A Bed of Stories

All families have their stories- the ones that are told over and over, the main events evolving along with the children's ages. My family's story has been the story of Partition. My husband, whose parents left Lahore for London when he was barely one, doesn't understand our/my fascination with this historically unique mass migration. Maybe because he had the luxury to return to Lahore every summer to the ancestral home still occupied by family members he fails to see the poignancy of the Partition story.

My grandmother's family- the Hamids- were from Lucknow in what were known as the Upper Provinces in Undivided India. And if you're from this part of the world you know what that means- an obsession with how things are done aka tameez and tehzeeb. The Hamids were a clan- two brothers and five sisters and a whole coterie of aunts and cousins as well as the offspring of old family retainers- having known them for forty years am still unsure of who is who exactly.

The Hamid sister in their "Romanovs" pose!

Here are the five Hamid sisters. Right in the middle is the youngest, my grandmother Saida, and sitting to the immediate right of her is Aziza- known to all as Ajjo. Beloved Ajjo. Ajjo was the only one of her siblings to never marry and have children of her own, but in every way that mattered we were all her children. My mother and her siblings have their memories of Ajjo- rushing off with her nieces and nephews  to see the latest movies, bags of treats in hand; my sister and I have ours- playing Trumps with her all afternoon, Ajjo moaning about her cards and yet managing to win every hand; and my children have their memories of Ajjo- as babies they all loved falling asleep rocked in her arms, and later she always kept their favorite snacks at hand. But everyone remembers the stories.

Ajjo in her trademark pastels with my son Qais

The stories were invariably about Ajjo's childhood in India- an exotic mix of boarding school, summers in hill-stations like Nanithal, riding elephants to tiger shoots... And then there was the heady atmosphere of politics- going to hear Jinnah speak, meeting young men in the Muslim League (and in one case marrying one). By the time Partition came, the family was conflicted. One brother had joined the newly-created Pakistan Army, another brother-in-law was a senior officer in the Indian Army. One sister had died and been buried in India, another married to a man wedded to the idea of Pakistan. Eventually, after the Lucknow riots, all the members of the sprawling Hamid clan finally made it across the border, making new homes for themselves in Pakistan- but forever lamenting their Lucknow days. "Lucknow mein to..." became a refrain that subsequent Hamid offspring first sniggered at and then grudgingly came to acknowledge as an integral part of our heritage. 

Being "from Lucknow" meant that we all learned to wear and carry our ghararas properly, to say adaab in the appropriate way and prefer our daal on the liquid-y side...but most importantly it meant imbibing an odd mix of the conservative with the liberal. The lives of the Hamid women were interesting paradoxes- they went from wearing nifty little dresses to saris; Ajjo learned to drive a truck post-Partition but never drove a car; my grandmother knitted sweaters for us while studying for a Law degree; they religiously held milads in Rabi-ul-awal, and distributed sharbat in Muharram (but mind you, it was always khichra and never haleem that was served on Ashura); most of them prayed daily, but abhorred religiosity, and devoted homemakers they were all fierce feminists. 

When Ajjo and my great-grandmother Bi-Amma, moved to Karachi they brought some essential pieces of family furniture- grand almirahs and massive takhts. The golkamra (not gol at all but quite rectangular) had many chairs and sofas, but everyone preferred sitting on the two takhts facing each other in the inner room. It was on these takhts that the paandan sat, and where new brides were welcomed into the family, and babies put down for afternoon naps, propped with gaotakias. It was on the takht that Ajjo would tell us stories of the yard-wide rotis cooked for elephants and the time when the Hindus were rumored to be on a rampage and the Hamid women buried all their valuables in the garden and waited, armed with an old sword...

The bottom of the takht marked by the movers when being sent to Karachi

Ajjo is gone, the last of the Hamids from Lucknow. But her stories live on. Yesterday one of the old takhts from Lucknow came to live in my house. 

The takht's new home- rilli from Thar

The takht may have a new home, a new cover, but it is still the same old teak daybed, the bearer of a great story-teller and now the carrier of tales of its own.