Haunted House on Mt. Pleasant

What a pity!

This large and elegant sea-facing mansion on a huge lot in a leafy lane called Mount Pleasant Road atop Malabar Hills built by one of the best architects of his time with marble imported from Italy and doors and other woodwork made out of walnut trees and once adored by its now dead owner lies in ruins replete with unwanted weeds and overgrown creepers and has blind bats hung upside down in its dark nooks and crannies and snakes slithering around undaunted as its only occupants.

At one point it rang with youthful laughter and its walls witnessed titans of Indian politics discussing the ways and means to fight a foreign nation to achieve a free, proud and self-governing country of their own.

Now this place is a haunted place - haunted by two bitterly rival nations and a bone of contention among the descendants of an estranged daughter and other blood and bloody relatives who can't even agree on who really is a true inheritor.

What a pity!

This palatial house was lovingly named 'South Court' by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, its owner. But, now, it is only called Jinnah House.

Don't you see a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions weaving through all the creations of Jinnah whether it is this house, his lovely wife Ruttie who died on her twenty ninth birthday, his daughter Dina who is pleading at age 88 in the court that Hindu and not the Islamic law of succession be applied on her father and she be given the possession of this house, and the benighted country he created through his sheer will?

I, for one, see a lot of resemblance in this house and Pakistan. Can you even imagine the height and extent of irony of Jinnah and Zardari governing the same country without feeling deadly pangs of pain?

He had dreamed of making Pakistan into an elegant sea-facing country on an leafy lane atop Mount Pleasant. But it has turned out to be a country festered with blind bats and hungry snakes who are devouring everything in their way.

I don't think one can save his house from crumbling on its foundations but can we save his country from ruin?

Happy birthday Haunted House!!!