My Mother — Page 75
Dreams and Portents 75 support of Sir Philip Chetwode, which stood me in good stead at certain crucial moments. In due course the draft Home Office Despatch came before the Cabinet. On one question, I dissented from the draft, which was approved by the rest of the Cabinet. My dissent, drafted by me, was appended to the Despatch. In his comments the Secretary of State observed, ‘The only sensible and practicable solution of this difficult problem is that set out in the paragraph of dissent. ’ Mother was with us in Simla. Late one evening in July 1932, I received a telegram from Lahore despatched by my brother, Asa - dullah Khan, intimating that our cousin, Chaudhri Jalaluddin, Deputy Postmaster General, to whom Mother had been much attached, had expired after a few hours illness. Mother had retired for the night, and Chaudhri Bashir Ahmad—who was with me when the telegram was delivered—and I both considered that the sad news had better be conveyed to her in the morning, so that her night rest should not be disturbed. In the morning when I went to her, I found that she was rest- ing in bed and looked perturbed. On my enquiry she told me that she was disturbed by two of her dreams of the previous night. In the first one she had seen my father supporting a member of the family, whom she had not been able to identify and who was wrapped in a white sheet, down the staircase. She woke up, and when she slept again, she dreamt that someone gave her a note- book. On her enquiry about it she was told that Jalaluddin had been transferred and this was his account book. I said, ‘Then you would not be fit to travel today. ’ She exclaimed, ‘Why, what has happened?’ I told her. During the British regime in India a certain number of British