Amritsar: Preparations are on a war footing to welcome Pakistan Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif at Jati Umra village, the ancestral village of Sharif family.
Says Massa Singh, friend of Shahbaz Sharif's father late Mian Mohammad Sharif: " Mian Mohammad was a little older to me and was a friend. We used to play together in the village before Partition. He asked us to prepare out children to work in their factories in Gulf".
The Sharif family started to migrate to Pakistan before Partition, said Massa Singh. "We played together for about seven to 10 years. Every year I go to the Sharifs' house in Lahore and I have the pictures also."
Another resident of Jati Umra Balwinder Singh said: "We all are very happy and are making preparations for the visit of Shahbaz Sharif and his family members here.
'Whenever I used to go to Pakistan, I used to invite him every time to visit his native village. He asked me to send the village boys to Dubai and Saudi Arabia who wanted to work in their factories."
Inder Singh, sewadar at the gurudwara, which earlier used to be Sharifs' residence before Partition, says; 'When Sharif's family members had come earlier, they had said, their house should not be used by any single person, so we decided to convert it into a gurudwara."
