There was one thing that many of us found hard studying at schools in Karachi: High School English Grammar and Composition by P.C. Wren and H. Martin. Some loathed it but others loved it. It had been a part of the curriculum in India since 1935, and was carried to Pakistan following Partition.

This maroon-titled book was contained in our school bags but we were totally unaware of its link, otherwise, to Karachi.

One of its two authors, Major Percival Christopher Wren, joined the Indian Education Service in 1903 and served as the 16th headmaster of NJV High School in Karachi from 1904 to 1906. Between 1903 and 1907 he also worked with the Educational Inspectorate for Sindh and at a teachers’ training college. Wren and Martin wrote this grammar and composition textbook for the children of British officers in India. It was taught in Burma as well.

Wren, an Oxford graduate who was born in South London, worked as a sailor, costermonger, boxer and a cavalry trooper. He also served in the French Foreign Legion but is more recognised as an educationist — a schoolmaster, college principal, assistant director of education — a novelist and writer.

It was in Karachi that he met his second wife. His son, Percival Rupert Christopher Wren, was born of his first wife, Alice Lucille, in Karachi, on February 18, 1904. Alice died in Poona in 1914. Wren married Isabel in 1927 and adopted her son (from her first marriage), Alan Graham-Smith, who became the sole administrator of Wren’s estate.

A little known story about a saint’s shrine on Abdullah Haroon Road was documented as an urban legend by a British educationist in Karachi in the 1900s. With the later construction of the US Embassy on the site, it found enough basis to be recorded as a piece of history

Wren wrote over 33 novels and short story collections. His first book of fiction, Dew and Mildew, about a haunted bungalow in India, is based, according to some, on actual events and on the author’s experience there. In it, Wren recorded the events linked to the curse of a pir on a site situated on what was to become Abdullah Haroon Road.

Sudden Death Lodge is the tale of a pir in Karachi whose tomb was lit by a small oil lamp. A naked fakir sat there, under a peepal tree, for 50 years as its caretaker. An affluent Parsi seth, Sohrabji Rustomji Potwallah, decided to erect his bungalow on the site. The fakir pleaded to the wealthy seth to not disturb the pir’s resting place and cried. Unmoved, the seth was determined to raze the tomb, evict the fakir and build his mansion there. The fakir cursed the seth, saying the building would never serve the purpose and died.

The construction work commenced. But during this time, three builders met mysterious deaths and so did the chowkidar.

When the bungalow was completed, the Potwallah family moved in. That very day, the seth’s nephew accidentally fell off the staircase and died. Then a few days later, it was the seth’s son who fell off the balustrades, ruptured his spleen and died. A third family member, his grandson, caught his wrist on a nail. It got infected and he died of sepsis. Eventually, the merchant himself met a fatal accident.

The house was sold to Mr and Mrs Reilds, following which their manager died suddenly of cholera. Within a few weeks, in a bizarre event, Mr Reilds slit the throat of his wife in that same house before killing himself.

The mansion thus became known as ‘Sudden Death Lodge’.

Consequently, the building was razed in 1925.

The site remained a garbage dump until it was chosen for the new US Embassy. Construction began in September 1957. When it was being built, similar strange events occurred. An electrician died at work under unexplained circumstances. It probably would be the first time in the history of the US State Department that it bowed to superstition and altered the original architectural design, sparing the exact site of the pir’s tomb.

Years later, the history of the lodge was rediscovered by Barbara Lamprecht, who is considered a world authority on architect Richard Neutra, one of the principal architects of the embassy.

In Modern Resources, she narrates: “The curse of a 19th century fakir seems to have settled on the skeleton of a new American embassy being built here. According to a story widely accepted in Karachi, the fakir cursed the embassy site years ago. He claimed the plot contained the tomb of a holy man and warned against construction of any kind. To illustrate his point, he toppled over dead.

The property was then owned by a wealthy Parsi merchant who ignored the fakir and went ahead with plans to build a mansion. The house later became known as ‘Sudden Death Lodge’ after the merchant, his son, three workmen and an English couple all died by accident or violence.

The house was torn down in 1925 and the plot given over to a garbage dump until chosen as a site for the new American embassy. Construction began in Sept. 1957. To date, there has only been one death — that of an electrician. But the curse lingers on in more subtle ways.

The new four-story embassy, designed by California’s RJN and REA [Richard J. Neutra and Robert E. Alexander], was scheduled for completion last March. Contractors now feel the building might be finished by late 1960. Others doubtfully mention a year later. [It was apparently finally completed in 1961.]

Huge amounts of governmental red tape and an admirable desire to hold down US dollar expenditures have helped the curse along. Although building cost estimates run 31.2 million, Washington has decreed only a tenth of that will be in dollars. The rest is to come from local currency accounts which the US air programs have built up in foreign currencies. This has reduced a monumental procurement problem, particularly with Pakistan lacking most of the equipment and building materials required to meet US government specifications.”

The curse of the fakir is also found in the American franchise Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! (1965). The story written by Wren is now generally believed to be a true account of events.

Back when we were in school, many in Pakistan did not know of the author, nor his association with Karachi. But the same P.C. Wren, whose textbook taught us English grammar, was the first to pen the story of the curse which resurfaced decades later.

The writer is a consultant physician based in Essex, UK

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 28th, 2021