The
man who once inspired me is not there with me anymore to be my confident-my
father Late Haji Janab Mohd Hamid Ullah.
He
was a proud courageous man who lived a life of great dignity. Everybody in the
locality ‘Charari’ in Kanpur knew him for his generosity and fairness. The
raddiwala, safaiwlas and many small time vendors come down the street to his
door whenever required additional funds for their hospital care and other
emergencies. Similarly the widowed women with all their problems did not
approach any other ‘Saheb’ in the entire locality where my father lived. They
all knew there was one man they can count on for instant help.
One
day in the month of Dec 2012, I was sitting with him in the mezzanine, a
complete stranger walked in with a convincing hard luck story. My father was
not a rich man. He was a pensioner with enough saving to live a comfortable
life. I watched him going towards his steel cupboards and reading for his
familiar worn out leather bag. “Why are you giving money to a man you do not
even know?” I asked him. He looked at me, “I do not need to know him. He is
poor and he needs help that’s all I need to know. My needs are few. I do not
really want anything. I already have too much. If I can give so much to my
children and grand children, can’t I spare something for a poor man?
He
rarely got back his loan. He knows he’s writing the amount off even as he
counts out the notes. And it was always like this, even when he required funds
itself. And to my mothers eternal credit, she never ones tired to influence or
stop him lending a helping hand, some times to ingrates who promptly forgot the
favor ones the money was in their greedy palms and failed to recognize the man
who’d put it there, when they meet accidentally year’s later.
My
father silently showed me the way through the fog. With his robust common sense
and practicality, he always pointed in the right direction. Back then I was too
blinded by my own identity crisis to pay attention to his sagacious advice.
What he suggested wasn’t in the realm of high philosophy. It wasn’t achievable
or remote. His was the way of the pragmatist. Keep yourself clean. Pay your
taxes. Love your family and country. Do the morally correct things. Choose the
right path. He always said”A man of character always knows the difference
between right and wrong”. Maintain his greatest convectors that you can lose
everything but never lose your conscience.
He
was not an icon, political leader, film star or any kind of celebrity but I
realize his stature when I felt lost in the congregation of more than six
thousand people accompanied him in his last journey. The procession of a true Muslim,
a perfect human being who lived a life worth emulating.
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