Khushi Mohammed

It was the summer of 2007. My mother came to Islamabad from Karachi for her annual sojourn. She insisted that she wanted to visit her college. It was the year marking her 69thth birthday and the 50 years of her graduation from Government College for Women, Lyallpur. According to her, she spent the best part of her youth in Lyallpur before moving to Punjab University, Lahore, and then eventually to Karachi where she got settled and married my father. She may retreat from her position in social situations once in a while, but in private her nostalgia and a deep sense of belonging to the old name never allows my mother to call Lyallpur by its new name, Faisalabad.
We drove down to Faisalabad one afternoon and went straight to her college. My mother was a little disappointed when she came to know that it happened to be a holiday. But she found a few girls, who lived in the hostel, playing volleyball. They looked excited on meeting an alumnus. My mother shared her being a part of the debating team of the college and bragged about her prize winning speech in the All Punjab Persian Debating Contest.
Seeing strangers in the college premises, a young man approached us and wanted to know what we were doing there. He was a little uneasy with two unknown men roaming about the grounds. My mother told him why she was there and that my friend and I were accompanying her. Then she asked for his introduction. He said he was the gardener. “Oh, it’s been too long. But in our times, there was a young man like you who was our gardener. He was a very nice, sober and hardworking man. His name was Khushi Mohammed”, my mother recalled. “He died long ago. I am his son,” the young man said. He and my mother embraced each other. They stepped away from us and chatted for a while.
On our return from the college, my mother was in a contemplative mood. She had been a teacher all her life. She said, “Khushi Mohammed was our gardener, a good man but uneducated and poor. His

son after fifty years is also a gardener. There is nothing wrong in being a gardener. But he told me he is uneducated and also poor like his father was.”
The elitist state and the classist society of Pakistan, the institutions, intelligentsia and businesses, perpetually fail to offer an opportunity, a fair chance, a hope and a possibility for the son or daughter of a common Pakistani to improve their lot. Neither can the incomes be equalled nor can everybody in the society acquire the same professional level. But the state is responsible for creating equal opportunities and providing similar fundamental services to all its citizens. The majority of the poor remain poor or become poorer.
The inherent discrimination against the children of the poor and disadvantaged majority in Pakistan gets reflected and ably documented in the report titled ‘The State of Pakistan’s Children’ coming out annually for 15 years. This report is brought out on the basis of facts, figures and systematic analysis by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC). The 2010 report again confirms the dismal state of health, education, juvenile justice, child labour and violence against children. Ratifying international conventions and promulgating progressive constitutional amendments has translated into nothing for the common people of Pakistan. And then we have the gall to be concerned about disillusionment with the state, rising crime and street violence.

The writer is an Islamabad-based poet, author and public policy advisor. Email: harris.khalique@ gmail.com