Flashback: An unknown future in India
This is a photo of my Scottish maternal grandmother, Sydney Gorrie (née Easterbrook), on her wedding day in Dec 1923
August 07, 2014
This is a photo of my Scottish maternal grandmother, Sydney Gorrie (née Easterbrook), on her wedding day in December 1923. She and my grandfather were married in a cathedral in Lahore (now Pakistan). She hadn’t seen her fiancé in over a year and had just travelled out by ship from Edinburgh, Scotland to get married. For some time their home was in Lahore (now Pakistan) as my grandfather Robert Gorrie secured a job with the Indian Forestry Service, as a conservator of forests. He worked all over Punjab and the remote foothills of the Himalayas. After Partition, Robert worked for the new Pakistan government for a while.
For the full story, visit www.indianmemoryproject.com
PHOTO & TEXT: JANET MACLEOD TROTTER/INDIAN MEMORY PROJECT
CONCEPT: SANAM MAHER
DESIGN: SAMRA AMIR
This August, The Express Tribune will feature photographs from contributions to an open call for images from the struggle for independence and Pakistan’s formative years.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 7th,2014.
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@goggi (Lahore): "My beloved city of Lahore and its ancient culture was savagely plundered and devastated in 1947....."
Through Lahore troops have passed from ancient times, to fight the decisive battle at Panipat before accessing the throne of Dilli. On those innumerable visits, the passersby did a bit of plundering, as soldiers do anywhere else in the world. History is a continuum.
@goggi (Lahore): I wonder why your nostalgia is only for British India. Civilizations and borders change with history and time. I wonder what our great grandparents or their ancestors hummed before British India? After all Lahore was only part of British India for under 100 years but it was part of the Greek Empire of Alexander longer, part of the Persian Empire for longer, part of the Afghan Kingdom for longer and part of the Mughal Empire for longer. My grandparents never saw Hindustan as an ideal and I am sure my ancestors would have seen one of the previous nations that Pakistan was part of as their ideal. The fact that some woman from far off Scotland came to join her husband to help rule a colony is interesting but a sad reality of our history.
My beloved city of Lahore and its ancient culture was savagely plundered and devastated in 1947.
As a child I often heard my father hum a poem of his school and college time in pre partition Lahore - Sare Jahan Se Acha Hindustan Hamara -
My Muslim parents were my ideal and till today I adore their Hindustan and all patriotic Hindustanis!
Sigh ....