The pied piper of Ahmed Manzil

You know when you study a topic hundred times in hundred ways, and finally when it comes to implementing it, you forget it all.

My grandfather, failed to remember, that pain in the back, could also be a sign of heart attack, when he had one. He had read and discussed about symptoms of heart attack so much and so often that anyone who knew him would not believe that he could not identify his own symptoms.

The neighbors knew something was not right when they did not see him doing his routine morning jog. By evening, the house was filled with relatives and friends from all over the city for his funeral.

He was a friendly figure in the neighborhood. Loved by a family of children and grandchildren, he chose to stay in an independent apartment, a block away from his children. At 82, his life was still as busy as it was in his twenties.

People swarmed in and out of ‘Ahmed Manzil’, the three floored apartment that he built in his father’s name. His ex colleagues from the postal department, people with stuck pension cases in the court, his friends from the mosque and community, were the regular visitors.

A doting grandfather of 5 grandchildren, he had all the love he needed in his life. “You all make me rich,” he would say.

I recall him as our childhood pied piper. We would follow him everywhere — at his 10 kilometer jog to the fort, the Majlis (community gathering) where he would address the people and even to the post office for casual visits.

His living room was a convertible play area for his grandchildren. During summer days, it turned into a cricket pitch. On Sundays, we enacted class room play using the door as a blackboard, painted black by him. In the evenings, he was our Arabic and math tutor.

To many who he helped for getting their pensions regularized, he was a philanthropist. His community friends remember him as the one blessed with a singer’s voice. When he gave the Azaan (call for prayer) in the mosque, people in their houses would ask the kids to be quiet and listen to the melody.

Singing was something he enjoyed. ‘Chaudhavi ka chand ho, yaa aftaab ho’ (Are you the full moon, or the sun?) was an old Urdu song he would sing, when he was happy. 

It’s been more than a year that he passed away, but home is not the same without him. My brother visits his grave often. He removes the grass that grows around the grave. I shiver at the thought of imagining him, lying down under there.

 How difficult would it be to lower the body of your loved one under the grave, cover it with earth, leave them there and come back to a home without them! How do you let a loved one go and how do you make them stay.

My grandma sits next to me while I write this. She is peeling the skin off a sweet lime, subconsciously singing, “Chaudhavi ka chand ho yaa aftaab ho.”

Someone up there is sure happy today.