Lucknow, UTTAR PRADESH :

Lucknow :

As her handicapped middle-aged son, limps on his crutches up the staircase to the third floor of a private hospital in Lucknow’s River Bank Colony  area, Zarina Begum,  the last living court singer of Awadh, is being administered injections at the intensive care unit (ICU) where she is fighting both penury and ill-health.
Disciple of legendary Ghazal singer Begum Akhtar, 88-year-old Zarina Begum, who was the first recipient of the ‘Begum Akhtar Ghazal Award’ started by UP government in 2015, has been paralytic for the past nine years. It was on the day of Holi, on March 1, that she got extremely unwell, when her family took her first to Civil hospital and later shifted her to the private facility on March 5.

As a case of right side hemiparesis (pertaining to paralysis) she was diagnosed with urinary tract infection, altered sensorium, anaemia, fever, vomiting and weakness, to be looked after in the ICU under conservative treatment. The expenses estimate given by the hospital for her five-day treatment till now is around Rs 1 lakh. And this is not the final bill.

The last living singer of the ‘Baithak’ style of musical rendition, Zarina Begum has no income, a rented home in Aminabad’s Hata Khuda Baksh area and a deluge of medical bills.

“We are extremely worried about the money. How will the expenses be borne? I don’t even have Rs 400 in my pocket,” said her daughter, Rubina.  “My brother Ayub does not have his leg down the knee ever since he lost it to an accident almost 20 years ago. Ammi has been on the bed for the last many years, and can still recall ghazals and couplets,” she added. But it is not just the medical bills that the family is worried about.

Kin seek pension for Zarina Begum
The last government after many perusals had taken up her treatment expenses immediately. But what we also seek is pension for Zarina Begum, a job for Rubina and a battery driven rickshaw that Ayub can drive so that even after hospital treatment, there is some money to feed the mouth and bear regular medical bills,” said Zarina’s son-inlaw Naved.

There is almost a monthly Rs 10,000 expense that the family manages somehow for procuring medicines. “The home, a tin-roofed rented place might soon be sold by the tenant, which could leave us on the roads,” said Naved.

“My own health, as also Rubina’s, has gone down with the continued strain we bear in keeping up with the treatments. I have sent several letters of requests to the state government, but there has been no response on the pension or the battery rickshaw or anything to do with employment,” he said.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Lucknow News / by Yusra Hussain / TNN / March 08th, 2018