My Ancestral Link-Contd.

 My father had started medical practice (Hikmat) in Saugor city about 1900 and lost his fther in 1905 but then he turned to family and got married settled in there with political and other activities. He remained the main source of medical help for a long time with one MBBS physician coming to town after some time. Our life (his children) was simple. Mother was (afraid of?) against having electricity at home so we had oil lamp ( Lantern or Laltain). We had rooms where things like food grains or wood for burning etc. stored and there was no concept of 'individual rooms' for each child. Water was stored for use in earthen pitchers in one corner and a woman filled them everyday from a nearby well One kitchen and we all sat down on the ground for eating together food spread out on a piece of cloth (dasterkhwan). My father stored money (coins) in a large box kept locked in one room That was considered a comfortable living. We would eat two or three times a week some meat otherwise usually vegetables of each season as was the case with fruits.
 All of us were born in Saugor except my oldest sister and my older brother. There were a total of four sons and 6 daughters. As I grew older I learnt my oldest brother was from first wife of my father who he divorced early and she (my stepmother) was a stepsister of my mother. So my maternal grand father had married twice (not from divorce). My father and my step mother (who we called 'massi"-aunt) both had bad temper so the divorce, but that put all my maternal uncles on the defence and were not friendly with my father or mother. After the retirement of my father and as we all came back to the village in the Panjab before Partition of India, two of the maternal uncles started back friendly relationship.
 Seems complicated but it was really amazing how it happened and I was told this all happened within the family that my grandfather's brothers acted in good faith and my father was liked by all of them and they respected him.
 We had taken up the culture and language of central India but it changed after we all came back to the Panjab, all due to my mother's decision as she wanted her children to be married in Panjab. From practical point of view it was difficult as my parents/father was not well-known here as they had spent nearly all of their life in central India. Anyway, I was ten year old when we came back to Panjab.
 My father continued seeing patients and advising prescriptions free of charge for the rest of his life in Kotla, the village, my mother had chosen for that purpose. Father had mild obesity but no hypertension and during my medical school days he had developed Congestive heart failure, later got Atrial fibrillation and was maintanied on medications. Around 17th July 1957 he woke up with right hemiplegia and aphasia and was treated by us (my brother had started medical practice and I had just taken my final MBBS exam but he breathed his last on 31st July and was buried in the  (then) new graveyard of Kotla. My aunt from saugor and another neighbor from Saugor, my oldest brother, all were able to come at his burial.

Please visit my Urdu blog at http://saugoreebsc.blogspot.com/ and my Hindi blog at http://wahajuana.blogspot.com/