ONE day in winters when Marcel Proust, the French novelist (1871-1922), came home, his mother seeing that he was cold offered him some tea, a thing which he did not normally take. He declined at first, and then for no particular reason changed his mind. As Proust raised the warm liquid to his lips with a morsel of the cake called ‘petites Madeleine’s,’ a shudder ran through his whole body and an exquisite pleasure invaded his senses. It had on him a love-like effect with a precious essence, an essence that was not in him, but it was him.

Whence did this sensation come? What did it signify? How could Proust seize upon and define it? Such cerebral sensations and feelings that seized Proust are fleeting and associated with some pleasant event or encounter having taken place in the past. It is impossible for ordinary human beings not to experience such feelings also though unlike Proust, Joyce and Virginia they may not be able to recount and share them.

Very often like the petites Madeleine soaked in tea that transported Proust to a wondrous world, a fragrance oozing from a tree on an idyllic road stirs us quite unknowingly or the ambience of an old restaurant or a music shop recreates the past in a very subtle way.

Sadly, the past now appears to be another land, as a popular song brings it out so poignantly. Our little old Peshawar is not as old now as one finds it, slowly but surely getting buried under many millions of tons of concrete owing to varied reasons not least being the pressure of the population.

Someone recently said that he loved the freedom that Peshawar once symbolized in the not quite distant past. One could still see traces of that freedom in some isolated instances but, by and large, Peshawar as it stood until the end years of the twentieth century seems to have disappeared in the dust and smoke of our seemingly unalterable explosive times.

In the not quite distant past, one could roam around the length of Peshawar without any let or hindrance. In as far as free movement was concerned, the city and cantonment areas had so seamlessly blended that it was hard to notice the difference save of course in matters of greenery and cleanliness. Its famed charms notwithstanding, Peshawar’s old city has always been awfully unclean.

But then the war in our neighbourhood engulfed us; it gradually morphed into its most dreadful shapes and while refusing to go away devoured all that came in its way.

The upheavals of the last about 30 years and the resultant demographic changes coming in its wake have changed the entire landscape of Peshawar. Of the old bucolic, serene and profoundly quiet Peshawar little is left, and very little indeed for the younger generations to reminisce about in their later life.

Far from the bustling crowds, Peshawar’s cricket stadium at the Services Ground was sequestered in one of our quietest quarters in the military cantonment. A small narrow patch of a road that stood between the cricket ground and the military’s old-style apartments was so thickly canopied that the sunrays would barely filter through the towering old trees. There was something pristine about walking on that road that now stands closed behind concrete walls.

The old trees appear to be still there, as a glance in that direction reveals and hence one often wonders, wistfully, if that particular stretch of a road that connects the Mall with the Fort Road still carries that air of dazzlement which was once its hallmark.

The road though it passed through the military offices and residences was a licit passage, something that defies imagination in the context of our present circumstances. Its closure in the 21st century explains the extent of the damage Peshawar has sustained down the years.

Military and winters bring to mind the smell of charcoal burning in the chimneys to keep the barracks warm until quite recently. The air in the vicinity of the barracks would be thick with the strong overpowering smell, an anathema of course to the environmentalists, but its association with the past makes it all that endearing to one’s senses.

One recently found spools of English wool in eye-catching colours begging attention in a shop in Peshawar. ‘How romantic,’ one couldn’t stop remarking. One reminisced how dear old mother would be absorbed knitting sweaters while sunning herself on a string bed in the mellowed December afternoon. ‘Yes, indeed, very few

Nostalgia, a passé takers now,’ the soft-spoken shopkeeper smiled in agreement. Sadly, our new generations have no idea what a romantic indulgence it used to be.

Peshawar’s old cantonment bazaar provides copious substance for nostalgia. The old verandah housing Godin Pianos and Aleeg Café which are so deeply etched in memory have been replaced by glitzy jewelers’ shops. The café with its wooden interior and an attic would serve ice cream in saucers, an oddity, but its flavour refuses to go away many years hence. And how could one forget the music shop called ‘Teen Beat,’ and its chain smoking owner who happened to have a record of every song sung in the world.

Peshawar’s is now so over populated that we have started nibbling away at everything that comes in our way. The green belt, protecting our scarce architecture worth presentation like the Islamia College, is fast disappearing to create more room for the motorists.

Hiraeth, William Darlymple tweeted recently, is a noun that means homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the last places of your past. Will our new generations care to add such touching words to their vocabulary?

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2014