KARACHI: It can’t be missed easily. It’s quite prominent due to its cobalt blue colour. It seems as if someone has emptied an entire box of laundry neel over this building sandwiched between taller structures that may have come up after its own construction but look older due to lack of maintenance.

The Chatummal Shievramm Building was built in 1940. Though Chatummal Shievramm left it soon after the 1947 Partition, its current owners have made sure to not let it lose its original name and the date of construction. It right there clear in white in the top centre of the building for all to see. The restaurant it houses, Al-Kareem Restaurant, has its name painted on the sides as well as on a signboard and panaflex below.

It has been over 73 years since Partition and there have been many changes in the name of ethnicity on either side of the border. Sometimes there has been pressure by a certain group of people to change the name of an old road, park, building or business until the desired change happens. And sometimes there are people like the owners of the Al-Kareem Restaurant who ignore all such ideas because they want to preserve history and names.

“My grandfather Mohammed Khan got just the flat on the first floor of the building after Partition. He bought it from the original owner Chatummal Shievramm, who had got his claim accepted in India for [other] properties owned here,” Faisal Kareem Bukhsh told Dawn.

“Then later, my father Kareem Bukhsh also bought the ground floor, which had a running Malabari restaurant. We let the restaurant continue though, and they only wrapped up business a little while back because the fellow running it couldn’t manage after his father’s passing. Now there is a new person running the Al-Kareem restaurant here,” informed the owner.

When asked the reason behind not renaming the entire building after his own father, Faisal smiles and shakes his head. “We want to preserve history. Built on just 80 square yards, this may be a small building but it carries history,” he reminded.

Asked even if the previous owner was Hindu and his family Muslim?

“Yes. We are all Sindhis, too. And in Sindh we respect a fellow Sindhi no matter what his or her religion. It’s called peaceful coexistence,” he said, adding that his family belonged to Sehwan.

“I remember my father telling me that the owner, Chatummal Shievramm, did visit here once along with his family sometime in the 1950s. They stayed with us as my grandfather’s guests. I am told that they were very happy with the way we had maintained the building and preserved the name on it too,” he said.

Asked if the building was originally blue as well, Faisal said that he remembered it as being yellow originally. “Growing up, I remember it with a yellow exterior. The blue is my family’s doing,” he smiled.

Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2021