“Ji Hain! Lahore!”

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This is brilliant. Via SAJA, here’s the story of the Pakistani-American brother who has bought land in Lahore, Virginia, and has great plans for its use:

We spoke to the present American owner of a portion of the town’s land, and also the Pakistani American who has recently bought that piece of land to develop it to match the Pakistani town of Lahore. The new Lahore will have a school, a museum, an airport, and a replica of the famous Shalimar gardens in Lahore, Pakistan.

The report, for the Voice of America’s Urdu TV service, is by journalist Imran Siddiqui and features great local characters who are interviewed in English.

This opens up a lot of possibilities. For instance, there is a Delhi in New York, Delaware, California and Ohio. There’s an Agra in California and Kansas, and another in Oklahoma where there seems to be no shortage of land to build your miniature Taj. There’s also a Bombay in New York, population 1,192, with a tantalizing but undeveloped backstory:

The town of Bombay, comprising township Number One of Macomb’s purchase and. all of the St. Regis reservation on the American side of the boundary, was erected from Fort Covington by an act of the Legislature passed March 30, 1833, to be effective on the first of May following. Its name was chosen by Michael Hogan in compliment to Mrs. Hogan, who was a native of Bombay, India.

There are also Calcuttas in Ohio and West Virginia, a Madras in Oregon, and even a Lucknow in western Ontario. I couldn’t find a Thiruvananthapuram.

28 thoughts on ““Ji Hain! Lahore!””

  6. Mr K – as is Delhi (OH). At least that’s what one Dell-high-walla once told me.

  10. Siddharth: Thanks for the link to the story – can’t believe you did all that research into those Indian-ish towns!

  11. I couldnÂ’t find a Thiruvananthapuram. I can’t stop cracking up. 🙂

    Yea, that was great. @=)

    What’s the story with Lahore, Virginia anyway? I’m assuming George Allen didn’t do much stumping there.

  12. What’s the story with Lahore, Virginia anyway?

    It was named after a young lady who lived there who had a heart of gold. It is a funny juxtaposition of words though.

  13. Mr. K (#2):

    It might interest you to know that Delhi (NY) is pronounced Dell-High.

    As is the Delhi in Louisiana…

  14. The new Lahore will have a school…

    And it shall be called… Lahore Grammar School! And by next year, the town of Karachi, Maryland will have sprung up with its own Karachi Grammar School, and these two shall bring forth upon this nation generation upon generation of young American Grammarians!

    (happy new year, everyone!)

  16. I was very well aware that desi names have taken over videshi geographies when I read Agha Shahid Ali’s verse; these lines are from his (also one of my fav poems) “In Search of Evanescence”:

    It was a year of brilliant water in Pennsylvania that final summer seven years ago, the sun’s quick reprints in my attache case: those students of mist have drenched me with dew, I’m driving away from that widow’s house, my eyes open to a dream of drowning. But even when I pass –in Ohio– the one exit to Calcutta, I don’t know I’ve begun mapping America, the city limits of Evanescence now everywhere.

    Only I didn’t know there were so many of those Delhis and Calcuttas!

  19. looks like y’all, Sepians and SAJAers, didn’t notice my article ‘Hindostan Hamara’ in the August 2004 issue of NY-based Mantram magazine (now defunct). http://202.87.40.54/mantramol/viewdetail.php?filename=newsreport070820040219020.htm&repid=SPR200487219&repcode=SPR

    Hindostan Hamara
    Issue : Aug 04

    38°37’28″N 86°51’3″W

    Those are the co-ordinates that will place you in Hindostan, Indiana. As the Indian Independence Day approaches, letÂ’s indulge our nostalgia a little with the tale of this once-flourishing town right here in America.

    Unknown to most Indians and Americans, the Hoosier State proudly sports a historic town of Hindostan, a Hindostan Falls, a Hindostan Church and a Hindostan Park, all of it connected by, you guessed it, a Hindostan Road.

    Historians, who are only now piecing together the shards of local history, say that Hindostan, founded around 1816, was the first White settlement in Martin County, Indiana. But its downfall was quick and tragic.

    Ragen Pruneau, a local librarian and amateur historian, recalls the stories his grandfather told him while he was young: “He told me of the great town of Hindostan. He said that this town sprang up very quickly and died just as fast. He explained that the reason for the demise of the town was a ‘great sickness’ that spread over the land…no one was completely sure what the disease was that could wipe out an entire town.”

    More details can be found this week at indolink.com

  21. Lahore, Virginia is in my neck of the woods. I might have to pay it a visit, especially if they acquire a good desi restaurant.

  22. Anus, Indonesia.

    Bald Knob, Arkansas.

    Clit, Romania.

    And that’s just the first three letters of the alphabet. Get your kicks.

    Don’t miss Poo. Speaking of which, there’s this strange bit of business:

    Their son Randeep, then 22 years old, went into the bazaar in Poo, Kinnaur’s main town, where he came across a crowd of 500 people standing around a woman rolling around on the ground screaming, as a magician tried to drive a demon out of her. He walked past, thinking that nobody would listen even if he said something. Then he heard a voice speaking to him, saying “Randeep, Randeep, Randeep. If you don’t pray for this woman, I will use someone else.”

    File that in the dept. of wtf.

  24. Pitras Bukhari (Lahore ka jaghrafia: The Geography of Lahore) can now say “I told you so, Lahore would expand so much!”

  25. There’s a quirky film script in this story. Like Paris,Texas, but spicier.

    Kobayashi, I make you the man for this task.