Begum Bhutto is dead

In the death of Begum Nusrat Bhutto comes to an end a life spent as much in glamour and glory as deeply drenched it was in pain and tragedies of biblical proportions. Not much is known how her end came; nor do we know what was on her mind then, did she talk about it - if at all she could. But what is well-known and is recorded, places her in the company of those few who saw life on both sides of its great divide rather closely: splendid victories and grim tragedies she had plenty of both. Begum Bhutto, as she would like to be called, who belonged to a well-to-do Mumbai-based Iranian business family, married to a rising star on the country's political horizon. Her credentials were awe-inspiring and unmatched: she was the daughter-in-law of a Diwan, wife of a prime minister, mother of a prime minister and mother-in-law of a president, while in her own right she was elected to parliament a number of times and twice was appointed senior minister in the federal cabinet. But what really distinguished her to be rightly counted among great people was her grit and determination the world witnessed as she launched the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD) against General Ziaul Haq's military regime. Her husband done to death following a dubious judicial trial she did not stoop to the conqueror; she took over the command of the demoralised Pakistan People's Party and set it on the path to its electoral victory, a feat probably only she could perform. But all those successes and victories appear inconsequential when seen against the train of tragedies that beset her life. After the execution of her husband in 1979 she lost her younger son, Shahnawaz Bhutto, in 1985 in France in circumstances that to-date remain a mystery and then her elder son Murtaza Bhutto was killed in 1997, a blow she wilted under never to recover. Following the death of Murtaza she went silent, traumatised by the turn of events as her own daughter's government appeared helpless in hunting down the murderers. Some say she never knew her third child, Benazir Bhutto, too fell to the bullets of an assassin. Of course, the death has delivered Nusrat Bhutto from unending agony. That a woman so comfortably placed in life suffered so much is in the make of a Greek tragedy. Is her departure from this world the end of that saga of silent pain? Yes, for her but not for the Bhutto family. Copyright Business Recorder, 2011