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Although my ancestors, five generations back where from places all over the current Mandi Bahauddin District, I had never been to Mandi. Marriages across the river ended way back and senior generation relatives who used to frequent the events of marriage and death passed on with time. I always wanted to be there but it never materialized.
When Tariq Saeed, my classmate from Rawalpindi Medical College who is from Mandi asked me to visit him a few years back, I decided to take him on his offer. He is a cousin to my Abdalian entrymate Javed Iqbal (who earned the nickname of 'Mandi" early on in eighth grade when he surprised many of city dwellers in Hasanabdal in 1973 that Mandi is a sprawling metropolis in the heartland of Punjab).
Somehow the plan did not coalesce until now. This May, 2013, I went to Mandi. It was worth the trip. Tariq used to tell me about his clinic and the medical center he had made and how the rural medicine works. Tariq has always been of the religious bend and had a deep sense of community service; but what I saw was much more than I thought of.
Many of our friends and colleagues we know have started practice in their hometowns. Many have converted their old family houses which are now in the middle of the growing towns into a clinic or a medical center. Tariq has done the same. His family house which his father had built was supposedly outside the center of the town. By now it is in the middle of the town. He raised it to ground, build a four level hospital Shifa Clinic, and has brought in many specialists to the place. He has family quarters on the top floor. But this is not what makes him different. His contribution to the community esp in his ancestral village where he goes everyday, is what is unique to him.
With time, he had moved his family to Islamabad, for their education, so he lives in Mandi alone with his parents. His two daughters are medical students, both married to physicians, one a nephorologist in USA and the other an orthopedists about to start his own practice in Mandi, in Shifa Hospital. His son, not surprisingly, is taken out of school to finish Hifz Quran in two years. After that he will probably go back to the regular school system.
In summers, Tariq commutes weekly on Thursdays to Islamabad, spends the night there and comes back Friday night. That is his weekend off. That is how we decided to travel. He would be in Pindi area on Thursday and I will travel back with him on Friday after the prayers.
Cell phone has made a big changes in our lives. Tariq has taken the advantage of using the instrument on his daily and weekly commutes to connect with the class mates and everybody else. He is the one in our class who knows most about every body. This is despite the fact that he has no presence on internet, Facebook included. By US standards it is quite dangerous to call and drive, but he is quite at ease with it.
Travelling on GT road from Pindi to Lahore, one sees the Upper Jhelum Canal and the road along with it, next to Military College Sarai Alamgir. I have traveled on that road hundreds of times during my student years but never thought much about the canal. We make a right turn to head towards Mandi. The new road is now on the east side of the canal, the old one was on the west side. This is the same road where the abandoned car of outspoken journalist Saleem Shahzad was found and his dead body was found in the canal. One can see the effect of the road on the economy and the culture of the side of canal.
Wider and better roads do bring in prosperity and mobility to the rural areas and that is why building betters roads have led to election victories most of the times. Close to Head Rasul Barrage, we make a turn and lead into Mandi.
The Shifa Clinic is quite impressive, with a ramp going all the way to the top floor. After a short rest, we headed to the dinner with my old Abdalian Classmate Dr Shahid Naseem. click here
Mandi Bahauddin is one of the relatively new towns made out of an old village Chak 51. It has wide roads. It was laid by the British after the Rasul Headworks were laid, around 1920's.
The next day we headed towards his morning clinic. That is where the rubber meets the road. Tariq's family belongs to a village Gojra some twenty minutes south on the Gujrat Sargodha Road, colloquially also known as the Gondal Bar as mostly Gondals are from there. They come in all forms and varieties, sunnies, shias, Piplias, Muslim Leagueis, winners and losers in elections, it is all within the big baradari.
Along the way is the newly minted Darbar of Maulana Jalaluddin of Bhikhi now appropriately known as Bhikhi Sharif. His son Hazrat Mazhar Qayyum Shah Mashhadi aka Hazrat Sani Sahib ( the second one) is quite active in politics. The late Maulana was optically challenged but one Ramzan he convinced the population to break their fast at ten in morning, as he had evidence of moon sighting the night before.
What I saw in Gojra I would not have believed if someone else told me about it. The old family house is converted into an outpatient health facility. We reached there by 830 in the morning and there were at least two hundred patients waiting to be seen. All of them and more would be seen in the next four to six hours. They were separately lined up in men's and women's section. Patients in group of five or ten were seen at a time, either from the male side or the female side. They will be charged a token fee of Rupees 50, given some medications to take, and a pharmacy available for extra medications. This all goes non stop. Tariq does that on daily basis.
What he earns out of it? A lot of goodwill, peace of mind and spiritual satisfaction. I cannot think of any way I can achieve that in my professional life and felt envious of that. It is not only me, but in my opinion none of the acclaimed specialist friends who have busy and stellar practices in the big cities can claim that kind of satisfaction; a son of soil who is also a healer within the community can do a lot good. God bless him for his work.
Half way into his hours, I left him and moved on. His brother in law and son in law gave me a lift on the ever bumpy road to the Motorway, ( the only link road to Motor way which is still very damaged, even when it was the home territory of Nazar Gondal). Next stop was Faisalabad where an old paternal cousin once removed lives. I had to have a chat with him about the old stories of the family before either of us get too old to talk about it.
Tariq Saeed is one of those thorough gentlemen who are always looking for an opportunity to be of help and comfort to you.He was a gracious host, as always and it was a trip worth it in more than one ways.
