Relax, It's Maslahat
God's wish or Maslahat seems to be the answer to that often-asked question, "Why did (or didn't) this happen?"
Ever since the inteqaal of my father on April 6, 2025, there are moments when some memory flashes in front of my eyes and I clench my fist. For a few seconds, there is a burst of anger inside me and then it subsides gradually.
I am now getting into the habit of reminding myself to repeat “Relax, it’s maslahat” whenever a strong negative emotion begins to cloud my brain.
My father, Janab Syed Gulam Hasnain Naqvi ibne (son of) Janab Syed Mohammad Salman Naqvi was a person of strong character. He was always positive-minded and ready to motivate and encourage anyone if he thought his words would help. He would always motivate me to do well in whatever work I chose to do.
While working professionally, I would change jobs and join some other company or organisation that, I thought, would work for me. Daddy wasn’t happy that I kept changing jobs. Then I joined a company which was fairly well known. I worked there for a few years, then I decided to leave. I told my father about my decision, he stopped me from resigning. Second time, I again told him I wanted to leave, he once more explained things to me and stopped me from resigning. Then the third time came and I resigned without telling daddy. He got disturbed and explained things to me yet again.
I didn’t listen. He went to my office, met my boss in the company, asking him to stop me from resigning. Boss said I wouldn’t listen to him. Finally, daddy wrote a letter to me, sharing his feelings about me leaving a good job. He called me and gave that letter to me. I read it and stayed with my decision. He must have felt quite hurt about it, but what could he do, when the son is adamant, may be, even obstinate and won’t listen to him?
Whenever I remember this incident, I just shake my head now quietly and say to myself, “Maybe, it was maslahat.”
This year, while undergoing treatment in two hospitals in March 2025 where he was hospitalised and admitted, I have another reason to get angry with myself and fill myself with regret. That reason was my inability to question the decision of the doctors to let my father remain in ICU for 10 days combined in both hospitals.
I understand now that the only reason that was important at that time in his state of health was ‘dialysis’ as his creatinine level had gone up to a high level of 6.8. Doctors insisted on urgent dialysis or the possibility of daddy going on ventilator support, where they wouldn’t be able to do anything much.
I discussed this with daddy, who was admitted to the ICU a day before with the primary complaint of heavy breathing while walking just a few steps. Daddy had no option but to nod his head lightly after thinking for a minute or two. I discussed it at home with my brother and mother. Finally, we gave the go-ahead and the first dialysis of his life was done on my father on March 13, 2025. He then underwent eight dialyses, with the last dialysis being done on April 4, 2025, two days before his inteqaal. I prefer to use this word, rather than the negative and heavy sounding word ‘death’ for a valid reason. I have talked about this reason in my Hindi article ‘Khwabon Mein Mili Haunsle Ki Khushbu’
Now, the anger and regret on my side is that after the first dialysis was done, why didn’t I request the doctor to shift him to a private room. This way I could have been in front of him and with him, so he wouldn’t have felt alone.
After all, the only treatment that was going on for daddy was administering medicines via IV that was connected to the dialysis line on his neck. He didn’t have any blood pressure problems or anything else that required 24/7 monitoring. At least, this is my thinking. Yes, his heart was weak and a pacemaker was also installed. Yet, I still feel that his treatment could have been done satisfactorily in a private room by the nurses. Maximum time of 24 hours, I feel was sufficient for monitoring after dialysis, then he should have shifted to a private room.
Was this done? No.
Why wasn’t this done? Because I never requested and urged the attending doctors to do so. As a result, daddy had to stay alone for 22 hours daily in the constricting confines of an ICU with no known face coming in front of him to assure him that everything was fine.
Visitors were allowed one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening. This is how much time we got to spend with daddy when he was in the ICU.
Daddy was well aware of his surroundings in the ICU. He was adequately alert, he was talking and yet, not even once it came to my mind to question why he continued to stay in the ICU after a maximum stay of 24 hours.
Staying alone for so many hours and days in the ICU can negatively impact a normal person, forget what it would do to an 80-year-old patient undergoing dialysis and suffering weakness and yet sufficiently alert.
I feel that all this loneliness and resulting thoughts that daddy would have had was a big factor that negatively impacted my father’s health. Other patients in the ICU were mostly unconscious or barely conscious, but daddy was alert and conscious there. Whenever I came to visit him in the ICU, he would say in an angry tone, “Kaha chale jaate ho tum?” I would tell him that I am outside, in the hospital only.
Then he forced me to write down my mobile number on a piece of paper that he kept somewhere near him. I told him my number was already there in his file kept near his bedside. But still, he wanted my number. Later, once, he even managed to talk to me using the phone of a nursing staff in the ICU.
He did say once in the ICU, “Yahan koi kisi ko poochhta nahi hai.” That was an extreme statement, as the nursing staff did their duty of feeding him, administering medicines to him and taking care of his hygiene. But through this statement, he was essentially saying, “Don’t leave me alone here, take me out of here.”
But did I do that? Did I request the doctors to shift my father from the ICU quickly? My answer, “No”.
This answer ‘No’ and many other such indecisions continue to swim in front of my consciousness at times even now. As this happens, I get angry, clench my fist and then quietly say to myself now, “Relax, it’s maslahat. Yahi maslahat hai.” This helps bring down my level of anger and regret and I begin to open my clenched fists.
Maslahat brings down my tension level.
Maybe, if I could have done all those things that I now regret not doing, not saying or not thinking, daddy’s heath would have been better. He would be here with us today. But, it’s really a big ‘MAYBE’.
Because I have no idea whether anything I could have done at that time, which I now think I should have done - would have helped. Probably something else would have come up, some other health challenge, that would have deteriorated my father’s health.
Daddy was not sleeping well in the hospital. He was just tossing and turning in bed, or regularly asking me to help him get up and sit on the bed. He just did not feel comfortable lying on the bed.
Now that I think, all these symptoms and more were signs that his departure time from this world was coming. We didn’t understand this, neither did he.
So, now what am I left with in my mind? A numbness and a level of realisation that ‘it’s maslahat’, ‘yahi maslahat hai.’
This is what I am now accepting mentally, my brother is also accepting it, as well as my mother and my brother’s wife. We were all in my father’s bedroom, when he took his last breath in this world and went away quietly into the next world.
‘Maslahat’ seems to have brought down my anxiety level. Any tension I had related to my father’s passing away into the afterlife has gone down. What has helped in another way is the fact that after his inteqaal on April 6, 2025, daddy has appeared in the dreams of four people, looking strong and healthy. I have talked about these dreams in my Hindi article, which you can also read.
Probably the dreams are a message from daddy’s soul telling us from the afterlife that he is fine and with people who love him.
What will be, will be is what counts now.
What will be, will be and it seems nothing can change it. Now I always keep it in my mind before attempting to do anything, that whether the result I want will come to me, or not, it will be ‘maslahat’.
All I can do is put in whatever effort I can, request for divine guidance to take the right decision at the right time and channel whatever thoughts I have into my effort. My next step? Just be an observer of the result.
The result is not in my hand, I tell myself. Whatever will be, will be.
It’s all maslahat.