The end of an era: My mother's death in Aug 2017

How do I describe a pain that pricks my primordial existence? A loss that is deeply personal yet is universal in nature? The healing balm of time will blunt the most deadly pangs of this loss but the void, I know, will stay forever. Some voids never fill and this is one of them. My mother has died. This here is a story of a mother narrated by her son -I request the readers to allow me some emotions- but it is also a tale of trials and tribulations faced by the young migrants who were compelled to uproot from their ancestral abodes in the wake of partition of Punjab in August 1947. This is also a story of their struggle and triumph. My mother was born in 1935 to a family of tailors. My maternal grandfather had his prosperous tailoring shop on the ground floor of his house that he had recently built in Katra Karam Singh in Amritsar and was happily raising his seven children when Pakistan became independent. The people of Punjab, as those in other northern provinces of India, went berserk in1947 and started butchering persons of rival religious communities. My maternal grandparents, and their close relatives in Amritsar, were forced to migrate to Lahore and occupy the houses and shops vacated by Sikhs and Hindus moving in the other direction. My nana, a supporter of Indian Congress and a survivor of Jallianwala Bagh massacre, thought that he had nothing to fear in Amritsar. Hi s friends, however, advised him to leave as some Hindu migrants from Pakistani towns had their eyes on his newly built house. On 14th August, he sent his family to Lahore by train in the company of some other relatives. My mother would tell us of the fear she and her siblings felt on the platform on seeing the threatening hordes of karpan carrying Sikhs, who were held in check by the presence of the military force. When the train moved out of station, she remembered seeing jeering groups of Sikh fighters, eager to take down the train and its vulnerable cargo of refugees. However, they were lucky to have a Muslim train driver who kept firing the engine at a high speed. Some shots were fired at them but she recalls everyone being safe in her jam-packed compartment. Close to Taran Taran, another group of looters fired heavily at them but their luck held and they crossed over the border without any losses. Her father, who had a polio stimulated limp in his left leg, left Amritsar a few days later and had to walk or hitch-hike to Lahore. There are now numerous black and white photographs on the internet of cramped and overflowing refugee trains plying between Lahore and Amritsar in August 1947. A desperate crowd of terrified humans can be seen latching onto the door handles and the roofs, hanging for their dear life. I look at these images and see my mother, a twelve year old girl, suffocating in one of the compartments; because that is how she travelled from Amritsar to Lahore with her family. Upon alighting at Lahore, they thought they had reached the safety of a promised land. Little did they know that their struggle for survival and a decent life had just begun. They settled in Gowalmandi where my maternal grandfather set up his tailoring shop but never found the financial security that he had enjoyed in Amritsar. His first four children were daughters -my mother being second eldest. He was forced to dispatch his elder son, my favourite mamoo Waheed, to Soha Bazaar, instead of a school, as an apprentice to a goldsmith to make an early start in life. My mother used to go to a school in Amritsar but had to discontinue studies in Lahore. The two eldest sisters were married to Kashmiri immigrants; my Khala Safia to a cloth merchant from Gurdaspur and settled in Gujranwala, and my mother to a draughtsman (my father) from Amritsar. Both marriages took place in 1950 and the age of the sisters were 16 and 15 respectively. I felt the agony of partition when I visited Amritsar with me parents. Yielding to the nostalgia that my parents felt for the home and the locality where they grew up and that had left behind, the decided to pay a pilgrimage to Amritsar. We made the visit in December 1963. My father went to Lohgarh area and knocked at his onetime house so that he could take a look inside. A middle aged woman answered and when told about the purpose of the visit, she shut the door saying 'Why did you come? Go back to your country." My father stood at the entrance and kept trying to take a peep inside until the door was firmly shut in his face. I looked at him and could see tears rolling down his cheeks. I hated that woman at that time but now understand that she must have being a migrant herself and was feeling the same pain, as was my father. We then went to Katra Karam Singh, the old house of my mother and here we were received warm heartedly. We spent an hour in the house talking to the family and my sombre looking mother visiting various parts of the house. The next day, we visited Darbar Sahab and Jallianwala Bagh. We had planned for a stay of a few days but the next day, we heard that Moi Mubarak (Prophet's hair) had been stolen from Hazratbal in Srinagar. Riots broke out in Indian Held Kashmir and fearing closure of borders, we took the next bus to return to Lahore. After all these years, I can still feel the wistfulness writ large on the faces of my parents during that visit and as they had to make a hurried exit, reminiscent of their sudden immigration. My parents had to undergo a long period of hardship in settling down in the new land. Their stories bring in me a deep empathy for Palestinian, Syrian and other refugees, whose lives are shattered and families are torn asunder. I know their agony. We too suffered a trying period of poverty and want but my parents never gave up hope and provided us the best education that their meagre resources could afford. Our finances were so thin that I once accompanied my mother to sell a heavy brass lock in the market to fetch our next meal. Another time, when I was going to PAF College Sargodha from Lahore after summer break, my mother had only five rupees with her and our father's pay was due the next day. The bus fare for the journey was four rupees and one anna (one rupee equalled 16 annas). My mother insisted that I take all five rupees, in case I need some money on the way, while I, mother's confidante and cognizant of the last change with her, wanted to leave fifteen annas behind. She forced me to take the entire lot of five rupees. I was barely fifteen years old at that time and learnt the value of money. Those fifteen annas, the amount in excess of my bus fair, always remained a heavy burden on my shoulders and reminds of me of the sacrifices that my mother, and father, made for our better future. Life is defined not in terms of years but in struggles faced and overcome. Success in life is not how long one lives but how those years were lived. Measured against these standards, our mother lived an enviable life and our parent's hard work bore fruit. Starting her life in post partition Lahore as a teen aged uneducated migrant daughter of a small time tailor, she became mother of eight successful sons. She was mother to one Air Force and two Army officers, and very prosperous businessmen. Among her grandchildren, she had doctors, engineers, lawyers and some business graduates. We, her grateful sons, recognized her grit and fortitude in lifting us from penury to affluence. Anyone would be proud of these laurels in life. She died a satisfied mother. She was 82 and had been sick for some time. She had twice suffered cardiac events in the last three years, had inefficient renal functions, and had been diabetic and hypertensive for the previous three decades. Throughout her illness, she displayed forbearance, never complained and followed medical advice in true letter and spirit. However, there comes a stage when the human body loses its fight against age and illness, and her time had come. In the end, she had gone weak; in fact very weak and weighed about forty kilograms. While rubbing moisturizing cream on her dry skin, all I could feel was her loose skin covering her cartilages and bones. The lymphoma in her lower abdomen had rapidly consumed all layers of protective fat and muscle tissues, draining her energy in the process. When I reached Lahore on Wednesday, she could turn sides on the bed and stand on her feet to sit on the wheel chair for washroom. By Saturday, her last day of life, she needed help to do that. Through all trials and tribulations of her long turbulent life, she behaved in the most dignified manner. She was able to maintain her grace till the end. She ate her last meal with her own hands and went to toilet for the last time unaided, though on a wheel chair. By noon, she started feeling uncomfortable and her nails turned blue. We took her to the hospital where she was put on oxygen. She started losing consciousness and breathed her last at 0035 hours on Sunday the 20th of August. All her sons and many of her grand and great grand children were by her side. I witnessed her soul leave her body, recited my final prayers and held her in my arms to ease the final spasm. Rest in peace Ammi Ji. You will always be missed. This article appeared in the weekly The Friday Times on 29th Sep 2017 Parvez Mahmood retired as a Group Captain from PAF and is now a software engineer. He lives in Islamabad and writes on social and historical issues. He can be reached at parvezmahmood53@gmail.com