Guests coming to our house are considered as blessing of God in our country. We treat our guest well. We provide for their food, we provide for their lodging, we provide blankets and pillows, and a good treatment. That is why; in our country we are too hospitable even if it means borrowing money just to treat our guest well.
But Guests are of different types. There are those you would like to receive all the time, even at odd hours. Blessed are those ones. They include one’s valued friends or partner. The presence of such guests lightens your own stress and burden. On the contrary are those whose presence brings a feeling of tension and still wind.
Even if they have come to bring you good news, money or any other thing beneficial to you, you won’t like them to stay long after you have said ‘thank you’. There is yet another special class of guests whom I consider as the true guests from God: the needy or persons genuinely desiring one form of assistance or another. They should not be turned back without contributing somehow to making their burden lighter.
If I talk about first type of guests, I easily remember a recent happening.
My aunt just mailed me a couple of day ago to say she is coming to visit. This is a huge event in my life. First of all, I haven’t seen her in about 8 or 9 years and secondly she is probably the person I admire most. Needless, to say, I’ve been on a rampage to get my house tidied up. Actually, I’ve gone and just about redecorated the darn thing. I’m quite pleased with myself and the results thus far. I felt very joy the moments I passed with her; she was really a blessing of God.
On the other hand there is always another type of guests, whom we can say unexpected or unwelcomed guests. I quote here an incident which will explain the time which I and my family have to spend.
Unexpected visitors are very troublesome because they come at odd hours. They come with the suddenness of a calamity and make as miserable. A few such unexpected visitors we had the other day. I had just come from school. My father had not yet arrived from office. My mother was in the kitchen preparing tea for us. All of a sudden the bell rang. There was a loud knock.
I ran to the door. I opened it and I saw a man with a number of children. There stood in the corner a woman. She seemed to be their mother. The gentleman informed me that his wife was a distant relative of my mother. They had come to Khushab to attend a wedding. I took them in and asked them to sit. I ran to my mother and broke the news to her. My mother was taken aback. She never expected anyone, not at least a gentleman and a lady with half a dozen children. Asking me to take my cup of tea, she ran to the drawing room to see for herself who the visitors were.
To her utter surprise she found that the lady was a distant cousin, one who had married a Youngman of her choice and had left the country for good. To see her back again was the one thing she had never dreamt of.
Hospitality is the trait of Pakistani character. Unmindful of the discomfort they would cause her, she set to making her new guests as comfortable as her poor means allowed. It was evening. Father returned home. He was also surprised to see his little house ringing with playful voices of children. My mother had, in the meantime, got the dinner ready and announced that we should all get ready for it.
We all sat round the table and had our dinner. The guests did full justice to it. They praised it highly. My mother was glad to hear it but she knew how much she had worked to get it ready. Those were winter days. The guests had no luggage—not even a blanket. We could hardly spare two beds and these we placed at their disposal.The night passed somehow. We came out of our beds. Mother set to getting the breakfast ready. While we were at the table, the guests announced that they would stay for a few-days more. They said that it was their first visit to Khushab.These guests were also a blessing of God but in this era it is very difficult to manage too many guests at a time.