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The arrival of Punjabi refugees in large numbers in the wake of partition must have appeared as a cultural shock to the original Delhi residents, and has been much written about. Remembrance
of places which now lie in Pakistan was the order of the day and, among the older generation of Punjabis living in Delhi, nostalgia about Lahore runs high even today. How else can one
explain, so many decades after Partition, the continued popularity of the Hindi/Punjabi play, _‘Jis ne Lahore nahi dekhya uh jamaya hi nahi’_. This play runs to packed audiences every time
it is staged in Delhi and people emerge with tears rolling down their cheeks. Prominent writers and journalists still continue to fill pages with nostalgic memoirs about Lahore. While
several accounts exist about how Delhi received the influx of Partition-displaced persons, on the other side of the border, people also noted the vacuum which existed in Lahore when the
Hindu population fled to India. Tariq Ali, the veteran Left intellectual and activist, was in school in Lahore in 1947 and in his memoir ‘Street Fighting Years’ he makes mention of how
deserted and silent the streets and restaurants of the city remained for some days when the Hindu population suddenly left the city. For us new-comers, what was striking was that so many
shops and buildings were named after places in Western Punjab and other areas which now constitute Pakistan. It seemed that everyone had brought a little bit of their homeland with them.