My friend Iqbal Qaiser, the well-known Punjabi intellectual, knows Punjab better than most people. On the subject of ancient caravan serais, he said, there was one on the road from Gujranwala to Pasrur. It was because of this sarai that the village was called Saranwali; saran with its nasal ending being the Punjabi word for a roadhouse. Qaiser admitted he had not seen it but from what he had heard, it seemed to be in fairly good shape.

Now, having hunted for old sarais myself, I thought this one was worth investigating. And so, having turned left on the road to Pasrur from Sialkot Bypass outside Gujranwala, I stopped at a teashop to ask how far to go. "Five kilometres," said the man who did not know how long a kilometre was because I ended up driving 20 after asking him. But he did correct me: the name of the village was not Saranwali but Siranwali that is exactly 25 kilometres from the Bypass.

I was in for another correction at Siranwali. The elderly gentleman sunning himself outside his store said there was no Mughal sarai but a mahal (palace) believed to date back to the time of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The gentleman very kindly assigned a young hanger-on to guide me to the place.

Turning left into a broad street, we walked about a couple of hundred metres to the mahal. And what a palace it was. As we approached, the brick-faced side facing the street rose through a first floor to the rooftop blockhouse (mumti in Punjabi), in mint condition. But the room adjacent to it was roofless and ruined. Around the corner of the building, it was a picture of total perdition. The entire front which was obviously a veranda was gone; only its arches remained. Behind, the large courtyard was strewn with rubbish amid which a couple of cattle ruminated.

The u-shape of the courtyard had ground and first floor rooms on three sides. From the remnants of overhanging rafters and ornate woodwork, it was evident that an elaborate balcony once ran around the upper floor. To the right, the interior of the portion that had from the exterior presented the deceptive looks of good preservation was a collection of elaborately carved door jambs, painted walls and collapsed roofs. Only the partly collapsed mumti stood tall.

I walked around the corner to what was once the façade. Entry was by a single doorway richly carved in an opening with a multi-cusped arch. Directly above were three windows to match. On either side of these were two mock windows in turn flanked by bay windows. In these latter, only a vestige of the original woodwork remained in the one on the left. For some curious reason the door to the ruined building whose interior was easily accessible was locked.

Around the corner to the back was yet more heart-breaking decay. Another pair of buffaloes sat amid the rubble and hay overseen by a forlorn-looking boy. As in the rest of the building, here too the walls were spattered with cow dung patties that set off the faded frescoes of the first floor to the greater advantage.

In its ruined state the design of the mahal appears somewhat confusing. But that it certainly is not. The ground floor consisted of a spacious central courtyard open to the sky around which were the utility rooms as well as those where the master of the house would have received and fêted his male guests. The first floor was the living area for the, perhaps, extended family.

Lore has it that the mansion was built by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The ruins clearly belong to the middle of the 19th century but the mutilated frescoes appear to feature Hindu rather than Sikh stories: one damaged figure looks vaguely like a four-armed Hanuman. Like most of the men I spoke to, the present owners too had immigrated from Haryana at the time of partition. The various men I spoke to gave only conflicting word of the whereabouts of the head of the family, so I gave up looking for him.

But this family, having appropriated this rich and beautiful asset, had never cared for it. For them it was plunder acquired as after a battle. In the nearly 50 years they occupied it as a residence, they never so much as laid a tender, caring finger upon it. They abused it and when it began to come apart abandoned it. For them only the real estate now matters. When they find a suitable bidder, they will sell it. The once exquisite building, a fine example of the Punjabi architectural tradition that was forced into ruin, will be torn down and replaced by a tangle of ugly blockhouses fronted with bathroom tiles.

Even if I were to actually meet the keeper, I could not have asked him why he and his family were so heartlessly negligent of a property that was, in a way, pledged to them by another who they had never met. To have permitted it to fall into decay was the biggest crime they could have ever committed – not just against the real owners of the property but against the cultural heritage of the country as well.

The words for partition that the Punjabis of Pakistan and India use are indicative of our respective attitudes to our countries: for us it was loti – time of plunder; for our brothers and sisters across the border, ujara – ruination. Those of us who were natives to what became Pakistan plundered what was left behind by fleeing Hindus and Sikhs. Those, who came from across the new border quickly fell into step and helped themselves to whatever was available. The Siranwali mansion was not an isolated case. This happened across the new country and Pakistan was built on false claims of riches that we had never known in our native lands.

We did not care for the booty we acquired. We have seen how the looters treated the properties in Lahore's Model Town; how those beautiful palatial homes have been sliced and parcelled out into one-kanal plots. Partition was our time of plunder. It enriched many of us. That was all we cared. That is the reason we have permitted such precious pieces of the Punjabi heritage as the Siranwali mansion to go to seed.

I reluctantly stole a glance at the ground below, something I had just promised myself I wouldn't do. I missed a heart beat or two or three or four… who was counting? The ground was a long way down, a good 233 metres I was told, though it felt much further away.

I was standing at a small platform near the top of the famous tower in Macau SAR (China). All the buildings around the tower seemed much shorter than it. This reinforced the feeling that the ground really was a long way down. It didn't feel good; I should have kept my promise.

After my legs had been tied and I was attached to the bungy, I was asked to take small steps to the edge of the small jumping board attached to the platform. It was no easy task. There was nothing between me and the ground below.

"A long one to start with", chuckled a member of the staff, as I reluctantly edged to the edge. I had just told him that this was my first bungy jump. He thought it was funny to debut with this one because it is the highest bungy jump in the world as per the Guinness Book of World Records. How I wish I had known this earlier!

Out on the platform was not at all like what it was inside the observation deck, just a few steps away. There I had a floor under my feet, roof above my head, glass walls around me, controlled temperature, a lift to take me down, and the only thing I had to do was to take pictures.

Here it was cold and windy, nothing around me, nothing above me, and the only way down, which I had to take, was by air! Loud techno music was playing in the background but it wasn't pumping me up any more. Looking down from the platform had affected the way I thought and felt.

Standing at the edge of the jump board, I knew there was no turning back. There were powerful disincentives to turning back. The first one was that the fee for the jump was non-refundable. And a considerable sum was that!

In strict economic terms, it was still a sunk cost and my decision to jump or not to jump should have been independent of it. But I am a human being not the robot that economists have to turn human beings into before they can embark on their theoretical adventures. And I could bet, whatever I was left with after paying the fee for the jump, that no economist, not even the nobel laureates, could maintain their academic airs standing at the edge of that board.

The second disincentive to turning back was the many eyes of spectators which were fixed on me from inside the observation deck. Most of these were tourists who -- I knew by virtue of being with them moments before -- were busy taking pictures of the jump. Turning back meant looking them in the eyes, eyes that would tell me that I was a coward and smiles that would rub that in. There are far more dangerous things men have done to avoid being called a coward.

And then there were other relatively harmless disincentives too, such as the thought of having waited for something for so long and then letting it go when it finally came. But nobody else would have known that except me, so that wasn't something I would make a great deal of, not while I was standing at the edge of a small jumping board that was 233 metres away from the ground.

Then in a sudden moment of clarity I realised that if I were going to jump anyway, I might as well jump well. So I went thumbs up to the staff taking my photo, spread my arms out and held up my chin. Someone said 5, 4, 3, 2, and go… I didn't even scream and off I went, into the air, to the ground below, like a bird but one that doesn't know how to fly!

The first two seconds were indeed scary. I felt the adrenaline rush, felt the wind on my ears, felt that I was falling down. But soon I started to know what was happening. Fear gave way to fun. I was joyous, grinning ear to ear. This was bliss. I began to turn, getting an all round view of the ground below. I caught sight of the landing point and before I knew it, I reached the end of my rope, and got the rebounds, up and down and up, pure bungy entertainment.

As the rebounds ended and I was left high and dry, hanging upside down, trying to do some sightseeing in the last moments, I was slowly lowered down to the air bag below. Someone there helped me land on my back, as opposed to my neck, and freed me from the rope. I stole a glance back at the tower. The jump board was indeed a long way away but now there was nothing to fear. I walked way with the smile that only a bungy jump can bring.