From Kerala to Islamabad (A Journey of Nine Decades)

Daddy has never been a just a word evoking the image of a father. It always had connotations of a certain protective, loving, and caring attitude for the children. An instinctive outlook developed in the mapalla culture, of the muslims living in the backwaters of Kerala, where daddy was born and spent his formative years, in early twenties. At that time their life was rich in the traditions which their Arab trading ancestors brought with them, over the centuries, starting from the advent of Islam as they came and settled there. Getting primary and secondary education was difficult for many reasons, lack of schools in the vicinity being one.

Grandfather, a practical timber merchant was never too enthusiastic about his only son becoming too preoccupied with education, however daddy always felt grateful for taking him to school, though admitting him under the name Abdu, as he lovingly called him, instead of Abdur-Rehman, and later seeing him through college. After graduating in English from Maharaja College, Erakulam, he joined the ordnance corps of the British army, caught up in the war, as a civilian. All his life, at sometime or the other, Daddy has been telling me stories about life in the ordnance, first in Madras, after a brief stint with the central government at Delhi, and later in Calcutta. Mother remembers Madras fondly, since this was their first experience of living alone, and facing the problems of life, secure only in each other’s company, the first few years of their marriage intermittently spent in mother’s ancestral home, or tarawad, as it is called in Malyalam. Those years were difficult also because my mother had incurred the wrath of my grandfather, a well off timber merchant himself, for choosing to leave the comforts of family home, and staying in some seemingly unknown place.

The most colourful person from his ordnance days was undoubtedly Major Azam. Major Azam, now living with his family in America, in good health, but poor sight, is said have belonged to the Afghan royal family. During the pre-partition upheavals there, his family fled to settle down in such distant places like Dehradun and Abbotabad. Major Azam, conscious of his royal heritage, could never come to terms with the army discipline, often in-subordinating his commanding officers. Later on in Karachi, first at Malir, and then at Drigh Road, his family and ours were very close, and I have delightful memories of sometimes living with them, specially enjoying the stacks of comic books of his son. The off springs, all fine and able people, understandably inherited the pride from their parents. Unable to come to terms with the realities of life in Pakistan, the whole family eventually migrated to U.S.A. While posted in Calcutta, Daddy met some colleagues who belonged to Rawalpindi, and it was in their company that he got caught up in the Pakistan movement fever, deciding to migrate to the country which was to be called Pakistan. His well meaning British CO, to dissuade him from taking this step, tried his best to show him the problems of the decision which later was to shape the life both for himself and his family, but the dreams of living in the homeland of his dream! Even today my octogerian mother pines for her native land and dear ones. About twelve years ago one of those old ordnance colleagues from Calcutta told me with some pride that he was responsible for bringing Daddy to Pakistan. That elderly gentleman is no longer with us, and Daddy is in frail health. Recently Daddy at the age of ninety broke his leg, and we spent some anxious days hoping that he recovers from the surgery. The surgical procedure was successful but left him even weaker.

Nowadays I write in newspapers and on the internet about good old days just to make him happy since he always wanted me to write, but I never got convinced about possibility of supporting a family with my meager writing skills. He keeps enquiring if my articles have been published as yet, and I often show him the drafts and ask him for suggestions, even though I know he can barely keep his attention fixed at one thing for more than a couple of minutes. Inspired by Daddy’s values of hard work and enthusiasm for obtaining education, a daughter has become a doctor, a son is serving with the government at a very responsible position, and two sons have obtained their PhDs, one of them teaching in U.S.A. They may not have become the success stories people could quote of, but none has disappointed Daddy, and all are trying to keep daddy happy just out of sense of love and gratitude. During his current malady scores of friends of his children, who have been living in Islamabad for the last forty one years, came to pay their respects to Daddy, and it is really touching to see the warmth with which they greet Daddy. Some of them are important people, but when it comes to meeting Daddy they forget all this and meet daddy with warmth which is rare to see these days. Mother finds escape, living in a world of make-believe, run by the values of trust, compassion, and charity, prevalent in the gentle landed family of a small village in Kerala called Kunjithai, whose one claim to fame is the fact that Vaso De Gama landed nearby, just across the Periyar river, when he first landed in the subcontinent. Daddy tells me that a church and a fort still marks that place.