Reminiscences
Women who light candles
My mother was the second of seven children, born in an aristocratic family in Murshidabad. She was a married at the age of fourteen and gave birth to her eldest daughter Sakina, my oldest sibling, a great woman of piety and patience. Having very limited literacy and numeracy, my mother came to live with my father in Kolkata, a city very daunting with its levels of intellectual and cultural diversity. My father's ambition of speaking for the minority in India took away many years from his married life and he had to spend those years in jail. My mother was left on her own to cope with the myriad responsibilities of home and the arduous task of bringing up her ten children. She had the additional task of looking after some other children being brought up alongside my siblings. My mother displayed the most amazing calm and dignity during these troubled times. She was brave enough to face people from the intelligence department who came to search our home when my father was in Presidency Jail. She was the lighthouse in our choppy seas and inculcated in us many a quality of head and heart. As we grey with the weight of advancing years we remember her with the deepest reverence. I went to Loreto School and College, to be taught and guided by Irish nuns who belonged to the Loreto Order. I have deep respect for them as they gave me the discipline and values that have made me the individual that I am today. They never asked us to convert to Christianity. On the contrary, they reminded us that we must always uphold our culture and our heritage, the same thing that I tell parents here in Britain when I run parenting courses. I once visited, naively as it were, the Missionaries of Charity at Lower Circular Road, Kolkata, with the intention of joining the Order. Mother Teresa was not there but the nun on duty gave me a piece of advice I will never forget. She told me that if I could go back home and look after my ailing mother that would be the best thing to do at that point in time. My respect for that order increased manifold after this incident. Although I could never become a nun I have tried to practise many things that I have found praiseworthy in such renunciation. As I look at Mother Teresa's image in London home, I think of all the millions of human beings this lady was able to help in her lifetime. Such women are born perhaps once in a century. Rabia Basri, who toiled all her life and spent her nights in prayer, is someone I wish I had met and could emulate. Her life is a reminder of selflessness and complete submission to Allah, a life spent in prayer not for any reward but for love of the Creator. In my lifetime I have had the opportunity to meet women of substance and fame. I have found women of extreme fame to be very humble, loving and affectionate. Benazir Bhutto, whom I met In London in the late 1990s, was a very graceful woman who treated me with as much attention and love as would have my older sisters. She once gave me a box of chocolates and a copy of her biography. She was a wonderful host at her London flat and took me out for ice cream later. We talked on the phone and exchanged emails for several years. Not for once did she show any arrogance or pull rank. I happened to interview Audrey Hepburn for Radio Bangladesh in the 1980s. Her grace, elegance and poise charmed me. She gave me a rose that earlier one of the men from the radio had given her. Her gesture and fragrance can only be matched with flowers of mystic fragrance. Do artists nowadays have the same elegance or sobriety? In London I have been a member of an NGO for the wives of expatriates. In that capacity I met Dr Gill McKilligin, who ended up being my mentor. The wife of an ex-governor of Belize, Gill mothered me until I settled here in the United Kingdom. A few years ago, I decided to establish a charity and with that end in view sought the help and advice of Margaret Brayton MBE, who literally tutored me how on to set it up. Margaret is president of the Nurses Association and has had the privilege of having lunch with George V. She treated me like a child and took me sightseeing to different places in London. She also took me to a special service at Westminster Abbey which the Queen attended. Margaret and I had the privilege of sitting in close proximity to the queen. Margaret worked in the Second World War, a time when she gave up having sugar because of its scarcity. She has held high office in numerous NGOs and developmental organisations and has dedicated her life to the welfare of women in the Commonwealth. Margaret is someone whose advice and guidance I will cherish forever. The charity Foundation of Hope is running and is in its seventh year. The women I have mentioned above have enlightened me with their life experience. Additionally, I pay tribute to the women who have the courage to bear the death of their sons in Palestine and all the women in Somalia who are brave enough to bear the brunt of the famine and to all women across the globe now struggling to give their children the right values to build their lives on. Every righteous woman lights a candle for a world that will bring peace, that will have no wars and that will have no child going to bed hungry.
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