AMMI: letter to a democratic mother - Saeed Mirza

A lovely farewell gift from a'daughter' to her ' mother' - Can't Thank you enough for this my dear Christy. You will remain my only little daughter forever.

Saeed Mirza, Well known screen writer and director of hindi films and television, takes us through the life of his parents and some turbulent times. Combative and lyrical, moving and relentlessly inquiring, "Ammi" offers a way of seeing our history and our future.

In the author’s own words, the book is

“a kind of refelctive, personal journey set in a background of idea, politics and history”

“This is a story about a young man and a young woman, and how they met and fell in love with each other, It is also a story about a time and a place.”

The story starts in an old haveli in Quetta, ruled by Shahbobo, Jahanara is her granddaughter and here is where she meets her aunt’s brother Nusrat Beg, her father agrees to the match against his family’s apprehensions and the young couple move to Sibi, a dry an arid place in Balochistan. There are tales from the author’s childhood, stories of Aryabhata, Ekalvya, sufis, saints, maulvis and couplets by Mirza Ghalib. He then takes us through his growing up years, how English and everything western started influencing him, his years in the film school, incidents from his film making years, gripping encounters with unusual people met during his travels and so on. All through this are thrown around snippets of conversations with his mother on subjects as diverse as Vietnam war, intercaste marriages, the sikh riots, communal wars and the like.

The book also brings out author's suppressed anguish that he could neither spend enough time with her nor talk to her as much as she would have wanted him to.The story is as much about him as his mother.

“were bahanas. ‘Letters’, you said, ‘should be about things that people want to say. Not what they ought to say”

So no Bahanas please my dear. Though read this book long before - somehow was missing it.