by Dr. NYLA ALI KHAN
I still find an incredible depth of thought and strength in Sheikh sahib’s politics, despite his flaws
My Mother, Suraiya, like the rest of us, carries the burden of her own history. Her painful memories of her father Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s incarceration are deeply etched in her mind.
Although the Government of India vouchsafed permission to Sheikh saheb to attend my parents’ nikaah ceremony in 1970, the authorities did not display the same magnanimity in 1971, when he was disallowed from attending the rukhsati, which is the final sending off ceremony of the bride from her natal home to the home of her groom and his family.
The vacuum created then by the absence of her father at one of the most significant milestones of her life was deplored by my mother, Suraiya. Her once unspeakable grief at the helplessness that paralyses a person when the state machinery is deployed to clip his wings has now mellowed.
She remembers, with an incurable ache, that the political stalwarts who sought to assume paternal duties at the rukhsati were Maulana Mohammad Sayeed Masoodi, Ghulam Mohiuddin Karra, and Kashyap Bandhu, all of whom had fought shoulder to shoulder with her father in the creation of a political and socio-economic space for the people of the state in the despotic environment of the thirties and fourties.
My parents, Suraiya and Mohammad Ali Matto, tell me that Begum Akbar Jehan did not allow the void created by the absence of the Sheikh at their wedding to put a dampener on the ceremony. In distressing circumstances, she performed the role of matriarch with alacrity and zest and ensured that the ceremony solemnizing her younger daughter’s transition, an anxious moment for any woman, from her natal home to the traditional home of her in-laws, was conducted in accordance with long-cherished tradition.
Six years subsequent to my parents’ wedding and five years subsequent to my birth, the historic, enthusiasm rousing, and largely inclusive assembly elections of 1977 in J & K saw a mammoth participation of the Kashmiri people.
Grandfather had suffered a cardiac arrest and had to be confined to his high-ceilinged, sparse room, which was permanently furnished with a beige arm chair, a teak board armoire, a teak board bed, a prayer rug, a rosary (Tasbih), and windows, which looked out onto the trees on the lush lawn.
The lawn of grandmother and grandfather’s house was flooded with throngs of people who would wait hours to catch a glimpse of their ailing leader. Grandfather would hobble to the porch every couple of hours, supported by his cardiologist, Dr. Jalaluddin, to spend a few minutes with the people assembled there.
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