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I have an ‘Oxford Dictionary of Current English’ in my hands and the meaning of ‘alive’ is written as ‘living.’ If you skip the pages forward to the ‘L’ section, the meaning of the word ‘living’ is entered as ‘being alive.’ It shows our inability to describe ‘life.’ Or as Hegel said, everything is defined by its opposite you can say its an inability to describe ‘death’ as well.
Nani Ammi ‘died’ on 13th March, 2004, yet I don’t feel that she has died. She is out there, somewhere. It’s just that we can not tell where or in what condition she is in. She has passed from one stage of her life to another and all we can do is to pray for her.
The random and discontinuous nature of my thoughts makes it really difficult for me to categorize and arrange them in an effective manner so I have decided to arrange them the way time arranged them.
It was March 13, 2004, Lahore. The time was roughly 7 pm and I was sitting in the academy, listening to my Physics teacher that why the root mean square velocity of a gas is not zero, when suddenly I saw him move towards the door. I turned and was surprised to see my father standing there. The Physics teacher met him and beckoned me to meet my father. I walked swiftly towards the door. When I came near him, I observed that his eyes were red and moist. I prepared myself for the worst shock. He told me to get my things. I asked, “Why, what’s wrong?” And in staggering, faint voice he said, “Nani Ammi has died.” It was nothing less than a blow. I quietly went inside, packed my things and went home with my father.
Nani Ammi, my maternal grandmother, lived in Faisalabad. She had not been feeling well for some time and my mother had already gone there the previous day. She was the mother of my mother, and in my words, she was the square of mother (mother ) and consequently the square of love (love ) as well. There are many ways to categorize great persons and I consider ‘love’ as one of them. She was a great person due to her love and affection. She was like a boundless ocean of love; no matter how much love you extracted from it, it never dried up. But now it seems, it has dried up.
I owe a lot of things to her, even my existence. She used to call me “Allah-mangta,” the one who has been asked for from God. She had prayed for my birth and it was accepted. And she told my parents that for the first year of my life she would pay for all my expenses; and she did. At my first birthday the control of my economy shifted from Nani Ammi to my parents.
We immediately went to Faisalabad. And when I met my mother, she was crying and one of the first words she said were, “Piyar karnay wali hasti chali gai” (The being who loved us is now gone—the translation just cannot convey what really was said.) and at that moment I realised something. We were crying, we were grieving, not for Nani Ammi, but for ourselves. It was our loss, and a big one indeed. No matter what we do, we can’t compensate that loss. We can’t bring her back, we can’t again feel the affectionate touch of her hand nor can we ever retrieve her kisses. We are not crying over her death (because she is still alive, in a sense) but we are weeping over the love and affection we have lost; and that alone is worth all the treasures of the world.
Victory has a thousand fathers; but my success and victories also had a grandmother behind them. God knows how much she prayed for all of us. She was always praying, always asking Allah to bless her children and grandchildren. Now there is none to pray like that.
Nani Ammi deserved more than this short article but I am unable to express more of my feelings. I don’t have the words and the manner to convey them, a tleast not at the moment. In the end I would just like to say that Allah is more Merciful than seventy mothers (just multiply Nani Ammi’s love by seventy), so I really hope and pray that Allah would forgive her and bless her eternal Paradise. Amen.
But. Our lives would just never be the same again!
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Writer Profile
Awais Aftab
Writing has been a passion, a love ever since I learned to write. For me, writing is a means of expression of 'secret tears and secret pleasures'. True writing comes from the heart and often it is the one to find you, not you the one to find it. Writing gives me power, the strength to carry on, the will to live and to live in a better way. It helps me find deeper meaning in the world around me and to understand myself much better. I can't survive without writing. For me, my writings are the whispers of life, in which the glory and sorrow of life echoes. For me, these are the glittering tears, whose every flash encompasses a thousand aspects of life. I believe that, 'I write; therefore I am.' However, true ease in writing comes from art, and I still have to learn a lot about that.
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Comments
Judy Keung Kwai hing | Feb 9th, 2005
Thanks for sharing your touching story with us. I've enjoyed reading your description of your grandma. I really envy you for having had such a close relationship with your grandma. I believe she still lives in your heart. I can't remember my grandma as mum told me that she died soon as I was born.
Motherof my Mother Abdul Khalique | Feb 15th, 2005
I really very impressed by ur writing ability.
Keep up the hard work.
Best of Luck
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