- News>
- Newspapers
Pak trader comes to seek his father`s Chandni Chowk: The Asian Age
New Delhi, July 04: He is young and neatly dressed, but does not sound as confident as a businessman should. After all, business is not the only thing on this shy Pakistani entrepreneur`s mind. For Mohammed Ali Lodhi, 29, his maiden visit to Delhi as part of a delegation of Pakistani businessmen is more about tracing roots.
New Delhi, July 04: He is young and neatly dressed, but does not sound as confident as a businessman should. After all, business is not the only thing on this shy Pakistani entrepreneur’s mind. For Mohammed Ali Lodhi, 29, his maiden visit to Delhi as part of a delegation of Pakistani businessmen is more about tracing roots.
Armed with a map of Delhi given to him by his ailing father, Mr Lodhi plans to go out in search of Chandni Chowk, the place where his father had a flourishing watch manufacturing business in the pre-Partition days.
“We are from Delhi. We were in the watch business since 1904 in Delhi,” Mr Lodhi, who now lives in Karachi, told The Asian Age. He plans to explore Chandni Chowk through the eyes of his father. “He gave me a map of Delhi. He told me about all the details, including the tree outside our house which was somewhere near Hamdard dawakhana,” he said. Mr Lodhi knows it will be an arduous task to locate the house if he goes by his father’s map.
“I know everything must have changed. I told this to my father also. But he insisted that I should take the map with me,” he said, adding that his father could not come as he was ailing. After they left Delhi in the tumultuous year of Partition, the Lodhis continued with their watch manufacturing business near Karachi till the 1960s. “Our manufacturing unit is still there. But it is shut now. We have started other businesses of export and import,” he said.