IN THE late fifties and early sixties, Peshawar was bustling with activity of a very constructive, genial and joyful kind. The Canadian engineers were here in good strength to build a dam on the Kabul River at Warsak. The site of the dam is sandwiched between the two tribal agencies of Khyber and Mohmand, a formidable setting by all reckonings. But the Canadians remained undaunted.

The Canadians did not abandon any of their avocations or proclivities while travelling on a regular basis between Peshawar and the site, which was at a distance of nearly 20 miles to the southeast of the provincial capital.

The deputy commissioner of Peshawar once cautioned them to avoid travelling after dusk. That made the Canadian team leader really stroppy. “Look! Mr deputy commissioner, my men will come to Peshawar in the morning and my men will come to Peshawar in the evening, and it is your responsibility to provide them security under the agreement reached between the two governments,” the plain-speaking chief contractor blurted out.

The visiting contractors and their engineers would visit the Peshawar Club in the Cantonment, which had a liquor licence, at odd hours to raise many a glasses to the successful completion of the majestic dam on the fabled river. Knowing the visitors’ appetite for trout, the hosts had made contingent arrangements for the transportation of the same from Naran at short notices.

The Canadians had also built themselves a bowling alley at the site of the dam. In good time the labouring tribesmen raised a team that would give tough time to their rivals. But the Canadians did something other than that: they helped the Godins of Peshawar keep selling their pianos despite a marked decline in the volume of their business after the great exodus spelled by the partition in 1947.

The Godins lived in Peshawar from 1924 to 1982. The last of them Albert Joseph Godin and his wife Claire visited Peshawar a couple of months ago to attend a reading where an elderly lady reminisced about her early life in Peshawar. Earlier, one had been in constant contact with Albert from Canada through the electronic mail system. Albert is past eighty, but he seems to have aged little, if at all, in terms of his earnestness, tenacity and resolve. His love for Peshawar does not at all seem to have been tainted by the recent events and in fact if anything his emotional bond with the town and its people appear to have grown stronger.

A couple of weeks ago, a meticulously bound and neatly addressed parcel sent by Albert from Rawalpindi left one wonder struck. The parcel contained a wealth of information about Peshawar in the shape of fragments, shreds, newspaper clippings, facsimiles of letters and pictures collected and archived with nothing less than religious zeal. One just couldn’t help stop being moved in an Selling pianos on another planet incredible way. How one could stay so committed and faithful to a place where he has no stakes, except of course lots of fond memories to cherish, in this age of unbridled materialism?The Godins are a diminutive couple. They are calm and composed in such a decent manner that one is not left unimpressed. Throughout the length of the one hour long reading session they appeared to be completely immersed in the topic when the elderly reader drew a sketch of Peshawar of the mid forties. “Then there were hardly any Muslim businessmen or shopkeepers in the Peshawar Cantonment Bazaar save a reclusive man repairing saddles for the horses in a small shop hidden behind the Capital cinema,” the Godins nodded in assent when the reader recalled and added that the entire business was managed by the Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Parsis.

The Godins originally came from Goa in India. Their first shot with the business was in Quetta whereto the grandpa Godin had migrated in 1900. They set up a shop dealing in gramophones and pianos on the Bruce, since renamed as Jinnah Road. The family survived the 1935 earthquake that struck Quetta in the early hours consuming over 30,000 lives, as an auspicious decision had taken the Godin family on a picnic to the border town of Chaman.

The WW11 occasioned the family to open a piano shop for the British families stationed at the Nowshera Cantonment and a branch office at the troops’ summer headquarters of Cherat at 3,500 feet above the sea level.

It is quite understandable that the Godins’ business decisions were predominantly dictated by the movement and residences of British troops and their families. But no less interestingly, all such decisions took them to places such as Peshawar, Quetta, Nowshera and Cherat where the native folks evinced little interest in pianos.

The most popular instrument of music in all the mentioned areas has for quite some time been rabab or harmonium.

But such mundane considerations apart, it must be said to the everlasting credit of the Godins that once settled in Peshawar no outwardly force or motivation could dislodge them from their preferred place of habitation. Thus even when adverse times led to the dwindling of their business fortunes beyond the limits of sustainability, the Godins spurned offers from well wishers to shift to Bangalore. The gesture had its desired effect. And hence later when an opportunity took them to India, the family was accorded a rousing welcome as the proud Godins of Peshawar.

Later events would prove how rightly placed was the Godins’ faith in Peshawar and its people. When Albert’s mother Eveline breathed her last in 1982 after living a fulfilling life committed to social work, the Peshawarites paid her a befitting tribute.

“It was the month of Ramadan, and the infamous heat of July was at its peak,” recalls Albert. Eveline’s funeral was fixed for 6pm on the 7th day of July, 1982. The leader of the mosque on Arbab Road Peshawar Cantonment had announced the demise of Eveline of his own volition. “More than 400 Muslims who had converged at the funeral’s venue preferred to offer the Muslim prayer for the deceased lady after placing the cortege in the direction of the Qibla, and then many of them accompanied the cortege to the Christian cemetery on Jamrud Road,” Albert movingly recollects the scene to its last detail.

All that remains of those halcyon times are memories, still prized by them. The grand old veranda announcing the Godin’s business venture and so many other wonderful places of yore have been replaced by the glitzy jewellers shop. There appears to be plentiful of wealth, but little tolerance and little still fellow feelings.