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.
