My Mother…

My Mother…

When I think of my mother the very first associations I make with her are that of love, courage,strong will and determination.My mother got married when she was quite young as was the trend in her time. This was in 1954 when times were simpler and the pace of life slower.

So it was soon after taking her higher secondary exam that she must have found herself traveling to Abbottabad with a complete stranger, who was now her husband. My mother had lived most her life in Lahore and Abbottabad must have seemed very different to her. My father had a job in the PMA and not many parallels can be drawn between the hustle and bustle of the big metropolis and the cool environs of this quaint little hill station. Our home in the PMA was a large, colonial type bungalow…as different from our grandmother’s 5 storey high ancestral home near Islamia College in old Lahore as could be imagined.

I can imagine my mother setting up home in the cold and harsh winters of Abbottabad where she knew no one and no one knew her. My elder brother, my only sibling, arrived after a couple of years and that must have incorporated more changes in her life and made her busier. I arrived six years later and my earliest memories are of being wheeled around in a perambulator on the main road of PMA. Though I must have been very little at that time, I do remember my mother going up and down the somewhat steep incline of the PMA main road, sometimes stopping to chat with someone, while I peered out at the world safe and snug in my blankets.

My mother was not a lady to fritter away her time. She had resumed her studies soon after marriage and as soon as I was a bit older she passed her B Ed from Peshawar University. This entailed leaving home and going to Peshawar for extended periods of time. Soon afterwards she obtained a job in the government sector and started teaching at a school in Abbottabad. This meant traveling from PMA to Abbottabad and back every day. Abbottabad was sparsely populated in those days and this was quite a journey as we did not have a car then and she had to use public transport, arriving back home late in the afternoon, frequently battling with the vagaries of weather. Much later when I was older I asked her why had she not been a stay at home mother. She answered, ‘I wanted more for myself and you all and I also wanted to do something worthwhile with my life’.

She had enrolled in a Masters programme soon after her B Ed and she obtained an MA in Persian from Peshawar University in due course. This was in the sixties and Pakistan was a much more progressive country then. Very soon my mother was appointed as Headmistress in a high school in Abbottabad. I started school at Burn Hall in 1968 and after my school was over, I would be escorted to my mother’s school and we would come back home together. My mother loved art, music and poetry and it was through her that I learned to appreciate Iqbal and Ghalib and Lata and Mukesh and Mehdi Hasan and Amanat Ali Khan among others at an early age. She was a great admirer of Iqbal and would recite his poetry to us, saying that one day we would understand. Every Sunday  a taxi would take us all to a cinema in Abbottabad city where we would catch a matinee show of the latest Pakistani movie.

Though my mother had a regular job which took its toll on her time, it never meant that her home took second place. She was a marvelous organizer and with the help of our faithful retainer, she ensured that her family did not feel left out in any way. She slaved over the stoves, cooking lunch a night before, catering to the whims and fancies of all. I had developed this strange aversion to vegetables very early in my life while my father preferred them. Most of the time my mother had to cook two dishes at every meal but she always did it with a smile. Come winters and we would have all kinds of home-made halwas and panjeerees. In winters she would stuff my pockets with an assortment of nuts every morning before I left for school. While it was good fun munching on them it also made me very popular and endeared me to many class fellows, at least till the nuts finished.  Come summers and we would have homemade sherbets, milk shakes, sardaai and ice cream. The ice cream was made with real mangoes in a big, bucket like contraption which had a lever that had to be rotated for hours by hand but the taste of the ice cream was heavenly. I enjoyed helping her out in the kitchen and thus developed an interest in cooking and other household chores. My mother knitted and sewed and more often than not the gloves, pullovers and socks we wore would be knitted by her. We would spend the long winter holidays with our mother at our grandmother’s in Lahore, while my father would have to stay in Abbottabad because of his job. Lahore meant visits to all the historical places and parks with lots to experience and savour.

A government job meant that my mother had to be prepared to be posted anywhere in the province and she willingly went where the government sent her. During her 35 years service she served the NWFP government in many places including far flung remote stations like Mansehra, Akora Khattak, Karak, Ghandian and Chitral. My mother was an extremely upright, honest and principled lady. When in one of the elections, as the presiding officer in charge of a Polling Station, she did not accede to the unfair demands of a political stalwart, he threatened her with dire consequences. Later that night he sent his goons to frighten her and they fired shots around the place where she was staying in a village near Mansehra. I was with her then and I remember not being frightened at all simply because she was not frightened. Her aides advised her to leave the next morning but my mother refused. She took care of her duties the next day and only left after the votes had been counted. Needless to say that because of this defiance arrangements were made to transfer her to Chitral! Her resilience and will power continue to inspire me. I now realize that both my parents sacrificed their own comfort and ease, in so many ways, to ensure a better life for their children.

My mother was later appointed as the Principal of Comprehensive School, the largest government higher secondary school in Abbottabad. She then served as District Education Officer, also heading the Primary Education Initiative in the early nineties. I remember sometimes driving her Jeep when she went for her school inspections; a thorough professional, she would not even have a cup of tea at the host schools. Her students and colleagues were devoted to her and kept in touch with her long after she had retired.

In the early eighties, my father went abroad in connection with his job. This meant that my mother had the added responsibility of acting as a father. Though she managed to acquit herself well on all fronts, it did take a toll on her health and she suffered a stroke which left her paralyzed. Her indomitable will helped her to recover in due course and she was up and about in a few months but she had developed hypertension and diabetes, which haunted her for the rest of her life.

Meanwhile my brother had graduated from Khyber Medical College, Peshawar and had joined the AMC as a Captain. He was married  now and my mother was proving to be an exemplary mother in law and grandmother. Her ailing health confined her activities gradually but she continued to be the central figure in the family. She was the one who located my bride to be and I happily accepted her recommendation without even once meeting her and toward no regret till date.

They say the best thing parents can do for their children is to love one another. My father not only endured whatever disruptions her job caused to his life but proved to be a pillar of strength for her. My parents enjoyed about 50 years of a blissful and contented marriage. She was a wonderful grandmother and my kids doted on her.

Eventually her chronic ailments got the better of her. Her kidneys had deteriorated over time and she could only bear two dialysis sessions. She passed away early morning on 4 December 2005. We all were by her side!

Hardly a day goes by when I do not think of her. She continues to live on in me. So much of who I am today and how I act and react is derived from my parents. My values, my code of conduct and my personality all are their reflection. In our starry eyed youth we are full of ourselves and in our impatience and haste, whirling in the vortex of life and caught up in the hot pursuit of unrealized dreams many of us tend to take many things for granted. It’s only when you have children of your own that you begin to realize the profound and sensitive nature of the relationship between children and their parents.

Dear reader, if you are fortunate enough to have the company of your mother, cherish her, honour her and make the most of the time you have with her. The emptiness her departure will create will never go away.

‘It’s not until much later when the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories and all their accomplishments sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.”(Mitch Albom in ‘The five people you meet in heaven’)