Some Words of Wisdom From My Grandmother

Zainab
2 min readOct 25, 2022
Photo by Arshad Jamil on Unsplash

I grew up hearing my dadi (paternal grandmother) say

Allah kisi da mohtaj na banaye

Na veliyan da, te nahi aulaad da

May God never make one dependent; neither on those whom one loves nor on one’s offspring

I’d wonder why dadi would say that

Why this became the prayer she found solace in

Dependency on any living thing is a disappointment

And to rely on anyone besides your Creator is foolish

But how naive must we be to believe that those whom we love owe us anything?

And then to believe that we are incomplete until someone completes us?

I came home from school one day, and found out dadi would be leaving to go back home in a few days

I held her hands in mine and asked her,

What will you do there alone? Won’t you miss us? Won’t you be scared, alone?

And dadi squeezed my hands tight and said to me

Yaad teh batheri aayegi, teh yaadein hi laikar jaraye aa

Kalleya iss duniya vich aye ne, teh kalleya marna ne

Teh fir, kalle rehn naal kera dar?

--

--

Zainab
Zainab

Written by Zainab

Author || Storyteller || Entrepreneur

Responses (2)