Abandoned minds and souls

Today when I was browsing the newspaper I stuck to a picture of a tree. A very artistic tree. While I was gazing at its beauty…. I don’t know what a sorrow it had in it. The tree with many branches with numerous leaves has many year of history covered in itself.

This tree belongs to Edhi Centre for mentally ill women. Mentally ill is quite a horrified term. It doesn’t mean they are suffering from some disorder its means they are suffering from insufficient love, care respect and look after. It means they are a burden for their families now. It means they have no right to live any more with their family members. It means they are no more human.

Mentally ill I don’t know much about that term may be. But I know when we start talking with them they are so tender. They want to talk they love to share their feelings. What a pathetic people those, who left their parent to die on the road. I long sigh ….. Their lives are so lonely.


I’d been in Edhi house twice in my life to children section, I really felt so weak that I when I saw those innocent abused and illegitimate children’s I cried I a child. I found no cause to stop my tears. I felt helpless. For sake of thought …. Just tell me who are illegitimate are those children or their sinister parents?

They are innocent ……..


We are guilty, because we don’t accept those children and mentally ill people. But we accept those people who did that evil stuff. We give them respect. We are culprits…..

Seventy-year old unlettered Naziran with salt and pepper hair, cropped short, speaks only in Punjabi. All she knows is that she is from Hasilpur and has two sons. She has been at the Edhi Center for five years. “I once tried going back, but returned as I couldn’t find my home,” she explains.

Married at the age of 16, and having completed 12 years of education, soft-spoken Saima Khan does not seem to belong at the center. Still, she has been resident here for the last seven years.

The mother of two, a son and a daughter, she decided to forgo her Indian nationality and become a Pakistani when she married her husband, who works in the merchant navy. “When I became ill, my husband divorced me, took the children and went to Malaysia after admitting me here. When I got better, I tried returning to India as there was nothing for me in Karachi. Unfortunately, the Indian government refused to accept me saying I was a Pakistani.”