Our small but beautiful Rawalpindi

Growing up and now living in a posh area of Rawalpindi, somehow makes me miss things that I loved to do when I was a kid. Back then, unlike many other kids these days, I spent most of my childhood accompanying my parents shopping in a traditional market,” says Mahnoor Fatima.

“I still remember, how I was always the first one who got in the car whenever my mom or my dad wanted to go shopping, and once we arrived, I would be all excited with the people, the colors and of course, the food that I found in the traditional market. I know how this sounds so unpleasant compared to what the market has today, with the gigantic malls and supermarkets, but believe me the traditional market was interesting,” says Nazia Hussain.

“There was so much going on within a traditional market — starting from sellers preparing their goods, people negotiating, making transactions, people sitting around and laughing with their friends. However, from all the unique things in the traditional market, what attracted me most was the way people intermingled, smiling and trying to make conversations. There was a human touch; there was a relationship built,” says Sehrish Zaidi.

“When I wanted to pick up wheat bread and eggs for breakfast I just reknitted my hair into a tidy roll, dusted the creases off my dress, and walked down to Raja-ki-Dukan, a few yards down the road. There, my steel pail was waiting for me, freshly filled with one and a half litres of milk, cycle-delivered by the dudhwala from across town,” says Irum Ali.

“My karyana shopkeeper not only spoke to me in my local Punjabi language, he also knew precisely what I wanted, did a few odd jobs for me to generate goodwill and was concerned about what’s happening in my family. He opened shop at 7 am, shut at 10 pm and home-delivered required things on a phone call or even a yell from across the wall of his house,” says Shagufta Naqvi.

“I would not trade this comfort level for the modern-day trend of shopping in an air-conditioned mall, where impersonal touch-operated glass doors open silently and escalators carry you to even more materialistic pleasures,” adds Saira Bano.

“For a small-town woman like me, the rate at which mega shopping malls are devouring the small, roadside kirana shops is reason to worry. I shudder to face it, that fading signposts of a small beautiful city that my generation grew up in, are disappearing so fast that soon they will exist only in our memories,” says Shazia Batool.

Semeen Hasan from Amarpura says, “For us who live in less developed portions of Rawalpindi like me shopping remains malls apart from the rest of the city.”