I came to know of Mother’s Day in 1988 when I came to
America. My mother was already here living with my sister. That was the only
Mother’s Day I celebrated with her. By
next year, she had gone back to Pakistan, got sick and died.
When I was in Pakistan and she was out of country, I graduated from the medical college, did my internship and was working as an instructor
in the medical college. I had not really celebrated any of
my ‘successes’ with her. Coming to America in February and finding a job in a lab
while preparing for my exams in USA, we had our Mother’s Day. I gave here the
card and as a token of my gift from my income, I put in a hundred-dollar bill.
That was the only monetary gift I could ever give to my mother.
She was one of the younger siblings in a large family in rural
Lyallpur, now Faisalabad. Out of nine siblings, three sisters and six brothers who survived into adulthood, she
was schooled the least. She had developed farsightedness at an early age and had to wear heavy
glasses as a young girl. Her parents thought education would be too much of a burden
for her. She could only finish 8th grade.
She got married at a young age and raised five of us with
our father. They both shared the same dreams for us but her desire and ambition
were most palpable. She wanted her children to achieve what she could not. She wanted
all of us to be educated and successful in our lives. For that she fought all
her life. She fought for her rights, for the rights of her family and her children. Along the
way she was diagnosed with an incurable and debilitating disease, and she died
fighting for her life at a relatively young age.
She died young, in late 50’s, but lived long enough to see
all her children stand on their feet. Our
youngest sibling, my brother, was in the last years of medical college.
She was full of life. She lived with physical pain almost all of her adult life, but the memories I have of her are all filled with her laughter. That was in her Randhawa genes and no pain or adversity could take the liveliness out of her.
She was raised in a very religious household. Her father, was a khalifa (deputy) of the Darbar of Sultan Bahu and the Imam of the village mosque. Her daily routine, even in sickness, involved daily readings of religious texts, with translations, and spending a lot of time on the prayer mat. At the same time, she was a symbol of modernity; in her thoughts and in her life.
My regret is personal. I could not be of any service to her except
the 100-dollar bill I gave her on that Mother’s Day.
To quote Iqbal
عمر بھر تیری محبت میری خدمت گر رہی
میں تری خدمت کے قابل جب ہوا تو چل بسی
