My Mother — Page 4
4 innovation, and all that savoured even remotely of associating any- thing with God. As time passed his good repute spread not only in his own district, but also in neighbouring districts. Sikandar Khan of Daska became a byword for probity, piety, charity, and beneficence. His wife was a Bajwa of Data Zaidka in the Sialkot district. She bore him two sons and two daughters. The eldest, Nasrullah Khan, my father, was born in 1863. My grandfather was ambitious for his firstborn, who was sent to the local school, and after he had finished there he was sent to distant Lahore to continue his studies. He had done so well at the local school, that he had won a scholarship of two rupees a month. He was told that in Lahore he would have to subsist on his scholarship, supplemented only by a limited quantity of wheat flour of which he could get baked into as much bread as might suffice to keep his body and soul together. I heard him say that during six years of study in Lahore he did not even once eat his fill of bread. The nearest railway station to Daska for the journey to Lahore was at Gujranwala, fourteen miles away. My father had often to walk the distance carrying a heavy bundle of books and parapher- nalia. To save a penny on the railway fare, he bought a ticket from Gujranwala to Shahdara and walked the remaining four miles to his hostel near the Shahi Mosque. He pursued his studies diligently through Normal School, Orien tal College, and Law School, winning scholarships all the way, the amount of which rose from stage to stage through 4 to 6 and 8 rupees per month. English was not then taught in the local school, and my father had to pursue his studies in Lahore through the medium of the vernacular. This imposed a severe