A Paean to my Family

It is particularly fitting now to raise this verbal toast – so many of them have gone – I find myself holding tightly to those left. But where to begin? With the stern luxuriantly mustached man staring unforgivingly through the studio portrait we grew up with – or the equally stern but sadly reduced man he became in old age? The tail coat – tailored in Bombay, we were told with understandable pride – replaced by the sherwani now rather loose on the gaunt frame. That forty something man whose third wife having failed to bear him a son herself urged him to find a younger wife. He did. Sher Ali weds Aziz Fatima – 15 year old virgin, the nikhanama must have read.

Sons she bore – prolifically – eight of them – and the seventh is my father. Aziz Fatima was unusual for her time – the only daughter of a wealthy man – she’d played with the gold coins he lavishly brought home in little black tin trunks. He had her conveyed to the local school in a palki – and removed her when she was in the fifth grade – Munni was jawan (pubescent) – he declared. But he died and avaricious cousins snatched the lands and wealth and Munni and her mother – the Kashmiri who always boasted that had Heaven been on earth it would be in Kashmir – were left penniless. Ergo, the marriage.

Did Aziz Fatima regret being tied to a man so much her senior? Daddy says no. She was unflinchingly loyal – even when his quixotic nature led him to chuck away a secure governmental job because he was not being given leave to attend a cousin’s wedding. Reduced to penury, they slowly sold the household goods – my father remembers this with pain, having had to cart away a sewing machine as collateral for a loan. He blames his parsimonious tendencies on that lean period and never wants to be in debt.

Aziz traveled alone with two small children to join Sher Ali in Poonch where he was stationed. The caretaker at a lonely dak bungalow where she spent the night, taken by the young matron tried to scare her with tales of mountain lions into seeking his protection, but Aziz was firm. She locked him out and sat up the whole night. On that or another journey; Daddy’s memory can play tricks; she was traveling by train when her eldest mischievous Safdar suddenly found himself swinging from the open door of the carriage. The younger, Yaqoob was petrified but swore all his life that when the frightened scream reached her ears, she stood up calmly, called softly, “Safdar, I am coming,” and calmly walked down the corridor to rescue her errant son.

In the days of plenty they lived in the Haveli built in Jallundur by Sher Ali’s ancestor when he and his entourage fled from Jaipur having converted to Islam. As times grew harder, the family was forced to sell and move to a much smaller house. But here too, Aziz quickly imprinted her own style on the neighbourhood. Daddy recounts tales of the local women flocking in every evening to hear Aziz re-tell the stories of Urdu literature. Hatim Tai, I seem to remember figured largely in these nocturnal chats.

I wondered where I should begin –but my knowledge of her is coloured by my father’s memories, and though he is always loyal to the memory of his father, it is his mother who holds his heart. So just as he pays token reverence to Sher Ali, it is Aziz who springs to the forefront when the family is mentioned.

Inexorably I find the family picture in my mind’s eye whenever I think of them all – the Chaudhry brothers – at least three of my generation not then born are missing from the photo and several have passed away since, but I was about two or so – so this must have been taken in the late fifties. It must have been Chachajan’s house – Lawrence Road, the centre of all family activity. Of Aziz’s eight sons, two died young – the natural attrition of any family in those days. Safdar, the eldest however, stands with head rakishly tilted – his romantic soul well under control after his marriage to Esther – renamed Bilquis after the marriage. Burri Mummy, we all fondly called her. And it was their house to which we gravitated in our childhood for there we met unconditional love and food galore. Safdar, who in his teens fell so in love with some visiting cousin that he slept with her stocking under his pillow, Tai Mary’s daughter, maybe, for someone somewhere converted to Christianity.

Bil, as Safdar lovingly called her, adopted her in-laws so completely however, that she became the quintessential daughter-in-law. Purdah, a spate of little girls, so beloved in that house of men that the eldest girl Iffat was literally carried around in Amjad’s overcoat pocket.

Safdar, a true Renaissance man – devotee of books, of music, of my father… how his hands trembled when he tried to pin on to the uniform Daddy’s new badges of rank when he was promoted to IG police. Moodh Makhna – he called him. And the first time I saw my larger than life father cry was at Bhaijan’s death. An era in my life went with him to the grave.

Yaqoob stands ramrod straight – the uncompromising giant of my childhood who in later years mellowed so we could actually talk. Our devotion to him as children was so complete that when Daddy asked my brother and me to enter an essay writing contest entitled “The Person Who Has Influenced Me the Most”, our reaction was to name Chachajan. If Iffat, Safdar’s eldest daughter was taught to call her uncle Chachajan, it was the latter’s daughter, Aashi who picked up the appellation Bhaijan for Safdar – and we all followed suit.

Yaqoob struggled through the difficult years of his father’s premature retirement – studying for the law – he shared rooms with Ataullah Sajjad and Noon Meem Rashid – tutored for a living and finally became one of the most successful lawyers of Pakistan. When I knew him he was Judge Sahib – elevated to the High Court and later the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was privy to the Hamoodur Rahman Commission and was one of the judges who presided over the famous Asma Jilani case.

That was his public persona – the man I knew and loved was a very human person. He could not bear to see Amjad in his agony after a serious road accident. So he would sit outside the hospital room all day… Strong as he was and seemingly emotionless, when the doctors needed to insert a cannula into his throat, it was Daddy’s hand he held, fiercely. His love for me was manifest in the anger with which he tossed away the loan Daddy was returning on my behalf when I fell ill with a cancer…

Of his wife Azra, (also a distant cousin), Chachijan, one of my earliest memories is one of those spool tapes on which my father invites her to sing with the words “Azra Apa, ub aap” – and she sang the Ghalib ghazal “Nukta cheen hai” for she had a melodious voice and had learnt to sing formally in her childhood. I remember her for her laughter, her generosity and her singing of a lovely “sehra” for the wedding of my brother, Azmi. She was full of life – her comment to my parents when they were considering where to leave us while they did a European tour was typical – “they will be happy but I won’t guarantee that they will study”. And it was they – my aunt and uncle - who looked after us when Daddy was a POW and insisted on taking us with them on their annual holiday to Bhurban.

Amjad – the tall handsome Brigadier – a Masters in English Literature, his daughters did him proud when he insisted on their being allowed to attend University in the late sixties. Amjad’s most cherished memory in my naturally prejudiced eyes is when we brought Daddy back from the border after the prisoner of war exchange at Wagah in January 1974. A flurry of hugs and blurred eyes at the border – but when we arrived home, Amjad took my father into his arms for a long leisurely hug. That said it all.

Amjad was the one who took his younger brothers’ academic careers seriously – if Daddy was a prize debater, it was Amjad who wrote the speeches, rehearsed Mahmood (Daddy) and Sajjad and the three brothers would walk away with all the trophies - the youngest Mahmood, first, Sajjad second, and Amjad, the architect of it all, third. History repeated itself when Farida, Amjad’s eldest daughter prepared me for my first college debate – and I won…

Sajjad – tall – humorous – distant – how he would relax when he was with the family! A series of mildly scatological jokes, a love of mithai and good food indulged in only occasionally – largely when none of his immediate family was there to chide.

In childhood, we knew him only through hearsay – but when he retired from a distinguished diplomatic career, it was to Islamabad he came and when I too was here, we had some wonderful conversations. A cynic at heart, he advised my daughter just about to leave for University abroad, not to associate with any Pakistani men – advice she obviously took to heart! I held his hand when he suffered one of the many cardiac pains he was admitted to hospital for in his last years – and I touched his just cold hand when he passed away suddenly.

He’d learnt a hard lesson in his early life – when he failed to achieve a good grade in his Matriculation, that stern taskmaster, his father, refused to pay for further education and jeeringly offered to enlist the boy as a foot constable – Sajjad spent a year wandering aimlessly – till Yaqoob came to the rescue and enrolled him at College. Sajjad never looked back.

And Saado – I deliberately skip a son – my father – to go to the youngest. Mathematician par excellence – his favourite joke many years ago concerned the chap who counted sheep by adding up the number of feet and dividing by four! In the photograph is his rakishly tilted head – his fair if rather buxom young wife holding their first baby, Khurram. The girls came later – and like my father who has always stood by his much loved younger brother, we too took his children to our hearts.

Many a sleep-over we had with them – waking up in bed with a nosy rabbit snuggling against sleep filled eyes. Neemchi, we called her – the hip aunt. And the children, closest to us in age were best friends – I daren’t recall the level of humour we enjoyed together!

And so I come to Dad – which story should I recall? The time he found a rupee coin from his mother’s household accounts and went off to the mela? (The amount of stuff he bought is the point of the story.) The time he escaped from the enforced afternoon naps and got stung by a colony of bees for his pains? The time his mother gently advised, “Don’t turn to drink if you can help it” as he was shipping out to join his troops in WWII? (My father has remained a teetotaler all his life based entirely on that plea.) The times tables he helped us learn on long car journeys? The times he helped wash my hair so the water wouldn’t run down my face? – I was going through a fear-of-drowning phase. The first cake he taught me to bake? That it sank is entirely due to my over-anxious opening of the oven door. The discussions we had when he was getting ready for office in the months before my wedding - he asked me to serve him breakfast so we could talk before he went off for another busy day at work – and the gist of the talks was how to be a good wife. My husband must be sorry he never held me to those rigorous rules!

The ineradicable sense of integrity he gave me – the importance of right and wrong – the fair play – he is the one to whom the less well off members of the family turn for help. I am proud of the fact that when I was married, the papers reported that despite the President of the country being an honoured invitee, the garden party at the Islamabad Club boasted only tea and biscuits – “with a few plates of kebabs here and there”. My in-laws, needless to say, saw none of the latter, as we always laughed later!

But Daddy is one of the old school – he never tires of telling us how soon after their wedding he arrived home one day to find a feast at lunch. On inquiring, he was told proudly by his bride that the cook was on leave and while she was attempting to cook, her father had arrived and insisted on sending over the meal. Daddy rose from table and declared that on no day would the fire not be lit in his home! My chagrined mother never let him down.

Now when I visit my parents, we spend long evenings talking about all manner of things – as I have grown older, few subjects are taboo. Of course, it was my brother who put the parents on the straight and narrow – his first daring photograph from university in England with a cigarette in his hand was perhaps the ice breaker. I first smoked in front of him much later – and my son was suitable horrified I’d had the guts to do that! Nowadays, my sister and I sometimes smile when we consider the latitude he gives our daughters – we could barely lunch out with friends – Maheen and Mehr attend midnight parties. Shanzeh – my brother’s daughter and Daddy’s special pet, was agonizing recently (at age 12) over what to wear to her first disco!

No, I can’t say enough about my father – my mother brought us up to virtually revere him – ours is a strongly patriarchal household – and from earliest childhood, Daddy was both threat for misdemeanours as well as refuge from them. Whenever I call him on the phone and ask him what he and Mummy are doing – he invariably answers – “talking about you.”

No account of the family would be complete without mention of my mother – after her marriage, Mummy adopted the family as her own – many of my cousins relay requests to Daddy through her. She reminds him of obligations to the almost lost offspring of long dead cousins. She is the one who has over the years worked up the courage to calm him down when she feels he is over-reacting to something. As he says, knowing she is there gives him strength. If today there is a Chaudhry worthy of my feisty grandmother, it is her.

My family – they are me.