REPLY TO ABOVE

Kashana-i-Komal,

Samanabad,

January 9, 1994.

Dear Sadia,

If Nazia’s heart is in dance and music and flowers and paint box, why do you try to divert it to geography and history, arithmetic and geometry? Is not music more melodious and mathematics? Is not dance more dainty and domestic arithmetic? Is not paint box better than history and geography? Let Nazia follow her instincts and you must help her to bring out the best in her. That is real education. You seem to have a bit morbid ideas about her passing the Matriculation Examination. You seem to be afraid of what the people will think if your daughter is not a matriculate even. But what is a matriculate? He is master of none. He is not even a jack of any trade. Let your daughter follow her inner instinct, and she will become something in the world. If you suppress her instinct, she will just rot. Take her away from school and educate her at home. Help her yourself, engage a tutor if you can, or send her to some art school which teaches music, dancing and painting. If nothing better can be done, let her follow her own education herself. You buy her such book as she needs. In the long analysis a child is its own best teacher. All knowledge comes from the people to books and goes from books to the people. Let your child be her own guide and ustad. You just wait and watch. When we throw a seed in the soil, it grows to be a study paint. Earth, Sunlight, water and air, bring the paint out and make it grow. Let them be Nazia’s teachers.

Yours lovingly,

Rifat.