Published 09 May, 2021 09:28pm

On Mother's Day, Bilawal shares a poignant clip of his late mother Benazir with all three children

As many took to social media to write loving messages for their mothers (and mother figures) on Sunday, PPP chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari also shared a memory from his childhood on Mother's Day.

In the video, former prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, can be seen with her three kids — Bilawal, Bakhtawar and Aseefa — during an interview with Indian actress and talk show host Simi Garewal.

As the youngest one, Aseefa, chatters, Benazir says "she talks a lot".

A young Bilawal wears a T-shirt with a picture of his mother in the front and of his grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in the back.

Bilawal captioned the video, “Your heaven lies under the feet of your mother” and wished a happy Mother’s Day "to all mothers everywhere".

Garewal, who shared the interview on her YouTube page a few years after Benazir's assassination, had written that she was in awe of the leader before they met. "I had read her book and done tremendous research. For me she seemed [like] a real-life heroine," she recalled.

"I was struck by her lack of pretension; she was without airs or graces. She introduced us to her children, personally fed each member of my crew with cakes and tea; and gave me a lovely silver memento which I treasure," she wrote of their meeting in Dubai.

Benazir's children have often included tributes to their late mother on special occasions in their lives; last year, Bakhtawar's first photo with her fiancé Mahmood Choudhry at her engagement featured a portrait of the former prime minister.

At her nikah, Bilawal said that it "felt like our mother was watching over us in this moment of joy".

The young scion, in a column penned for UK publication The Guardian in 2018, wrote that his mother "proved beyond a doubt, with her life and relentless courage, that women can certainly do everything".

Read: 'I spent the best part of my life watching my mother fight the forces of patriarchy'

Recalling the time when Benazir was pregnant with his sister Bakhtawar, Bilawal said that his mother's prime ministership was challenged for that fact alone. "There were calls for her dismissal, the setting up of a caretaker government because a pregnant woman had no right to be prime minister. It’s not like the Constitution allowed for maternity leave."

"My mother, being who she was, took this all in her stride with a smile on her face, had her baby in secret and was back at work the next day," he wrote.

Read Comments