Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale has said that Sir Ganga Ram passed on an inimitable legacy to the generations to come and it is all bout compassion.
Speaking during a visit to the family home, built by Sir Ganga Ram, and completed in 1928 in Gulberg area, she said on Friday that there is something fairytale like about this place as “I have heard stories about it all my life”.
The house was built by Sir Ganga Ram, and his family lived here till Partition of Hindustan in 1947. Sir Ganga Ram passed away in 1927 in England and could never set a foot in the house, as it was completed in 1928.
Kesha Ram is a Vermont State senator and great granddaughter of Sir Ganga Ram (1851-1927) is an architect and philanthropist, who is regarded as the ‘father of modern Lahore’.
“This is the only place I have heard stories about as my ‘Dadi jee’ (grandmother) would talk fondly of the two kitchens, the swimming pool and the verandah all her life,” Ms. Kesha recalled lovingly.
“When I was pulled up here, I felt I knew this place already… I have seen the place through my mental window so many times,” Kesha said, adding that “since a home is a woman’s domain, my grandmother never stopped talking about it”.
She thanked the current owners of the house for preserving it in its original splendour, adding that “this is the best maintained building of the great architect and philanthropist’s legacy”.
About Sir Ganga Ram she believed he did not do it for the sake of modernity but to empower the rural population and women. She hailed the great city of Lahore and its inhabitants, who had restored Samadhi (a place which contains the urns of a famous or holy person) in a pristine form besides keeping the spirit of the former great architect alive.
“Anytime there was a conflict and somebody wanted to take his name off the building, someone would stand up and say ‘this man is too great, his generosity is too large and his heart is heart of Lahore’,” she said, adding that such men believed it was unfair to remove Ganga Ram’s name because it will tantamount to erasing the history of collaboration and partnership.
She said the most magical moment of her sojourn was seeing a Hindu pundit and a Muslim Imam say prayers side by side for Ganga Ram at the Samadhi.
She appreciated the hospitality and generosity of people and said it would make her and husband Jacob come back frequently.
She thanked office-bearers of an NGO ‘Lahore Sangat’ and Chief Executive Officer Feroz Sons Osman Khalid Waheed, while she was being shown around the folk-lorish ancestral home.
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