It is a curious thing how masonry learns to heal faster than memory. If you were to take a stroll through the freshly whitewashed corridors of Bahawalpur or cast a glance toward Muridke, you would hardly suspect that a little over a year ago, during the fiery brief theatre of Operation Sindoor, these very coordinates were subjected to a sudden, violent architectural critique by the Indian Air Force.

Let us jog the collective memory back to those nine select targets—four deep in mainland Pakistan and five scattered across Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir—chosen not at random but with the precision of a surgeon about to evict a chronic tumour.

There was Sawai Nala and Syedna Bilal in Muzaffarabad, Gulpur and Abbas in Kotli, Barnala........

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