'Vague memories of Delhi home'

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD, JULY 9. The Pakistani President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is pretty nostalgic about the prospects of visiting his ancestral birth place in Delhi during his visit to India beginning on July 14.

In an interaction with a group of local journalists over the week-end, Gen. Musharraf said, ``frankly when I came I was just four years old. So I have extremely vague memory of the house where I was born which is being talked often in the press. Very, very vague memories... and just its entrance is big. Other than that I don't have much memory of that.''

``Yes, I would like to go there,'' was Gen. Musharraf's reply when asked whether he was looking forward to visiting his ancestral home. Along with his wife Gen. Musharraf is expected to visit his ancestral home at Naharwali Haveli in Darya Ganj in Old Delhi on July 14.

``Quite nostalgic because I have never been to India since 1947, so I am going there after 54 years. And I was born at that place and I have never visited that place. So to that extent it is nostalgic,'' he told a group of journalists.

Asked whether he has any memories of partition, Gen. Musharraf said, ``Yes, I do but then I was about four years old. And we vacated this house when I was one-and-a-half or two years old. At the time of partition, I was four years old. And I certainly remember the violence and the patrolling that Muslims used to do in the area where there were Muslims. And we knew that attacks coming in from the Hindu side. So I remember correctly that police guard the area,'' he said.

``I remember the journey from India, where I remember my father, who was in the foreign office, had six hundred thousand rupees at that time and we brought this money in a box and he was guarding it more than his life in the train. He used to put his head on it, he used to sit on it, he would never part with it. I remember that box very correctly,'' he said.

On the impact of the `bitter memories of the violence and turmoil' at the time of partition on his personality as an adult, Gen. Musharraf said, ``yes, it may have affected my mind because the violence that occurred and killings of the Muslims that were carried out and miseries that people suffered when they came here as refugees with no place to live. Then, more than that we continued without resolving this issue of Kashmir and carried on our hostilities. And then of course I joined the army and went to war in 1965 and 1971. Then I had two postings on the LoC and I spent one year at a height of about 30,000 feet. My participation and involvement has been very direct''.

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