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Remembering my Mother!

An early vivid recollection of my mother is in Shalwar Kameez riding a bicycle, my infant sister on a basket on the front handle, my father and myself pedalling furiously on either side on separate bicycles, during my father’s postings in different cantonments from 1949 to 1953, successively Sialkot, Kurmitola, Jessore, Quetta and Comilla. My mother was always an original whether teaching classical dancing or music, playing cards or just socializing, etc proud of being Bengali and proud of being Pakistani, never afraid to say what she felt and without a care to whom she said it or how she said it. To those who saw the frail, shriveled person in semi-coma for about four months till she died peacefully in my presence at about 9:30 pm on Saturday May 19, 2001 at the age of 76, all this may sound rather incongruous.

Ruby Bano Zia Paiker Sarwat Ara Sehgal, daughter of late Magistrate Badruddin Ahmad and granddaughter of Khan Bahadur Mohiuddin Ahmad of Bogra, Boga, Paanch Bibi and Sukanpukur (to name the parameters of the Nawada Boga Estate, spread over 65 villages in Northern Bengal, (Paanch Bibi being famous as Moulana Bhashani’s home village), the heartland of Bangladesh, was married in September 1944 to a Punjabi Army Officer from Sialkot, the heartland of Pakistan. Too long a story to be told in a few paragraphs, suffice that her two uncles late Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy and J A Rahim had something to do with their vision of the Pakistan-to-be. The powers-that-be in GHQ Rawalpindi decided in 1949 in their infinite wisdom that her Bengali lineage was enough reason to post my father (then a Major and die-hard of 7/16 Punjab, now 19 Punjab), kicking and screaming in protest, to lead a Company-sized contingent from “Sat Sola” to raise 2nd Battalion The East Bengal Regiment (2EB), he went on to command the JUNIOR TIGERS in Comilla from early 1956 to 1958. Two of his adjutants Shafiullah, Ershad and another officer Ziaur Rahman, rose to Chief of Army Staff rank in the Bangladesh Army post 1971, Zia and Ershad went on to become Presidents. At least six others became major generals in Bangladesh. In Pakistan, Maj Gen (Retd) Nasrullah (his 21C in 2EB) and former Governor Balochistan Lt Gen (Retd) Sardar F S Lodi (who came to him in 2 EB as a subaltern) were present on May 22 on the “Dua” for my mother. Late Gen Iqbal Khan, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, was attached as a Captain with 2EB for over six months time in 1957 with two companies of 2 FF and also functioned as his Adjutant during anti-smuggling “Operation Close Door” in then East Pakistan.

Among many initiatives for the Battalion and the Regiment, my mother gave 2EB their Bengali marching song, rebel poet Qazi Nazrul Islam’s “Chol, Chol, Chol”, setting it first for “Bravo Company” to music. It soon became the Regimental song, I believe it is now one of the national songs of Bangladesh. When my father despaired of getting good recruits, she suggested that he should screen the jails for volunteers from among those not convicted on grounds of moral turpitude, at least two rose to rank of Honorary Captain, one even became ADC to the President of Bangladesh. She would read my articles in Urdu in Nawa-i-Waqt, she had learnt Persian as a first language at home.

When my father died in 1983 in Karachi and I suggested a residence for her in Dhaka also so that she could be with her relatives a few months every year, she flatly refused, “Whatever I have is lying buried in Abdullah Shah Ghazi Mazar and is standing in front of me”. She would insist on receiving her paltry Pakistan Army widow’s pension (Brig (Retd) M Saleemullah of Army Aviation would help her in fill out the forms), “that is my right!” and would give it out in gifts to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren or to the poor. Thanking one person in this column would not be fair to the many thousands for their condolences. Still one would still like to mention as a token of my gratitude the telephone call from Furry Auntie (Widow of late Lt Gen Attiqur Rahman) “Chand, my best friend is dead !”, the Special Part I Order by Commanding Officer 4 Sindh condoling her death, the unit also having Quran Khawani in Okara Cantonment, as did my colleagues and associates in many towns and cities of Pakistan, including one in Dhaka arranged by Tooheen, my niece, wife of Brig (Retd) Danial Islam of the Bangladesh Army, incidentally also of 19 Punjab when he was part of the Pakistan Army. To my cousin Chaman and her husband Feroze, who went and prayed for her in Haram Sharif in Makkah. And from Maj Gen (Retd) Ananda Weerasekera, formerly Adjutant General Sri Lanka Army and my course-mate from 34th PMA Long Course, who used to call her “Amma” and believes that he and I were brothers in a previous reincarnation. And last but not the least a most precious letter from Major (Retd) Saeed Akhtar Malik who lost both his parents in an accident 32 years ago in Turkey. Was it so long ago that I stood beside Saeed in Chaklala to receive the bodies of Lt Gen Akhtar Hussain Malik and Auntie brought by an honour guard in two C-130s from Turkey, one full of flowers? (Our parents had met for the first time in the 16 Punjab Centre in Sialkot in 1947-48 and after his parents died my mother would always give him pride of place in our home).

Thirty years ago, almost to the day, when I was missing in 1971 in then East Pakistan, believed dead, my mother would walk bare feet every Thursday evening from Bath Island to Abdullah Shah Ghazi Mazar in Clifton. On cue on the eighth Thursday sometime in end July 1971, Brig (later Lt Gen) Ghulam Hassan Khan (then Defence Attache in India) was waiting in the drawing room of Darul Ali, D-2 Bath Island, sent by President Gen Yahya Khan, to tell my parents that I was alive and well, having escaped from an Indian PW Camp, but to keep it very confidential because I was still making my way out of India. Thirty years later, my courageous mother, stubborn, unbending, autocratic when she wanted to be and yet humble in word and deed, full of life and humanity, generous and expansive enough to be mourned by the poor of next door Shah Rasul Colony, was buried besides her beloved husband, in the same Abdullah Shah Ghazi Mazar. Coincidence, I don’t think so! Her only regret in life was the death of my younger sister Shahnaz in 1977 in Dhaka. I repeat what I penned for the DUA for her on May 22, 2001.

East is East and West is West, and here the twain did meet The fortunate will always remember, the unfortunate do not have a memory.

Can I end without thanking my son Zarrar and daughter Haya, who were far away in New York but were with me every 2 hours on telephone? Or my youngest daughter Nefer, who abruptly left the hospital about an hour before my mother died, saying, “you know Dadi is dying”, my niece Shahnoor (Joya) who would not leave her grand mother’s body till she was buried and my late younger sister’s namesake (and best friend), my loving wife Shahnaz, coincidentally also born of Punjabi father (Kharian) and Bengali mother (Faridpur), and a pillar of strength in my hour of weakness. One cannot thank Capt (Retd) A A Jilani enough (not a family friend but “family” itself) for the beautiful verses he penned for my mother on her death. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Marc Antony funeral oration for Julius Caesar with apologies, “the good some women do cannot be interred with their bones, the goodwill they have spread will always live after them”. So let it be with my mother!

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