In the early 80s, my father bought a piece of land behind the famous Shalimar Garden to build our house. Our house was the first one in the Alqader scheme neighborhood. Back then, the area was surrounded by green fields and there were several banyan and cordia myxa trees around. Our house is located less than half a kilometer away from the last terrace of Shalimar Bagh. According to historical records, Shalimar Bagh originally had seven terraces, three of which had walls for protection, while the other four were open gardens. Over time, due to floods from the Ravi River and prior to the construction of the fortified bund around Lahore, the four open gardens disappeared completely.
If you have been to Shalimar Garden, you may have noticed a deep dry well present the adjacent to nursey that is located right in front of Baghbanpura boys school. The school ground is still situated about ten to fifteen feet below the GT road. Just after that well, there used to be a pathway called 'Ghati' that connected the GT road with our colony, which was situated about fifteen to twenty feet down from GT road, and still, during rainy days rainwater was stuck in our colony for days. Interestingly, the top surface of that 'Ghati' was originally made of Nanak Shahi Bricks, but later it was replaced with asphalt pavement.
When we were young, my father would daily give us a ride to school on his Yamaha 80 cc motorcycle. However, most of the time, the motorcycle would stop in the middle of the 'Ghati' with all three of us siblings on it. Being the eldest my father drop me just before the 'Ghati' so the bike can climb the ascend.
One of my oldest memories is that during an excavation near the third terrace of Shalimar Bagh, roughly it would be the fourth as it become part of a newly constructed housing colony in the foundation an early buried construction appeared, the owner thinks it might be part of some historical baradari and his land might be taken by historically concerned departments and he built his house on the same bed without going deep.
That hard bed integrated me for decades that might be a Bardari bed, what was that I could not find the answer unless having a meeting with Maqsood sb an architect works for years in the archeologist department of Punjab. he told me that it was an old water tank that feeds the lower terraces of Shalimar garden and vanishes before 1970 due to heavy flooding and its presence was only mentioned in few land records.
The terraces vanish gone long ago at least I saw one last glimpse of a forgotten structure relevant to the fourth terrace.
