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.
