By Sukant Deepak

New Delhi, Jun 16 (IANS): She vividly remembers the four-storey haveli in Qissa Khwani Bazaar of Peshawar she was born in and where the family would spend most of its time in summers. The cool basement where they would play, the living room where all children would gather during winter evenings to eavesdrop on men sharing tales from across undivided India.

The 95-year- old Shanta Kapoor, younger sister to the screen and stage legend Prithviraj Kapoor now wants to visit that home -- ‘Kapoor Haveli' in Pakistan's largest city holding small, ancient memories. "I still smile thinking about my childhood there. It really does not matter that it has been 90 years since I visited that house. Something tells me that the rooms still remember me -- those wooden floors, the water freezing in the pipes during winters..." says Gurugram-based Kapoor.

The Pakistani government's move to turn the ‘Kapoor Haveli' into a museum has given her a sense of relief. "At least now it will be maintained properly and people will continue to remember my father and brother. This is a really special gesture." In fact, along with 'Kapoor Haveli', actor Dilip Kumar's house (also in Peshawar) is now owned by the local government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and will also be converted into a museum.

It was in 2018 that Pakistan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that he had received a call from late actor Rishi Kapoor requesting that the haveli be converted into a museum.

Shanta Kapoor, the last living member of the family to have lived in that house had moved to Calcutta when she was four years old but would keep visiting the haveli during her holidays. "I have heard that 60 rooms in that house still survive."

Smiling that she was "a mistake", Shanta who was the youngest among the five children born to Basheshwarnath Nath and Channa Kapoor, was just two years younger to Raj Kapoor. "We were an extremely close-knit family -- while Raj and my two brothers were older, Ramesh and Vishwanath, and I grew up like siblings."

Shanta, who has not applied for a visa to visit Pakistan, hopes that there might be an invitation to visit her house that she has not seen since the Partition. "That would be just perfect. Also, is it not high time that people-to-people contact between the two countries increased?"

While she may not be in touch with anyone from there, Shanta knows that many people who were close friends with the family still reside there. "Sometimes, I wonder how it would be to meet them after decades...."

When Prithviraj Kapoor joined BN Sircar's ‘New Theatres' in Calcutta, he brought his family to the city. "His salary was eventually raised to Rs 500, which was a big sum for those times."

When her elder brother, who shot to fame with ‘Sikander' in 1941 entered films, it was time to make Mumbai home.

Married to an engineer, Chander P Dhawan, working with the Tatas at Jamshedpur, who passed away in 2015, Shanta Kapoor now lives with her younger son.