By Asif Khan, TwoCircles.net
“My father didn’t let me return after Indira Gandhi’s assassination”, Azeez ul-Haq talks about the time he spent in Delhi. He worked as an embroiderer then, leaving for the capital in 1978 upon entering his teens.
He worked in various places — Old Delhi, Yusuf Sarai, Seelampur. For a period of less than a year, he worked in Garhi. Unlike the other places, he was the only Muslim in this workshop. “I would offer all prayers at the workshop,” he recalls, “and to break my fast, I would walk down to a dhaba in Sant Nagar”. Migrant workers from around the neighbourhood would collect at that dhaba each evening for Iftar.
With fondness he remembered a “Chinese temple” where he would take his bath each morning. “There were just shanties and empty plots of land then,” he recalled, “but a lot of rocky land was being cut to construct tall buildings.”
TCN Series : Ramadan 1437