Canada Global(Web News)A village named Bagh Kalan is very important in the history of Islamabad. Islamabad started from this village. A little behind Katarian village G-5 was a village named Bagh Kalan. It was also called Bagan.
Sector G-6 was also settled in the same village and the first commercial zone of Islamabad was established here. The first residential quarter for government employees was also built in the same village. Both of them were established in a quarter which still exists today and is called the Red Quarter.
In the census of 1961, this village was present and its population consisted of 633 people. Bagan later became the capital, but till the 1961 census, it was not G Six but Bagh Kalan. Imam Bari Sarkar’s father Syed Mehmood Shah migrated and settled in this village along with his family and is buried here. His resting place is in Khayaban Suhrudi. But in respect of this shrine, the master plan was changed and the road was diverted towards the Rose and Jasmine Garden and the shrines were preserved. It was also respected that the sanctity of this burial should be restored. The first bus stop was established. Islamabad officially started from Bagan and the government employees’ quarters were made here and the employees were sent here from Karachi. These employees were mostly from East Pakistan. Among them, one employee was named Abdul Wahid. It was the first being born in this new city, which caused a wave of happiness among the employees and everyone celebrated together, calling the daughter a blessing, as if a blessing had descended on everyone’s family.
The parents named the daughter Abpara. At that time, Chairman CDA’s wife Mubarak Dayan Abdul Wahid came to the house and asked what the daughter was named. DA named this market after this daughter and named it Abpara Market and today we call it Abpara Market but in the winter of 1971 we lost this daughter and only the market remained Abpara’s family. He settled in Islamabad in the decade of the 1960s, but then he moved to East Pakistan. No one knows about Abpara whether he is alive or not. Now only his memories remain. Now only the memories of Bengali citizens are left in Sector G-6. They said that in the seventies, some relatives of Abpara used to live in G-6 and they used to come and tell about it.
He said that when Benazir became the Prime Minister, a woman from Abpara’s family fed me sweets and said that Benazir had become a great officer. Daughters are everyone’s sister-in-law, but see the irony that this daughter was separated from Pakistan in just seven years. Wonder if Ajab Ke Abpara is alive today and is telling her grandchildren and great-grandchildren that a market in the capital of Pakistan that I was born with. It is still there today. I wonder where this daughter Bagh Kalan of Islamabad will be now.