AAKHIR KYON
The boy happily climbed on the pillion of his father’s bike…….he hugged his father tight as the bike speeded up.
Nighat watches such events every day and her heart cries…..she walks across the Mir Mohalla…past the dilapidated house where she once lived happily …as a pampered single child. Absentmindedly, she picks up a pebble from the courtyard and moves on to her maternal uncle’s house.
She puts her school bag on the table. Her mother Afroza enters the room and they talk about the activities of madrassa……and then as every day, Nighat sits near the window, looking at the trees and thinking about Manzoor, her loving father.
Afroza always nagged Manzoor for having ‘spoiled’ Nighat…
“Why do you get things for her on her very first request?” she would complain… “Nighat must understand value of things…..”Afroza would argue.
Manzoor would laugh it away… “Bachhi hai ….mere jigar ka tukda hai..” ….and then secretly, the father and daughter duo would plan on the next purchase…sitting in the lawn, playing with pebbles…. more nagging from Afroza….more ignoring by Manzoor… overall a happy family scene.
When Nighat came to know that Manzoor had picked up a weapon, she was at loss to understand the literal meaning of the phrase….her innocent mind could not comprehend the issues that people discussed…and she could not understand when some people praised Manzoor on having done so…..or the celebrity treatment she would get at the Madrassa from some teachers…now that celebrity status had vanished…..and sympathetic expressions had replaced the praises.
That day in early autumn had got etched in her memory like a screen saver of a computer …Manzoor’s mortal remains placed in the same lawn where they used to sit for hours.
Her maternal uncle and aunt both love her…. but that love cannot match Manzoor’s love … love of ten uncles and twenty aunts cannot match the love of a father to a child. When her uncle sings a cradle song for his little daughter…she misses Manzoor…when he tickles the little girl and she giggles…. she misses Manzoor…. Afroza understands this and when free, she would hug Nighat and express her love…..but that love too was not close to the love of her father.
Sometimes Nighat thinks she is better off than her friend Ayesha who stays in an orphanage….her father too had died after he had picked up a weapon. Ayesha had no family, her relatives had shunned her and she was at the mercy of donations….at least Nighat had a home…but then she rethinks…was she in a home or a ‘house’? Once she overheard Afroza saying to her brother that Manzoor had ‘embraced’ death. Nighat would think for hours together…why would someone ‘embrace’ death? It was scary…and if we all have to die someday then why ‘embrace’ death before time? Sometimes she feels angry that Manzoor did not think about her before ‘embracing’ death…sometimes she would ask naïve questions to Afroza which she never answered.
Nighat’s tender heart does not understand the logic of life and death as Maulvi sahib preaches…she does not understand destiny…or ‘life after death’……..she knows one hard fact …that her father was dead…no logic and no explanation would make her understand the reason behind it.
Life goes on….. people continue to chase obscured dreams of life after death.. ignoring the life at hand…. their families are not part of these dreams…the families get left behind… solitary and sad.
Mera masoom bachpan jawab mangta hai… Apne toote khwabon ka hisaab maangta hai.
