Two Day, Two Deaths

This past weekend is one I would like to forget very quickly. It took away two people I liked very much.

Prof. Obaid Siddiqi was a celebrated biologist. He pioneered research on molecular biology, genetics and development in India. He built institutions and trained numerous students who will carry forward his legacy. Obaid received every possible award and recognition one could get in India, but those did little to curb the child-like enthusiasm he had for his own work and that of others, or to reduce his good-natured humility even an ounce. Obaid passed away on Friday evening and we buried him on Saturday in Bangalore.

Dr. Sabiha Saleha, or Apiya to me, was the elder sister I never had. She was not a famous scientist, but was equally proud of what she had achieved professionally. She was the unknown crusader who gave up everything, including her health, to raise her children and ensure that they get a good education and grow up to be decent human beings. They will carry forward her name. Apiya passed away on Saturday night and we buried her on Sunday in Aligarh.

As I reflect on these two individuals who did not know each other and were only connected through me, some common threads begin to emerge in my mind from the two lives and the two deaths.

They were both educated at the Aligarh Muslim University.

Obaid was a local boy who had his undergraduate education at AMU, excelling not just in academics but also in leftist politics and debates (especially Urdu debates), before he left for a job in Delhi and higher studies in UK and USA. This was the 1950s.

Apiya entered AMU immediately after finishing her High School in Lakhimpur-Kheri in the Terai belt of UP, her father being an erstwhile zamindar and a practicing Advocate there. Over the next ten years or so, she came out with a PhD in Organic Chemistry. This was pretty remarkable for a middle class Muslim girl, who was the first from her family to achieve this distinction. This was the 1970s and early 80s.

The Aligarh Muslim University, a hotbed of Indian Muslim intellectual activity, nurtured people as diverse as Obaid and Apiya. It gave them a platform to express themselves and become confident in their own ways to tackle the challenges of life. It accommodated diverse points of view with ideological leanings being strong, yet never in the way of personal or professional relationships. At the same time, it provided a secure environment into which a middle class Muslim family could confidently send its 17-year old daughter. Both are as relevant today as they were then.

But these values are eroding in times when they are needed the most, at AMU, in India and the world. Is it not our duty to preserve them locally and apply them globally? Perhaps the custodians of institutions as well as the self-appointed custodians of faith and morality should ponder over this with some honesty.

They both succumbed to matters of the brain.

Obaid spent his life trying to understand the mysteries of our nervous system, especially how we remember smell and taste. He used the fruitfly as a model and devised simple yet ingenious experiments to understand the genetic and molecular basis of these processes. He was as comfortable giving a lecture on his work to accomplished scientists as he was talking to High School and college students; I have attended both. It is ironic that he died due to a freak head injury that destroyed among other faculties, the same abilities he spent much of his professional life trying to understand.

Apiya suffered from a neurological disorder that was diagnosed about four years back. Despite all advances in neurosciences, no two doctors from India to Saudi Arabia to USA, agreed on her prognosis. Some called it Parkinson’s, others called it Multisystem Atrophy and yet others thought there were iron deposits accumulating in her brain. But all agreed that it was progressive and her condition would deteriorate rapidly. And this did happen. When I saw her last, about ten days back in Aligarh, her eyelids were the only body part she could move on her own. How painful must it be to hear everything, to understand everything, yet not be able to communicate her feelings? Yet, she had the courage to smile, when her facial muscles allowed her to.

And they were both lucky to be surrounded by people who loved them.

Through the five days Obaid was in the ICU, the Bangalore Baptist Hospital witnessed a constant vigil by his immediate family and people at all levels in the institution he created. They were with him, hoping without hope. But they also had the moral courage and sanity to not press charges on the 16-year old girl on a moped, who unknowingly knocked down this giant of Indian science. What a tragedy!

Apiya required much longer care. For over two years, her family – husband, daughters and son, tended to her with love, often getting frustrated, sometimes losing hope, but never really giving up on her. When the end came, her husband was there, struggling against a condition that had progressed beyond hope. Apiya was relieved of her agony, both physical and mental, in the wee hours of July 28.

It is said that writing can be therapeutic. And for me it is. I will remember these two who meant so much to me in their own ways. Expressing my association with them will hopefully diminish some of my personal anguish.

But what about the anguish of an institution and community in which debate and reason has taken a backseat to guile and self-interest? Or a system that allows a 16-year old to drive without a license? Or the anguish of a family that witnesses their loved one afflicted by a disease that no “expert” really understands.

Can we channel our anguish into coming together to find solutions?

Because only solutions will take us forward.