India, May 23 -- Nearly eight decades after Partition altered not just borders but also the names etched onto Lahore's streets and neighbourhoods, the city's return to its original heritage names has stirred emotion and nostalgia among Punjabis on both sides of the India-Pakistan border. For many, it is less a renaming and more the restoration of a memory that ordinary people had quietly preserved through generations. "After Partition, my family migrated from Baltana to Lahore and settled in evacuee property in Krishan Nagar, where I was born, brought up, and gathered characters and themes for my stories," says writer Zubair Ahmad, whose short fiction breathes through the lanes and bylanes of Krishan Nagar. He has welcomed the official restoration of Lahore's original names. Yet, he points out, the people of Lahore had never truly abandoned them. "We never called, nor heard anyone call, my birthplace Islampura, despite the board put up after the great divide of 1947," he says. Painter Akram Varaich echoes the sentiment. "The new names of colonies and streets remained only on the boards. People never accepted them and continued using the old Indian and British names," he says. For Zeeshan Hussain, better known as Balwaala, the YouTube chronicler of Lahore's streets and layered heritage, the move merely formalises what had always survived in memory. "It is interesting to note that these changes made soon after Partition were never fully followed, even in official papers," he says. "It was largely a matter of boards, and it is good that this finally comes to an end after 79 years of Partition," he adds. Across the border too, the decision has stirred deep emotion among Punjabis who never forgot the city immortalised in the saying: 'Jis Lahore nai takia, oh jamea nahi' - one who has not seen Lahore has not truly been born. Welcoming the return to the city's original heritage, Manmohan Singh Kohli says, "This is heartwarming, for I grew up listening to the glory of the city of Punjabi dreams left behind in 1947." He believes the move is part of a wider effort to restore and record Lahore's original heritage. Novelist and Indo-Pak peace activist Ranjit Powar sees in the decision the will of ordinary people. "This decision has presumably emerged from the desire to reclaim a shared heritage rather than nurture hate," he says....