Note: This post is like verrrrrryyyyyyyy long and pretty serious so if you are not in the mood for something a little blue, kindly don’t read it and hence save me from you ill will 
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”You know what we used to think when I was a kid?” inquired the wrinkled old face
“What? Dadi Jan?” I asked earnestly, my little face in my hands and my bespectacled eyes focused on her.
“…that this world is lifted up on the horns of huge bulls, and when they shift it from one side to another , earthquakes come!” She told me in her slow, halting manner..
“hehehe” my little form bubbled with giggles….. “but that is so stupid Dadi Jan…didn’t you know that earthquakes come because of some other reason?” I asked her a question in return, trying to be wise beyond my years…
“The subterranean movements…earthquakes come when there are shifting of layers beneath the ground. And no, back then we didn’t know this, science is a modern thing for us…little Professor” explained my Grandmother in a little detail to the 6 year old me…
It was always like that, my brother and I asking one thing or another from our Grandmother and she telling us tales of her life, sharing her experiences, teaching us new things and what not. Having Grandparents to live with you is a very beautiful experience and Alhamdulillah, we’ve been lucky to have lived under the cool shadow of parents’ squared love. Our Grandfather had the Parkinson’s disease and his mind did not work properly until his cerebrum shriveled so much that in his last years he became a mere vegetable….yet his presence was there throughout the house.
My Grandmother was my best friend back then, one who used to tell me cool stories about the independence fights, the wars of 65 and 71. One who taught me to read at the tiny age of 6 and the one who taught my brother and me to play a mean game of court piece. It was her, upon whom, Ahmad(that’s my brother btw) and I experimented our culinary talents, fried mangos and half cooked roti and it was her whose little bittles of old fashioned superstitions made me think about every thing twice. I guess it was because of my Dadi Jan that I became such an avid listener and such a curious questioner….so when she died when I was 10, I was devastated.
Time heals, it does….but it’s more like that it buries the pain under the layers and layers of passing hours until we stop aching continuously….only intermittently.
I don’t believe in the filmy love of ‘janam janam ka saath’ but even the unbelieving me could see that the streak of deep fondness and companionship of years can even filter into the vague, evasive worlds of unconscious mind…..my Dada Jan’s health deteriorated very fast after my Grandmother’s death….whatever little movements he could do, he simply let up until his beautiful grey eyes perpetually stared into the expanses of empty space. We could sometimes here him speaking of the remote past, his friends, his deceased brothers and mother and ‘F’, my grandmother.
My grandmother’s name was Fehmida and my DadaJan used to call her “F” and he said it so beautifully that the young little me used to think that any husband who loves his wife calls her “F”. After my grandmother I used to spend hours talking to my un listening Dada Jan. I told him my boring tales of my boring life at school, my O-Levels papers and how I totally blew my chance to get a perfect 100 in mathematics. He had become mute, he couldn’t complain if he hurt somewhere, he couldn’t ask if he was hungry and he couldn’t tell if he had to go to washroom…yet he was very much there,….fully present in our lives. I ranted to him about things I knew nobody would be interested in listening and I wondered how scary it is to be living in a state of unnatural fog…and I remember telling him… “It’s ok Dada Jan, it’s going to be Ok” …….
So I could never forget that Monday morning when after Fajar prayers I had slept back without kissing his forehead and saying ‘Good Morning’ to him….that was an omen. I woke up from a terrible nightmare I was having from my mother jerking my shoulder forcefully:
“Rabia come to the bed, see what has happened to DadaJan, he is not opening his eyes” she told me between sobs….
I was up in a shot and touched his feet for my grandmother had told me that when the Angel of Death comes he starts to take away the soul from the feet….they were death cold!
I had lost another best friend that day….even before I could tell him that I had still managed to land an A in Math, the only other A besides Urdu….As it is after my Granddad’s death many difficult times erupted, as if his presence warded off the evil spirits….but Allah (SWT) never tries us more than we can take and I thank God that time is not stagnant.
My Dad put his career on a hold since he had his sick parents to look after. My mom had to give up on a lot of her desires and wishes because she had to take care of my Grandparents and in return they get the life long satisfaction of doing the right thing…..but how many old people are lucky enough to have someone to cater to their needs in their tender age of lost hope and wilting life?
I’m not a supporter of beggary…but can I possibly say ‘no’ to a wrinkled old hand opened in front of me! No that is very difficult….you cannot shun a rickety, hunched, shriveled being who moves with an effort and whose face shows the corrosion of ages and eyes devoid of any light or life. It kills me a little every day to see some old person sitting on a foot path crying, in cold and in heat. It made me hate my generation and the one directly before me to see that they left their ill, old parents in Edhi homes so they could get on with their lives.
Sometimes I’m scared of becoming a similar self absorbed brat, who’ll neglect a weak hand extended to help them up….God SOS…for it is our souls that we are losing to become zombies living for this world only.
