Mubarak Eid Mubarak

 We siblings and our children , all of us call him Mama 

My parents used to address him by his first name : Niranjan 

He is our family well wisher 

He used to work for Dilip Kumar / Mehboob Khan and family and used to stay inside the iconic Mehboob Studio in his younger days , even remembers the number , make and model of "Yusuf Saheb's" personal car back then !!!

Later he moved out of Mehboob Studio and started driving a taxi 

Bombay ( or had it become Mumbai by then 🤔 ?) was under a spell of riot , violence and curfew in 1992 

My father who was working on a couple of TCS projects abroad in the 1990s , had to go back to work after a holiday at home , and needed a taxi to go to the airport 

Taxi milna , at that time was a huge task and my father looked quite maulana-like with his graceful white beard 😊😊😊 !!!

So it was all the more difficult to find someone who would be ready to take so much risk for even a super-hiked up fare 

It was at that testing time that my family found Mama 

He took my father to the airport safely , and unbelievingly charging the regular fare 

After that he became our trusted navigator for all our travel requirements in and around Bombay ,  and soon became almost like a family member 

Now he has become frail and his health has deteriorated so he cannot climb four flights of stairs to the residence of my brother , an apartment in one of the older buildings that doesn't have a lift 

So whenever he wants to meet our family , he comes over to my place , a first floor apartment in an equally old building , also without lift 😄 ...  and then Mashaallah we have a family reunion 😄 !!!

So yesterday he came to wish us Eid Mubarak ... And baatoN-baatoN meiN he mentioned that two days back was his birthday ... 😊

So Usman and Mehmood ( my son and nephew ) ordered a cake 

And we had a surprise Birthday Party for Mama 😊

His childlike delight and joyous amazement can neither be expressed in a thousand words nor in any number of emoticons 🥳🎉🎊🤗😄😄😄

And that happiness of his , so pure and innocent , is the most treasured and priceless Eidi that we have gotten in a long time ... 🙏🌟🌙✨⭐🎁💕💕💕

 "When God blesses you financially, instead of raising your standard of living , raise your standard of giving."

"When you focus on being a blessing , God makes sure you are always blessed in abundance"

A lot of us must have only perfunctorily read / sent these (and such other) quotes in our GM msgs on WhatsApp

Aajkal when WhatsApp Universities are awarding PhDs in subjects like EPS  and Communalism , such quotes are precious reminders , that every so often awaken the insaan in us , thus helping voices for empathy justice and equality to not be totally herded away 

 

So ... I read these quotes in a couple of GM msgs fwdd by friends / family ... but saw them being put in practice by my kitchen helper !

She had started working as a cook and helper about two decades ago because she couldn't see her children living a life of deprivation under a drunkard head of the family 

Her first employers were amazing human beings who looked after her and her children like their own 

They also talked to her husband ...

Soon enough he started mending his ways and stopped drinking too

Happiness and better luck soon followed 

Not that she has everything in life now 

And not everything is going the way she wants , but her struggles have never stopped her from sharing her blessings with others 

She even offers her own "kaam" to other women who are more deprived than her !!!

And as she shares her blessings , I ve seen God's nemateiN increase as she keeps getting more and more work opportunities Mashaallah 

Touchwood

 

Another rare quality she has is that she is extremely sincere and respectful of her "rozi" (zariya e maa'ash , livelihood)

I often jokingly tell her to open an employment agency considering how much she helps needy women get work 

She laughs it away 

I thought Ramzaan is the most appropriate time to share this story because this is the month in which Muslims try to do a lot of nekis (नेकियाँ) which include ...

Reading duas in Arabic (which someone else has written) 

Reading Qur'an (there's often a competition of sorts as to how many times one has completed reading the entire Qur'an in this Holy Month) 

Giving zakaat (can be given at any time of the year but the general understanding is that rewards from God in exchange for this neki increase manifold in Ramzaan)

Giving Fitra (charity specifically distributed in Ramzaan)

Reading the taraveeh ( the long night prayer specific to Ramzaan where Imaam Saheb , who should be a Haafiz too reads portions of the Qura'an in such a manner that the entire Qur'an is read at least once during the month of Ramzaan) 

Hosting Iftaar parties ... 

etc etc etc 

But here this humble , uneducated , ordinary woman has risen hugely in the ranks of kindness and humaneness , which is the ultimate msg that every mazhab preaches 

The universal law of Nature works irrespective of any discrimination Kaaynaat ka nizaam mazhab dekh kar nahi chalta 

kyoN ke Qudrat naa Hindu hai naa Musalmaan

#GodAllahBhagwan

#Waheguruji 

#ElElohim

#ShaddaiAlmighty