Mohammad Ali Akbar is the author of a unique coffee table book, Rawul Pindee: The Raj Years; a book that combines never before seen images of everyday life in the largest military cantonment in India with the sensitivity of someone who was born and raised there. He is also a former international tennis player who has been the Pakistan Davis Cup captain, an inventor, writer and businessman. Dawn caught up with him to talk about the history of Rawalpindi.

Q: What made you interested in the history of Rawalpindi?

A: I’m a Pindi-wallah, born and raised in Rawalpindi. But the book came together fortuitously; and it was made possible by the advent of the internet. I was given an amazing collection of pictures, and I had access to or found information and maps which makes for good reading. Once I had the first treasure trove of photographs, word got around and we found there were many people with albums and memories who were nostalgic about their grandparents or great grandparents. Neville Thomas contacted me through an old India group. Many of these were things no one had seen so it created quite a stir and then I got the Rawalpindi, Punjab 1863 record of expenses for the Cantonment, which is fascinating for an anthropologist as it details everything from the commanding officer’s salary to the traders and the cost of their merchandise. I found that in a library in London.

Q: Where did you get the first collection of photographs?

A: It’s an interesting story – the photographs largely came from Neville Thomas in New Zealand. They had been taken by Hal Waters, his father-in-law, who had grown up in Rawalpindi, where his father was the headmaster of the Station European School from 1884-1912. Hal was an avid photographer and he took some wonderful pictures of his life and surroundings, capturing glimpses of everyday life like children doing a tableau where a 120-year-old photograph shows a little girl playing Little Miss Muffet with a cloth spider dangling from a thread near her. When I went to visit Station School, I found children doing similar activities. Nothing had changed in a hundred years. There are pictures of an old statue of Queen Victoria which stood at the corner of Flashman’s Hotel; it now resides in the British High Commission. Mall Road, Murree Road used to be dirt roads. Future King George and Queen Mary visited Rawalpindi in 1905 and there are photographs of them with the Maharajas. The Tashi Llama visited Rawalpindi as well.

I’ve actually got a lot more material for the next re-print, including a full newspaper of Rawalpindi, The Pindi Mail from 1916.

Q: What are the greatest changes you see in ‘Pindi over the years?

A: It’s just too crowded now. When we were kids we would come home from school, throw our bags in the corner and get on bikes to go play outdoors. We would come home at night for dinner. Nobody was worried about security – there was nobody on the roads. It was a lovely place to grow up because we had inherited the trappings of the British Raj. The British brought some order. That is probably what made me curious about the time. It was a good life where you could play in open safe spaces and study in good schools.

Q: What’s the day job?

A: I was never built for a desk job. I have a TV programme on Tennis and I was quite a high level tennis player in America - in the top 200. I was captain of the Pakistan Davis Cup team. I also invent and sell sports training aids. You put the aid on it and it guides you into the right technique so it is a self-learning tool to speed up the learning process. I used to run the Qatar Open ATP Tournament in Doha. I write about sports – cricket, tennis and golf.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2018