Do not feel bad that people remember you only when they need you. Feel privileged that you are like a candle that comes to mind when there is darkness in their life.’ Abdul Ghaffar Khan aka Bacha Khan.

THE last house in the hamlet ‘Dheri Katti Khel’ atop a steady incline to the south of Grand Trunk Road in Nowshera was where ‘Kachkol Mama’ lived with his four sons and numerous grandchildren before he breathed his last on the night of December 26, 2013.

Being last in many respects, including of courses resources, was not uncommon to the deceased, but that never stopped him from being first in the fast shrinking line of the few surviving true adherents of the ‘Servants of God’ Movement started by Bacha Khan.

With a spacious courtyard, having space enough for domestic cattle, Kachkol Mama’s house is one of scores of similar houses in the hamlet beyond which there is a vast serene expanse of uneven land strewn with brambles, thorny plants and shrubs.

Although the hamlet is located at a short distance of a kilometer from the madding rush of the old Grand Trunk Road, yet an amazing calm of indescribable extent overwhelms the visitor as he nears its outer reaches.

With the moon slowly disappearing behind the western mountains and lights in the cantonment on the not quite faraway Cherat Hills dimly glowing, a walk in these climes in the evening hours has never been less than a blissful rendezvous with nature and holiness.

As one beholds the view to the north from where Kachkol Mama lived, the rail track at a short distance comes in view, and with that the mournful whistling of a stream of trains chugging along the track at all hours of the day and night.

At an even shorter distance from the rail track is the Grand Trunk Road, and a little beyond that the old River Kabul carrying forth in its lap waters from the uplands only to spill it in River Indus at Attock. Such handy juxtaposition of the means of communication is a boon majority of the citizens of the world crave for.

At a short walking distance from the centre of the hamlet stands a towering, but nonetheless fading, obelisk to the memory of the British soldiers sent on a relief mission to Chitral in the Hindu Kush Mountains in 1895 to counter a rebellion staged by the natives after the death of the ruler of the mountainous hideout.

The obelisk overlooks the Nowshera Cantonment on the borderline of which Kachkol Mama had his small grocery, where he would be seen during most hours of the daytime reading newspaper before old age started taking a toll on his physical reserves.

Before the present brusque wave of cell phones and internet hit the world, Kachkol Mama’s grocery also served as a part time unofficial postbox for the residents of Hakimabad and nearby villages in Nowshera. Kachkol Mama’s fame and credibility was such that it would be enough for the senders to mark the envelope with his name along with that of the recipient from any place in the country to reach the intended addressee.

Despite the fact that all the trappings of a comfortable life were within his reach, Kachkol Mama lived the life of a hermit who never compromised on his ideals that he had set for himself at a very young age.

Few people knew that the man dressed in coarse cotton clothes was an idealist in his own right when people all around him were pursuing fame and riches from the platforms of different political parties.

He never flinched even when he found his associates wavering in their resolve.

Two massive floods hit Nowshera during the eighty six years lifetime of Kachkol Mama. He was a toddler when the town literally disappeared in the furious waters brought by the flood in 1929.

When the town was inundated by another flood in 2010, Kachkol Mama and his family beheld the horror from the rooftop of their guesthouse. It was the relative height of the rail track that held back the raging waters from reaching the lower limits of Dheri Katti Khel.

Just a fortnight or so before his death, Kachkol Mama came down a single flight of the stairs from his home to his guesthouse to greet his guests. Then, one had never thought this man with the looks of a biblical patriarch even in his humble attire would bow out so soon.

He carried a cane and had sufficiently protected himself against a soft cold breeze blowing all across on the small hillock where he found his guest seated on string-beds.

His eyeballs looked to have swollen up, but he didn’t complain of any major ailment when he began to talk on a topic that he had always cherished. It was on this occasion when he disclosed his age, which even his children did not appear to know.

‘I remember indulging in exchange of catchy slogans on the streets of Nowshera in the 40s with the young men of my age all of whom came from the privileged families and who were opposed to Bacha Khan,’ he broached the topic in a soft voice that appeared to resonate from the depth of his soul.

With a shy smile he then repeated some of those slogans eulogizing the stance of the Red Shirt Leader from the district of Charsadda to whose cause he had found himself drifting as if through the prodding of an invisible force.

It is to the everlasting sad memory of Bacha Khan that very few of those who ruled the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in his name for five years were as steadfast and earnest as the poor old Kachkol Mama.

And thus it was least surprising that his death went unnoticed in the circles that had gained prominence from the platform of nationalist politics.

But Kachkol Mama’s political mettle was such that no consideration howsoever convincing, including his little mourned death by the followers of Bacha Khan, could have swayed him from the path that he had followed as a mere foot soldier.

On his face there was a serene magnificence and no trace of any ambition save that of the cause célèbre that would keep him awake even beyond the midnight hours.

In Kachkol Mama’s quiet life and persistent struggle there is a lesson for the present ANP leadership that is struggling to come to terms with its comeuppance.

They must concede that the control of the party had been usurped by those who made a spectacle just recently by acting like those who start belching uncontrollably in public after overeating. Nothing less than that would wash the seemingly ineffaceable stigma brought by the wrongdoings of a few.