Chapter 2
“Ay hay lo bitiya! Ye kya ke roz dono waqt miltay tum roney lagti ho? Dil me shak aata hai!” [Dear goodness! What’s this that you start weeping each evening just as the sun is about to set? My heart is filled with ominous foreboding!], exclaimed Qaiser Jahan Begum to her daughter, Nasreen, on a crispy winter evening as she prepared to perform her wazu. She wasn’t cranky, just worried. “Pata nahi kaun kaun si manhoosiyaton ko bulawa diya jaata hai roz. Lahaula wala quwwata…” [Who can say what evil energy is being invited to our home every day. There is neither power nor ability save by Allah…].
It was 1964, and they were in their aangan, the inner courtyard, of their home in Nakhaas, a bustling neighborhood in Lucknow. This was where all the young people of the house would pull their charpais during the afternoon and soak up the last bit of the sun; where the hauz was situated, in which goldfish would surface from time to time; where speciality roses and potted cacti grew around the hauz; where miniature pines lined the front of the great outer hall; and two guava trees and two Morpankhi trees graced the corners.
Nasreen was 11, and lying in a fetal position on her charpai. Nearly 3 weeks since her married older sister, Shahnaz, had moved to Mumbai, she still longed and wept for her each evening. Wrapped up now in an embroidered Kashmiri shawl, she watched her mother complete her wazu in the hauz and tried hard to control the steady stream of tears. Gathering her energy, she got up to follow her mother.
Qaiser Jahan Begum had quite a following — almost larger than her famous husband, Dr. Rafiq Husain, who was the chief civil surgeon of Lucknow before he quit and started his private practice. She was the younger of his two wives, whom he had married to further his ambitions by connecting him to the erstwhile royal family of Awadh. And she was a mother of eight children.
But she did not allow these connections to define her. Her focus was always on how she leveraged these things to be an agent of critical change. And she was a force to be reckoned with — moving in the most intellectual and privileged circles in Lucknow, Delhi and Kashmir, she influenced leaders to pay attention to the plight of the artisans of Lucknow. She supported shayars, ustaads, chikankari artists and mirhasans. She sought out destitute women and set up schools where they could learn handicrafts and earn their financial freedom. And she did all of this without a single stain on her modest white gharara, maintaining the chastity and piety expected of a lady of her stature.
She was floating across the aangan in her white gharara now, entering the outer great hall through one of the many dar, and climbing up on the takhat that was covered with a soft cotton mat and a pristine white cotton chandni. She opened the doors of the miniature imambara, whispered a supplication to hazrat Abbas, and turned around in the opposite direction to start her namaz.
