Rajesh Khanna His house in Pakistan people there still remember

Located on the old road from Multan to Delhi, the town of Burewala in Vehari district in southern Punjab was once known primarily for the shrine of Hazrat Baba Haji Sher Dewan. Irrigated by the Pakpattan Canal during the British Raj, it became part of the fertile agricultural lands known as the Canal Colonies. It must have been a very small place, a kind of a qasba in the years leading up to partition. Since then, the productivity of land and the galloping population increase, have contributed to this once small town becoming fairly big even by Pakistani standards (its population was about 1,89,000 in 2006). It was in these environs that Rajesh Khanna was born in Burewala in 1942. His father Lala Hira Nand Khanna was the first headmaster of MC Model Boys High School there -- from April 1, 1931 until retiring on March 28, 1947, months before Partition. The headmaster must have struggled to instil the virtues of education to people more thrilled by the force of numbers and fascinated by shortcuts to wealth and fame. A board at the school still bears his name. Rajesh Khanna studied till Class 1 in the local primary school. His ancestral home, a two-storey structure with arched windows, still stands in Block H of Burewala. The name "Jatin Niwas" is still visible, inscribed in Hindi at the main gate of the family house, to which the current residents have made few changes. Next to it is an old temple. As Khanna's last rites began in Mumbai, Burewala residents gathered at MC Model High School to hold a condolence meeting, including a five-minute silence.