had found Afrasiab waiting. He told us his family had not one, but two havelis to show. The first one, itself rather austere, had a hugely beautiful carved door. Here were flowers so extravagant that they could only have emerged from an artist’s mind intertwined with vines of equally exaggerated style and beauty. Here were sets of pilasters growing out of pots that, according to Kamil Khan Mumtaz, the noted architectural historian, symbolised the treasure of Laxmi.

The jamb and the lintel were profuse with curvi-linear forms and the arch above the door was another abundance of similarly rich flowers and leaves. In the spandrels shone two sunflower-like designs and the outer rectangular panels were again filled in with more pilasters, geometrical patterns and phantasmagoric flowers and vines. One had grown to expect such artistry in Chiniot and Multan or other larger towns. Hardly in a place as remote as Hur Do Chir.

Remote today, the village, situated as it is amid ravines and broken ground, would have been all but inaccessible in 1926 when Zaildar Sultan Mahmood, Afrasiab’s grandfather, had undertaken to build this haveli. Timber for the door, so Afrasiab relates, came from the market in Jhelum town, carted across the Salt Range by camel. Azeem, the master whose celebrity spread wide as the greatest woodworker of the area, came from a neighbouring village and was hired at two annas per day. Such a master would surely have worked with a complement of helpers and this sum would have paid for the lot. For eight months the Azeem and his team laboured over the timbers before they could all be put together to make up the door.

Two annas per day translate into sixty per month or four rupees and twelve annas per month. Which in turn would mean thirty rupees in all for the eight months it took to complete this fantasy in wood. Other than that Afrasiab did not know how much the timber and its transportation from Jhelum had cost. Nor did he know the full cost of the haveli.

                              (c) Mr Salman Rashid, 2014 acknowledged with thanks 

Haveli of Raja Jahandad Khan (Khanpur, Hazara, NWFP)

by Salman Rashid


Even from a distance one is impressed by the grandeur of the chunky building with one tower rising above what seems to be a vaulted car porch. To match, it has a picturesque setting: smack on the shores of the blue-green Khanpur Lake in the midst of lush rolling hills not far from the village of Khanpur on the highroad from Taxila to Haripur.

Raja Jahandad Khan Gakkhar, who receives honourable mention in the Gazetteer of Hazara district , built this haveli back in 1875. He was a scion of the old and respected Gakkhar tribe, one of their head families settled at Khanpur since Mughal times. Then there was no lake; only the winding Haro river, copper-red during the rains, azure otherwise, would have complemented the scene. The lake came about thirty years ago when the river was dammed to store the water supply for Rawalpindi and Islamabad. If anything, it added to the picture postcard quality of the house.

On the far side of the high, arched entrance of the car porch a rickety wooden gate led into the courtyard. I looked in diffidently, not knowing if I would be allowed to enter the building. Apparently the servants were used to strangers poking about for I was invited in by the man and his wife; and, yes, I could look around all I wanted.

In the traditional vernacular style of construction, the courtyard was U-shaped with a paved patio in the middle and pillared verandahs fronting the rooms on the sides. At the end of the patio an unkempt, overgrown garden stretched to a crumbling boundary wall. Beyond lay the placid surface of the lake. From the verandah doors with stained glass led into spacious rooms, most of them roofless. Debris covered the colourful mosaic floors. Grass grew wild within the four walls. In one room there was even a young mulberry tree. Just below the level of the roof was a line of frescoes; and above it the rectangle of blue sky. The last coat of yellow wash on the exterior must have been laid many years ago when the owners still lived here – or at least visited every weekend. Now in many places it was peeling to show an older deep red wash underneath. The stained glass was missing in many places.

The caretaker said there were some rooms on the first floor where the roof was still intact. But I was dissuaded from going upstairs for the staircase, he said, was teeming with wasps. The basement was similarly choked with debris. Everywhere were signs of abandonment; assertive, unabashed, absolute abandonment. As if someone vehemently wished to break that connection with the past that this haveli represented. It was an act so wanton and sorrowful that I, without any affiliation with the mansion or the family who owned it, felt affected by the aggressiveness of the act.

In the back was an equally beautiful and similarly derelict zenankhana – the Ladies Quarters. Next to it a modern appendage grew like an ugly wart. The caretaker asked if I wished to see the modern house from inside. I declined: there would be no stained glass, cut brick, mosaic floors or frescoes to marvel at; it would only have all those accouterments that any modern house has. And of those I have seen plenty.

In neighbouring India mansions such as this were being meticulously preserved and turned into hotels that make money. And here we are allowing them to go to pot. Situated as it is on the shores of a lovely lake, this haveli holds the promise of being whatever it is not allowed to be. For one, it could be a first class lakeside honeymoon lodge where guests could relive the splendour of the past. But sadly, this old haveli is now almost a fallen ruin.

  

                (c) copyright Mr Salman Rashid, 2014