Wednesday, August 25, 2010

One page Synopsis of the Khuda Baksh.

A child is saved at the Jalianwala Bagh at the massacre in Amritsar in 1919. The child was brought back to the village and ,with the consent of all, is given to a childless couple to raise. The family raises the baby with respect for all religion because the child's religion can not be established as he is not circumcised yet. Because the child survived the massacre by the grace of God, he is given the name KHUDA BAKSH(Saved by god).

The child grows up and marries a girl named Soni Bibi for being beautiful and gentle.

In 1949, India is partitioned. The married couple goes to what is later known as Pakistan. They were hoping it would only be a temporary departure. He never returned to India alive.

1974; Pakistan declares Ahmadi's non-Muslim, honorable Abdus Kalam only Noble laureate of Pakistan and first Muslim Noble laureate leaves Pakistan. After death his body is returned to Pakistan and his grave marker states 'Here lies the first Muslim Nobel prize winner.' Somebody appeals to the Pakistani courts that under the Pakistani law Ahmadi's are not Muslim and court orders that Muslim be removed from his grave stone. This bothers Khuda Baksh even more.

2009; Kuda Baksh's granddaughter, Monica Bibi, gets American citizenship and invites her grand parents to come to America and applies for immigration Visa. At the same time, on prominent bill boards and signs appear that Ahamadis are Kafir and it is the Korans order to kill any and all Kafirs. A Jihadi group attacks a Prayer House, in Pakistan they can not be called mosques,of Ahmadi's and kills 90 people and many are injured. In despair Khuda Baksh, who is 90 years old, begins lamenting to God for ignoring his people and not giving them better sense. His wife is always saying extra prayers for his salvation and retreating God, always pleading for forgiveness for him as he is ignorant of your ways. She loves him so much that she wants his salvation at all costs. Words of the Quran are chiseled out from the houses of other Ahmadi home on the orders of law. It was said that Ahmadi's have improperly appropriated Allah's words as their own against the Pakistani Law. Kuda was sorry that Pakistan Government had copyrighted Allah words at great distress to all.

Khuda Baksh laments this loss, and in privacy of his home, is crying and beseeching to Allah; questioninhg His wisdom and justice.

Somebody hears him questioning Allah and files a report that he was blaspheming Allah and Islam. Swiftly, the Police come and arrest him. News gets out in the small town. There is a young boy who had never learned to discriminate against good and bad. He had been sold to an Arab Mullah with the hope that he would get education and better life. He truely thinks that he has a right to kill any body who is saying anything bad about his God. In line with this, he goes out and kills Khuda Baksh in front of the police station.

Soni Bibi prays to Allah for forgiveness as it is needed to be in heaven, may be she has a hope that if he reaches their she may have a chance of being with him. With him she always have hope.

Soni Bibi hits the wall of dilemma. She wants to bury him with all the Muslim honors deserving for an honorable man, like the Khuda baksh she has known. She cannot do so because in Pakistan he is not a Muslim. A friend of Khuda Baksh, Mohan, comes for the rescue as he offers to have Khuda Baksh buried in the village of their ancestors in India.

All the arrangements are made to take his body to India for bur rial but Soni Bibi is denied Visa to accompany him for the burial.

Mohan offers to stand in as their son for the burial ceremonies. They bring a maulvi to perform last rights in the village and send pictures and video to Soni BIbI.

Mohan is trying to be a good Muslim son and fasts for the whole month of Ramadan. Having seen the bad behaviour of Muslims in Pakistan, Soni Bibi does not want Mohan to be a Muslim. She was pleased that he was fasting for Ramadan. She was happy that families in India had remained tolerant and their Hindu friends children ,even born after partition(Independence), have enough dignity to honor her faith and do right to honor .

Soni Bibi participated in the last rights by telephone and asked Mohan to plant a shady tree on his grave so their may be shade on him.

Mohan was pleased that Fasting has made him a better person and he lost the extra weight he had accumulated around his waist. He developed more respect for the Islamic tradition of fasting and understood plight of a hungry person. He did not get up in the morning to eat Iftar. Every evening he broke his fast with simple food of daal, roti, warm milk, sometimes alloo gobhi and saag. He did not know but his whole family was following same eating ritual as him to please the God's and to redeem the soul of Khuda Baksh and they prayed to Allah as other deity Khuda Baksh had believed all his life.

Here in Pakistan, Bibi lived barely and prayed to God and sent cold water like Hindus send water as salutation to sun god in their prayers. She believed that if water of Hindus could go and comfort the sun for share her offering of water will reach the tree planted on the grave of Khuda Baksh. In conversations, she had found out it had rained in her ancesstoral village she was convinced that water had reached his grave.

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