As they came face to face with us, one shouted, 'Who art thou?' Defenceless, we stood our ground. 'They are not Hindus,' replied our saviour, the elderly cook Imam Bakhsh, adding, 'they are Parsees — the ancients of Iran.' Deathly pause. They were sizing us up. We did not look like Hindus or Sikhs. The looters decided to give us the benefit of the doubt. There could be other pickings more profitable than messing around with the 'ancients of Iran' as Imam Bakhsh put it.

By early 1948, the Hindu and Sikh boys had left Lahore and my school, St. Anthony's, run by Irish missionary brothers, was left with a majority of Christian pupils.

One of the new boys, Saad Ashraf, had come from Calcutta. Chubby, gruff Saad was the opposite of the delicate, quietly-spoken Kumar who had vanished in the tumult of the times.

Soon, Saad and I were hop, skip and jumping on the mud rooftops of the servants' quarters. I remember what seemed like a chasm between two rooftops. My friends jumped it. Confronting the void — I froze.

Many years later I read the autobiographical novels of Ved Mehta. Before Partition, Ved lived in Mehta Gali, next door to Park Lane, where Saad lived. Confronted with the same rooftop dilemma — perhaps the same roof — the friends of the blind Ved holding both his hands on either side said, 'Jump, Ved, jump!' He landed safely on the other side.

One of my most vivid teenage memories is of the shake-up that sleepy, slow-moving Lahore received when Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger arrived to shoot Bhowani Junction. It was like a monsoon storm invading the stillness of the times.

The done thing was to see them or be seen by them. By luck I found myself seated next to Ava Gardner in a darkened room, known as a 'box' at the Regal Cinema.

My father was in the liquor business. In his absence one evening I received a panic phone call from his friend, the owner of the Regal Cinema on the Mall — the best cinema in town. Ava Gardner with other actors were in the cinema watching the movie The Barefoot Contessa in which she had starred.

The caller hissed, 'Ava Gardner and her friends are drinking gin like water. We're running out of the stuff. Please help.'

Reacting to his distress call and risking my father's displeasure, I nervously took two bottles of gin to the cinema and handed them over to the owner. He was immensely relieved. To reward me for services surrendered, he invited me to sit next to Ms Gardner in the owner's box to view the film. Actually, the owner was at his wits' end trying to handle the motley crowd of actors; he was relieved to vacate his seat for me.

There were about four or five of us in the box watching The Barefoot Contessa. Ava Gardner was sitting on a settee, with another actor whose name I forget. I was startled by their compromising position. It was like a 'falabee' of tangled hands and feet; they were least bothered. Suddenly, she turned to me and said something, to which I replied, 'Sorry, Ma'am, I don't understand you.

Question repeated, same answer. Finally she shouted, 'I want to go to the shithouse — do you understand 'shit'?'

'Yes Ma'am.'

I had the honour of escorting her to the shithouse with a police battalion and director George Cukor in train. Waiting outside whilst she was in. I attempted some small talk with Cukor. He probably had difficulty understanding my Paki English, and I his American.

In exasperation he said, 'If you are looking for a job, young man, I ain't got one.'

By now our Barefoot Contessa returned, puckering her nose, declaring that she had yet to encounter a more evil-smelling place.

Excerpted with permission from
Calling a Spade a Spade Selected writings of Minoo P. Bhandara
(BIOGRAPHY)
Vanguard Books, Lahore
ISBN 978-969-402-533-9
277pp. Rs695