AMAN KI ASHA
Freedom but no free movement across the border.
Photo credit: TravelJournal.net
Wednesday, August 17, 2011: August 14th and 15th, 2011, are the 64th Independence days for, respectively, Pakistan (part of which later became Bangladesh) and India. My heart has not been so torn at the previous Independence days as today. I have just returned from visiting my close friend, a Sikh (Indian) woman in the hospital with 50% burns, who celebrated her 40th birthday four weeks ago.
Sharon Kaur has been a friend, helper, rescuer and confidante for the last 17 years since I started working here in Scotland and needed someone to help manage my home as effectively as I managed my career.
We see each other once a week every week and sometimes even twice if I am having one of my parties but not so much for the last five years since she has put a ban on them. She would get tired and told me off: “Suhayl and I are fed up with your parties and we are not having them anymore, even I have stopped having them”.
She has three kids, 17, 15 and 3 years old, who have grown up in front of me. She loves my daughter Nadia like her own child since she saw her the day Nadia was a week old lying on my bed. We share our joys, sorrows, religious celebrations, weddings and birthdays. I have had some fantastic food at her house and the gurdawara that she attends and she is a big fan of my Afghani palao.
She speaks the Punjabi language, which I missed most after moving from Pakistan as no one among my in-laws spoke it. My Potowari Punjabi has been heavily influenced by her Sikh (Gurmukhi) Punjabi and she can now hold a reasonable conversation in Urdu. I just don’t want to start about her Birmingham accent as she grew up there... that drove me to fits of laughter in the beginning. She grew up in Birmingham and I grew up in Rawalpindi, both moved to Glasgow after getting married and both moan to each other about how conservative the Sikh and Pakistani communities are up here in Glasgow. We still think we are the most stylish and modern ones!
Sharon is a very beautiful, smart and charming woman, her house is much bigger and clutter-free than mine and she drives a BMW while I have only a Nissan Almeira. She always says “You two keep reading books and the house is going to the dogs... twaday brains keney waday ney tey twanoon phir wi koi akal nai”.
Sharon got burnt in a house-fire accident three weeks ago while cooking in her kitchen. She had just come back from London after celebrating her 40th birthday at her elder sister’s home with her five sisters and their families. She left a message on Thursday for me: “Alina, mein London toun wapis aa gayi aan when do you want me to come over, call me”.
She had the accident the same evening. I had been busy with my mum so didn’t call till the weekend, then her sister-in-law and husband called me. My heart sank when I heard that she had got burnt badly and was in Intensive Care. Her husband had also got burnt trying to save her.
I went to see her the next day and was devastated to see her in that condition. We all cried when the doctor told us that she had sustained 50% burns and that she would be fighting for survival. I think I had not cried so much as I did that day and over the next two days since my father had passed away. She is such a big part of my life, and I of hers, and we had never really thought about it till that day when she looked at me and nodded when I asked her if she recognised me and could hear me.
She always says that she cannot stand pain and then for her to be burnt and to be in so much pain just wrenched my heart. I always used to moan about wanting to live in other cities/countries and sometimes I am so fed up with parochial Glasgow but that day I said that I have to stay in Glasgow for Sharon to help her recover; I could not abandon her. I am still amazed at the emotions which I felt for her and the sense of responsibility that I felt towards her.
Friendship is a great thing and today, 14th August, when I saw her looking a bit better and whispering (she cannot yet talk) to me, I had to hold back my tears. She always says when she is tired or sometimes when she arrives at my place when I ask her, “How are you?” And she would say, “I am dead”. I used to sometimes tell her off and say “Hun ki huya...did you have a fight with someone?” She would start her story over the chopping of onions which would last over an hour at least. She looked at me today and whispered to me “Alina, I am dead”.
I had a hard time holding my tears back and instead said to her “Your face is fine and you will be looking beautiful in no time”. She is a fighter and I am sure she will pull through this terrible ordeal, a much stronger woman, and it will make me a stronger person as well to be there for her.
So why I have felt like sharing such a personal story with my friends today? It made me think of the Partition and the reasons for which Pakistan was made. I am at a loss when I see our 17 year old friendship. It’s not to say that we don’t discuss our religions/cultures, as she is religious in terms of praying at the Gurdwaras and going to the Sikh religious ‘gurus for blessings’, unlike me who shuns the mosques that segregate men and women and are mostly Wahhabi.
Once, she was going to cook for a religious ‘baba ji’ who was blind and was staying at their home for three days to bless it. I teased her “Oye baba ji teray tey aashiq nein” and she would laugh and say “You are so bad, he is a very pious Guru”, to which I would reply, “Ajay anney nein taan pious nean...tenuon wekh lein tey phir tey teray nal nas jaan gey”.
I think the pious Guru ji did fall in love with Sharon. Who would not love her, she is such a warm and affectionate person. She could not stand me crying after my father died, if I cried she would start crying and tell me not to cry “mein tenuon roundey houy nein wekh sakdi...na ro” and then would keep crying herself and I would have to wipe away my tears and console her as her mother had died a year earlier than my father.
I am proud to have my Pakistani and Indian heritage as well as the identity of my adopted country, Scotland. But I just keep asking why...surely there were strong ties among communities like the ones Sharon and I share, why did they have to get broken?
I have read the history but today I am questioning that decision, I might be wrong in doing that— does it make me unpatriotic? I am just very sad today for the countries which still have to cast off the colonial cloak of mental slavery and become free in the true sense.
As the great actor, Balraj Sahni said: “A free man has the power to think, decide, and act for himself. But the slave loses that power. He always borrows his thinking from others, wavers in his decisions and more often than not only takes the trodden path”.
I hope that we may become friends again...yahi meri Aman ki Asha hai!
* The writer is a Public Health Specialist and activist living in Scotland.
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