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AAPA

Our Rashida Khala, younger sister of my mother, who we had always called Aapa, left us for her final resting place in July 2023. She was the last of her generation among us and we felt her loss greatly.

I met Aapa last when we visited Toronto in June 2019. We were there to attend my niece Nain’s wedding, and just a day after getting there arranged with her son Rashid to take us to his home next day to pay our respects to her. We found her sitting on a comfortable sofa in the living room and were delighted to see her in good health. We were there for over an hour conversing with Rashid and his lovely son, Ahsan, talking about everything under the sun, laughing, sharing jokes, having tea. We asked about Shahid and Salavia who we would meet a few days later. Aapa sat there mostly silent happy to see us all around her.

Was she keeping all her thoughts to herself then? I wondered where she was in her mind at that time. The older we get, the near-past gets fuzzier in our minds while the distant-past begins to emerge and assert itself in all its colourful splendour. Was she in her beautiful bungalow in Lahore with her darling husband; or was she in Lucknow, the land of her exciting and happy childhood? Who knows? So many images of her came to my mind; laughing uncontrollably with her dupatta in her mouth trying to stifle her voice; giggling and whispering to my mother making fun of an aunt; putting on mock clothes of a street sweeper to pose for a picture. What a life she had lived; so many twists and turns in her long life, enough to fill multiple lifetimes. For me who had set his eyes first on her as a small boy when she was only a girl, she had then looked like a superwoman, and indeed she was that: a superwoman.

She was too small when she lost her father – only two at that time – to feel his absence. Being the youngest, her three brothers and two sisters were there to look after and pamper her. And most of all, her loving amma, always there for her. She followed my mother, six years older, to the Kashmiri School in Kashmiri Mohalla, a well-known school for girls in Lucknow. They shared their experiences together and, as Mansoor Bhai used to recall later, mimicked the way some of the lady teachers walked and talked, giggling and blushing like little girls do.

Aapa developed a bond with my mother in those days which was to last till the latter’s dying day. Their elder sister Hameeda was much older, got married and went away to her new home when Aapa was only four years old. My mother spent most of her childhood growing up with her and would always be close to her. Aapa could share her deepest thoughts with her and confide her secrets to her, always a willing listener though not always giving an advice liked by her.

I have sometimes wondered whether there is any bond closer than between two sisters. This is a special bond surpassing all other relations. A bond between two brothers is also strong but they lack sharing the kind of intimacy and frankness existing between two sisters. A bond between brothers loses much of its shine after they get married and, though it always remains there and comes alive in times of need, it does not offer the kind of day to day support that sisters are able to provide to each other. A bond between sisters, if anything, only gets stronger after they get married. They now have much more to share and confide in, with the certain knowledge that their trust would never be breeched. And so it was between Aapa and my mother.

Aapa was fifteen years old when my mother got married, a lively and high-spirited girl then with naughtiness dancing in her eyes. My father, a newly-wed groom, introduced for the first time to the elegant and sophisticated culture of Lucknow arriving from, what must have looked to her, the backward small town of Jaunpur, was a God-given gift to her to make fun of and to play around with. She made full use of this opportunity. Aapa and her cousins started to play all kind of pranks on their brother in law on his first visit to the bride’s house.

Some of these were quite simple, like putting salt in his tea cup or chillies in the paan. Others were more elaborate, like the one which involved preparing shami kebabs made from khali ( Kh pronounced as in khilona). Khali is a fibrous material mainly used for washing hair. This was finely grounded, made into a paste and then fried as shami kebabs. It was really horrible stuff, almost impossible to swallow. Faced with such kind of mischief, my father’s reaction was simple; he would pretend as if everything was normal and he was thoroughly enjoying whatever was being served to him. While all this was going on and my father would be sitting for dinner in the strictly male company of some grave looking elderly gentlemen from the family, there would be a slight movement in the curtains at the door, faint sound of suppressed giggles and excited voices whispering something inside the house. And my father would continue to maintain a poker face. One could always argue about who was the winner in this battle of wits. My father, who could claim to have denied Aapa the satisfaction of seeing him feel acute discomfort or showing annoyance; or Aapa who did succeed after all in feeding him horribly distasteful stuff.

Three years later Pakistan came into being and Aapa, along with her mother and brothers moved to Karachi to make it their new home.  She shared a two roomed apartment situated on the fourth story of an old building in Ranchore Line, a  busy market area, with other members of her family. My elder mamoon’s family occupied one room of the apartment while she, Nanna and chote mamoon started living in the other room. This was a far cry from their house in Lucknow but spirits were high and nobody complained. After sometime, chote mamoon was allotted a small two roomed house in Martin Road Quarters, a newly built colony on Jehangir Road, and she moved there with Nanna. She joined college and eventually obtained an MSc degree in Home Economics from Karachi University; this was a newly created faculty and she was one its first students.

She used to visit us in those days in Lahore at our flat on GT Road with Nanna. These were fun days. We used to visit our other aunts and uncles with them. The memories of those days are preserved in many photographs of Aapa. There are two in contrasting moods: one where she is sitting inside a big pipe and laughing, obviously at her funny pose, and the second, where she is posing as a kind of dejected heroine clinging sadly to the side of a curtain. The lighting and ambiance is perfect in this picture.

Then there are two others in full theatrical makeup which must have required some effort creating the effect of the characters she is portraying.  In one of them she is playing the part of a jogan, a female Hindu devotee, with her hair done in multiple thin braids holding a begging bowl in one hand and a long walking stick in the other. In the other picture, she is dressed as a street sweeper wearing a dhoti complete with a turban and a big moustache. What fun Aapa and my mother must be having imagining and then creating such characters to perfection. Aapa has that playful, mischievous look in her eyes typical of her. My view of Aapa as a superwoman was reconfirmed when I, still a small boy, would see her dressing and acting in such strange poses. These were carefree days for both the sisters and they were enjoying them thoroughly.

After a few years living in Karachi, Aapa moved to Lahore with Nanna, starting a career. Her first assignment was in a small town called Lala Musa, situated on GT Road about hundred miles from Lahore on the way to Rawalpindi. She was allotted a quarter in the officers colony and she moved there with Nanna. We went to meet here there on a weekend. It was a nice enough place, clean and fresh, away from the pollution of a big city and we enjoyed our visit very much. This was a time when single women hesitated to venture out of their homes to earn a living for themselves; moving hundreds of miles away from home to start a job was simply unthinkable. But Aapa defied all odds and set an example for others to follow her. She was a person possessing incredible courage and an iron determination, traits evident so many times in her later life.

Aapa was then transferred to Quetta, a city much further away and a place even men would have hesitated to go to. She accepted the posting without any qualms and  proceeded to join it on schedule. She used to tell us about the intense cold there and how the water pipes got frozen in the winter. As summer approached, we were much looking forward to visit her there and a program had been finalized, tickets purchased. Just a day before our departure however, my mother unfortunately fell ill and the program had to be cancelled causing us great disappointment.

Through all the freezing cold and biting winds of Quetta, Nanna was there with her too, a constant companion, and a remarkable character. Widowed when she was only in her forties with six children to care for, she lived a further forty years on her own, living an active life till almost her last day. Even in her advanced years, Nanna tried as much as possible to do all her chores herself including mending her clothes as she hated nothing more than being dependent on others. She was always dressed in a clean white gharara suit and was hardly ever found sitting idly down. By nature, she was a caring and good-natured person, attentive to each of her grandchildren, some twenty-five of them. But the apple of her eye would always be her eldest son, my barre mamoon,  whose arrival at our home would make her eyes gleam with a mixture of pride and happiness, something my mother noted with mock envy.

It was around that time that Aapa joined the man of her destiny. Mirza Khurshid Zaman, Zaman Khalu to us, was an old friend of my father who used to visit us frequently at our home before the marriage indulging in amusing conversations. His extended family, also settled in Samanabad, had been well known to us for a long time and meeting frequently at various family functions. Zaman Khalu was an exceptionally kind hearted and affectionate man. He always spoke in soft tones and usually had a smile on his face talking to others. When annoyed over something, he would rather keep quiet rather than raise his voice. At the same time, he had a highly developed sense of humour and had a vast repertoire of anecdotes to suit every occasion. He was also involved in community affairs and played an active role in getting our Samanabad mosque off the ground.

I remember an occasion of those days when he was visiting us sitting alone in the drawing room. My brother Naveed, about four years old then, was upset over something, roamed about the house teary eyed, saw Zaman Khalu sitting, went in there and put his head down silently in his lap, probably the only place he could find comfort in. This was the kind of person Zaman Khalu was.

They were married and started a conjugal home. This was the back portion of a house in Samanabad fronting the triangular park, a few houses down the road from the house where I and Tabana would set up our home many years later. It was so nice to see her  happy and proud managing her domestic affairs. It was my favourite place to visit because Zaman Khalu had brought all his astrology and palmistry books there and I loved to borrow them, this being a completely new and exciting field for me.

A short time later, they moved a short distance away to a flat built on the upper story of  a house facing the main park of Samanabad. It was a comfortable place to live, conveniently located, but had a history behind it: a husband was said to have killed his wife here some years ago. Neither Zaman Khalu nor Aapa believed in superstitions and had no hesitation in renting the place otherwise offering so many advantages. Later on,  when they were already comfortably settled there, Aapa used to tell us about a feeling she had sometimes when she was cooking dinner in the kitchen, of the silhouette of a man silently watching her. A lesser person than her would have probably got frightened out of her wits and decided to leave but Aapa, being the superwoman that she was, hardly gave it a second thought, rather enjoying the experience. In so many ways, she was remarkably different from ordinary women. Was it the ‘spiritual’ guidance of this character that turned Aapa from being an ordinary cook to a super cook, frequently experimenting with new dishes.  Helped by encouraging comments from Zaman Khalu she used to serve great dishes at her parties.

As the family got bigger, they had to move again, this time to a flat downtown in New Anarkali. It was a much bigger flat and close to the children’s schools. Aapa continued to work at her job with Pakistan Scientific & Industrial Research Institute (PCSIR) as before, doubling as a mother and housekeeper. She and Zaman Khalu ensured that their two boys received the best education possible in elite schools which were expensive but known for their quality education. With their combined savings, they started to build a house in the newly established Canal View Colony, a picturesque location facing the Lahore canal, full of trees and greenery. They moved there later on and Aapa was to spend many years here, happy and contended, in the loving company of her family. She had achieved everything one could hope for in one’s life, by sheer hard work and determination.

I was suddenly jolted in my thoughts when I faintly heard Tabana telling me to get up as it was time to go back home. I looked around, saw people slowly getting up from their seats, and realized that I had travelled far back in the past with Aapa, seeing a different person from the one sitting before me, in all her glory and glamour. How time changes people, all of us, and we are left but a shadow of our past. All the mischievous glint in our eyes gone for ever. I rose from my seat, went to Aapa and begged her leave. She nodded good bye to me silently.

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Chapter-4 a Young Man

Finding a title for a chapter is never easy. Many writers find a way around it by numbering the chapters rather than putting a name to it. My solution is to name it in the most unimaginative way possible; like, naming a ship, ‘A Ship’, or calling your pet cat, ‘Cat’. So, rather than going for something like, ‘A Debonair Man Ventures into the Unknown’, I have stuck to the simpler version above.     

(1)

President Ayub Khan, having ruled Pakistan for over ten years, resigned on 25 March 1969, handing over power to the Commander-in-Chief Army, Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan. General Yahya Khan abrogated the 1962 constitution, declared Martial Law throughout the country and banned all political activity. The next day he announced that he would arrange to hold elections as soon as conditions permitted to allow the peoples’ representative to take over the government.

Ayub Khan has been blamed for not transferring power to the speaker of the national assembly, Abdul Jabbar Khan, a Bengali leader,  as provided in the 1962 constitution. The law and order situation had however, deteriorated to such an extent in those days that it had become impossible for civil forces to control the situation. Bringing Army to help them would have brought them in direct confrontation with the public which would have been most undesirable because the agitation was against the person of Ayub Khan and not the Army. Imposition of Martial Law was the only solution but legally Ayub Khan could not do so because he was now a civilian. This was the view held by legal experts and supported by the Army Judge Advocate-General. Power therefore had to be transferred first to the Army C-in-C who would then declare Martial Law.

Three crucial decisions were taken by General Yahya Khan in advance of the elections and announced on 28 November 1969. One-Unit was dissolved restoring the four West Pakistan provinces of Punjab, Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan. Also, parity between the two wings mandating equal number of seats in the National Assembly for both wings was revoked. He also promised return to adult franchise, that is, the principle of  one-person-one-vote, which would guarantee a permanent majority of members from East Pakistan in the National Assembly. Political activities, which had been banned with the imposition of Martial Law, were allowed to resume from 1 January 1969.

A Legal Framework Order (LFO) was promulgated on 30 March 1970 laying down the ground rules for constitution-making by the National Assembly. It provided for a Federal structure of government and made a simple majority sufficient for framing the constitution. Elections to the National Assembly were to be held in December.

The long period before the elections proved to be a bonus for the two principal contestants: Mujibur Rahman in East Pakistan and Z.A. Bhutto in the West and they utilized it fully to consolidate their hold over their constituencies. Mujib propagated his Six Points Plan with full vigour which vested all powers in the provinces with the exception of defence and foreign affairs. Bhutto, in the meantime, campaigned extensively in West Pakistan, advocating a more rational autonomy for the provinces with a viable centre. The old, established politicians severely underestimated his strengths and popularity among the masses and were in for a big surprize.

Elections were held on 7 December 1970 in a peaceful and fair environment. Mujibur Rahman won all but two of the 169 seats in East Pakistan while Bhutto won 88 seats out of 144 in the West. Both of them failed to win even a single seat in the province they did not belong to. The results thus gave birth to extreme polarization in both East and West Pakistan which was to culminate in their separation within a year.

According to General Gul Hassan, a retired chief of army, “The Shaikh and Bhutto had much in common. They were comparatively young; they were fiery rhetoricians; they oozed ambition; they were vindictive; and neither ever told the truth if a lie would serve the purpose – in fact they were creative liars. Nevertheless, they now occupied centre-stage.”

Events now started to move quickly, each one bringing the end one step nearer. Yahya Khan visited Dacca in the 2^nd week of January to hold discussions with Mujib and on his departure referred to him as the future prime minister of Pakistan. He then went to confer with Bhutto in his home town of Larkana and persuaded him to visit Dhaka and hold discussions with Mujib to try to resolve the stalemate. The talks held on 27 to 30 January however failed to produce a consensus and, on his return, Bhutto advised Yahya Khan to postpone the Constituent Assembly’s session.

Yahya Khan however did not accede to Bhutto’s request and announced that the Constituent  Assembly would meet on 3 March 1971 in Dhaka. The announcement was greeted with resentment in both the wings. In the East, the delayed convening of the assembly was seen as a scheme to withhold power from the majority party while Bhutto, now certain that he would be left out of both the power and the constitution making, refused to attend the Assembly session and threatened dire actions if the Assembly was allowed to meet. When some of the minority party members from West Pakistan announced their intention to attend the session, Bhutto threatened them that he would break their legs telling them to get one-way air tickets only.

Faced with an impossible situation, the President invited Mujib and other leaders of East Pakistan for talks with him in Rawalpindi. Mujib refused to comply. Law and order situation there now began to deteriorate and some non-Bengalese came under violent or murderous attacks. The long hate campaign started by Awami League against West Pakistan was beginning to bear its poisonous fruit.

During these turbulent times, there was a strange episode of hijacking of an Indian airplane by two young Kashmiris to Lahore airport. While negotiations were still in progress with the hijackers, they decided to blow up the plane with unusual alacrity. India immediately banned all flights between East and West Pakistan going over its territory and these would now have to follow the circuitous route through Sri Lanka. The circumstances behind this hijacking have never been fully explained but there are strong indications of an Indian involvement in all this as a pretext for banning the flights.

Finally, on 1 March, the President exasperated with the ongoing conflict between Mujib and Bhutto, announced that the Constituent Assembly session, scheduled for 3 March, was being postponed hoping that, given more time, some reconciliation would be possible. Mujibur Rahman’s reaction to this was immediate: he called for a strike and civil disobedience on 2 and 3 March. This also served as a signal for the start of mass killings of non-Bengali citizens claiming the lives of over 30,000 people. Army was called to help restore law and order; there were clashes between the troops and the mobs leading to heavy civil casualties; and before the situation deteriorated further, the troops were called back to barracks by General Yaqub Khan, who was wearing the triple hats of Governor East Pakistan, Commander Eastern Command and the Martial Law Administrator.

The Awami League cadres took the troop’s return to barracks as their victory and were jubilant. The responsibility for keeping law and order and protection of non-Bengalese was now theirs which was like leaving a lamb in the care of a lion. General Yahya Khan was sorely disappointed and replaced General Yaqub with General Tikka Khan on 6 March. At the same time, he announced 25 March as the new date for the Constituent Assembly’s meeting in Dhaka. Mujib announced his readiness to attend the meeting. He had already appointed Colonel M A G Osmany, a retired Bengali officer of the Pakistan Army to train Bengali police, other law enforcement agencies and Awami League workers to be used for insurgency and this plan was working well.

The President arrived in Dacca on 15 March hoping to wave his magic wand to break the political deadlock. After some talks with Mujib, he summoned Bhutto six days later and presented him with a compromise formula which was rejected by Bhutto as, according to him, it had the seeds for breakup of the country. Yahya Khan then asked the minority East and West Pakistan politicians present there to try to persuade Mujib to adopt a more realistic approach which would preserve the entity of Pakistan, but Mujib failed to oblige. The President first asked politicians and then Bhutto as to what he should do next. The politicians hedged the issue by telling him that as the President, the judgement rested with him. Bhutto, on the other hand, suggested a short and sharp military action; this advice was supported by his military aids also. Apparently, fortified by this advice, the President called General Tikka Khan on 25 March and ordered him to launch a military crackdown the same night, called Operation Searchlight. Mujib was arrested and shifted to Mianwali Jail in West Pakistan. On 4 April, Lt General Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi assumed the charge of Eastern Command.

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(2)

The military action lasted from 25 March to 31 August 1971 achieving its main objective – restoration of government authority – though at a cost of almost total alienation of East Pakistan’s people towards the idea of a united country. General Tikka Khan was then replaced as Governor by an eminent Bengali Dr A M Malik, who had served as a federal minister in Yahya Khan’s cabinet until February 1971. Gen Niazi took over as Martial Law Administrator. However, by this time, the public had been estranged to such an extent that it failed to create any excitement nor did a general amnesty for the rebels announced shortly afterwards.

During this period violence was committed by both sides: by Bengali militants, mainly before 25 March, as well as by Pakistan Army reacting to control this violence. There were massacres of thousands of non-Bengalese and their families in Chittagong, Khulna, Dinajpur and other smaller towns. At the same time, Hamoodur Rahman Commission, a judicial inquiry commission set up by Government of Pakistan in 1971, cited many instances of atrocities committed by Pakistan Army in its report, and gave a number of 26,000 Bengalis killed during action. Not a single Bengali was killed, or even harmed, in West Pakistan even after reports of many Bengali army officers defecting to India and compromising war plans. However, as the Commission concluded rightly, “No amount of provocation by the militants of the Awami League or other miscreants could justify retaliation by a disciplined army against its own people.”

The agitation and unrest in East Pakistan was like manna from heaven for India and it was quick to turn it into its advantage. Soon after 25 March, it started to make noises about refugees from East Pakistan crossing over the border, grossly exaggerating their number. India began to arm and train the rebels and put in motion plans to invade East Pakistan at the first available opportunity.

Pakistan Army was at this time facing a strategic conundrum: its troops were dispersed all along the border in tiny formations (called Border Outposts or BOP), the aim being to deny the rebels an area which they could secure, declare independence, and call Bangladesh. This was essentially a political objective. On the other hand, an attack by Indian forces required a cohesive and consolidated army formation to fight every inch of land for the defence of Dhaka, and this was a military objective. In fact, the primary mission of the Eastern Command, according to well laid out war plans, was to defend Dhaka at all costs. Unfortunately, despite General Niazi having been warned repeatedly by the military high command of an impending Indian attack in November 1971, he failed to redeploy the forces to mount a credible defence.

Without a formal declaration of war, Indian forces launched a limited attack on several fronts on the border in East Pakistan on 21 November, two days after Eid. This had been foreseen many weeks earlier after receipt of reports of concentration of at least eight Indian divisions around East Pakistan, supported by ten jet fighter squadrons of Indian Air Force and a formidable Indian naval presence led by the aircraft carrier Vikrant in the Bay of Bengal. Facing them for the defence of East Pakistan were three infantry divisions, one squadron of air force and negligible naval support. Nothing can illustrate the lack of sense of urgency at the top level in Pakistan than the fact that the President, when called for a meeting in the Army operations room the next day to discuss this grave emergency, excused himself on account of a pre-scheduled meeting in Sialkot. When he did come, he was presented with the planned defence strategy to counter the attack on East Pakistan by an offensive from the West. This would force the enemy to pull out troops from that front causing disruption to their operations. Plans for such an offensive were ready, approved, and waiting for the go ahead from him.

The President, to the surprise of many, revealed that some political negotiations were in progress at that time and opening a front in the West would jeopardize them. The only action authorized by the President to counter widespread Indian aggression in the East was to register a complaint with the Secretary General United Nations! As expected, this did not achieve any results whatsoever. Had a military offensive been launched in West Pakistan at that time, it would have changed the course of the war.

Finally, after much delay, limited operations commenced in West Pakistan on 3 December, preceded by Pakistan Air Force planes attacking airfields in East Punjab. Most of the objectives were achieved, the major exception being the capture of Poonch in Kashmir. On the same evening, India commenced a full scale attack on our forces in the East. Limited strength of our forces there facing a much larger army, their dispersion over a wide front, Indian fighter planes ruling the skies and active support of Indian forces by the locals had almost guaranteed the outcome.

It had always been an established Army doctrine that the defence of East Pakistan lay in West Pakistan. A full-fledged counter-offensive should have been launched in the West against India on 21 November to relieve the pressure on Eastern Command forces but the green light for this was not given by the President until 13 December for launch of operations on 16 December. Why did it take so long for him to do this has never been fully explained except the view held by those close to him that, after 3 December, he had lost all hope of defending East Pakistan and was simply biding his time. By that time, the whole exercise had become futile because the fall of Dhaka was imminent and Indian army was in a position to move their troops back to the West.

General Yahya Khan had not always been like this. General Gul Hasan who had served him in various positions until the time that Yahya became Army Chief, found him, “competent, decisive, broad-minded, easy in manner which is a sign of confidence, and above all possessing a remarkable memory and high IQ. . . . . His tragic decline began when he became the President.” Like many people before and after him, the charms and perks offered by the absolute power of presidency went to Yahya Khan’s head. He allowed himself to be made a puppet in the hands of a small group of people close to him, including Bhutto, and gradually lost control over his decisions. Tragically for the destiny of our dear country, this transformation took place at the worst possible time in our history.

By 7 December, almost all sectors in East Pakistan had come under severe pressure and were on the retreat. General Niazi was invited the same evening by Governor Malik to the Governor House to brief him on the latest situation. Governor Malik was receiving reports independently from civil officers posted all over the province and was more or less aware of the situation on the ground. He started the discussion by offering words of comfort to Niazi saying philosophically that things never remained constant in life, there were ups and downs, and the generals too encountered victories as well as defeats. Col Siddique Salik, in his book ‘Witness to Surrender’, describes the scene, “General Niazi suddenly started shaking and tears ran down his eyes. He covered his face with his hands and started to sob uncontrollably.” The Governor consoled Niazi and with his agreement sent a wire to the President asking for some action.

General Niazi came back to his headquarters and remained closeted in his office for the next three days in a semi-paralysed state. Most of his divisions had lost coherence by this time and had fallen much behind ‘the line of no penetration’. Eastern command in the meantime continued to send ‘everything under control’ messages to HQ, keeping them totally in the dark about the real situation. The first despatch communicating the true state of affairs was not received at the HQ until 9 December shaking them out of their complacency. It admitted that defence of Dhaka was no longer possible due to enemy action which was supported by rebels and attacks by air force. Governor Malik also sent a telegram the same day to the President suggesting immediate end of hostilities and a political settlement. The President responded but shifted the responsibility to the Governor for taking whatever action he deemed appropriate.

Things now started to move into the realm of farce. Governor, encouraged by the President’s authorization, sent off a letter to the United Nations requesting it to arrange ceasefire and promised transfer of power to elected representatives. The letter got leaked to the press as soon as it reached New York and greatly offended Bhutto who was present there representing Pakistan’s case before the UN. According to him, it had compromised his efforts to obtain aid from China and United States. On 13 December, a spokesman in Rawalpindi denied that Pakistan government had ever suggested ceasefire and the matter came back to square one. In the meantime, to boost Eastern Command’s sagging spirits, a message was sent from Rawalpindi about expected intervention ‘soon’ by ‘yellow friends’ from the North and ‘white friends’ from the South (US had an aircraft carrier parked in the Bay of Bengal), with orders to communicate it to all command sectors. For the next few days, everybody kept looking up at the sky and towards the sea for heavenly help but none arrived.

Looking at the war situation tactically, Indian forces had still not been able to cross the three huge rivers of East Pakistan: Brahmaputra, Jamuna and Meghna around Dhaka, and with a determined force it would have been possible to hold the enemy there for at least a month. But now the Eastern Command had to face the grim reality: there was not even a single platoon of regular army left in Dhaka to defend the city. The sector commanders spread all around the country when ordered to begin retreating towards Dhaka to fight a final battle there, were either unable to do so or sent in various excuses.

Dhaka was in the end left with a force of barely five thousand men drawn from civil armed forces, police and volunteer corps under the command of Major General Jamshed. The troops were mostly armed with old and obsolete ammunition and suffering from low morale. General Niazi was now beginning to see the writing on the wall and requested the Governor to send a signal to Yahya Khan on 12 December evening requesting him to take immediate measures to prevent further loss of life. Nothing happened until 14 December when the Governor House was bombed by Indian MIG 21 planes causing it extensive damage and disrupting a high level meeting in progress there. The Governor, his cabinet and senior officials repaired to Hotel Intercontinental which had been declared ‘a non-partisan zone’ by the Red Cross. Fourteen December was practically the last day of the Government of East Pakistan.

A telegram was finally received from the Presidency addressed to General Niazi on 14 December at 05:30 pm saying that he had requested the UN to advise India to cease fire in East Pakistan guaranteeing safety of people there. It authorized Niazi to start proceedings to arrange a cease fire. Niazi hardly wasted a second and immediately fired off a message to the Indian army chief, General Manekshaw, offering ceasefire. The Indian general responded the following day on 15 December accepting ceasefire provided the Pakistan army laid down arms. These terms were communicated to and approved by Rawalpindi the same evening and forwarded to all sector commanders.

Indian army Major General Nagra arrived in the outskirts of Dhaka on the morning of 16 December. He was met by Major General Jamshed sent by Niazi to greet him and he entered Dhaka without firing a single bullet. Nagra walked into Niazi’s office and they talked casually about old days when they had been together in the British army. Later in the afternoon, Niazi went to receive Lt General Jagjeet Singh Aurora, chief of Indian Eastern Command, at the Dhaka airport and on his arrival saluted him in military style before shaking hands. They went together to Racecourse Ground and there, surrounded by thousands of cheering Bengalis, on a small table laid down for this purpose, General Niazi signed the surrender document. He took out his revolver from his pocket and presented it to General Aurora, putting the final seal on Pakistan’s surrender to India on the Eastern front. This was the birth of Bangladesh.

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(3)

Karachi had the only international airport in West Pakistan in those days and it was from there that I flew to London on 26 March 1968 to continue my accounting studies. It was a pleasant spring morning and my father saw me off at the airport having travelled with me from Lahore to give me company. I wasn’t feeling my best leaving home and, as the plane took off, the situation turned from bad to worse. Breakfast was served and after the trays were picked up, people started to relax and settle down. The plane was only half full and the seat next to me was unoccupied. I started thinking of home, about my mother and my sisters and tears started rolling down my eyes. I could not believe that I was now going to live thousands of miles away from them and wouldn’t be able to see them or even talk to them for years. I must have been at that time the most unhappy passenger in the history of air travel.

I am not sure how long I carried on like this but suddenly I saw somebody coming to sit next to me. I looked through bleary eyes and saw that it was an air hostess. She started talking to me in soft tones and asked me if everything was all right. I kept quiet for a while but when she continued to probe, I told her that I was going away from home and was missing it terribly. She then started talking to me offering words of consolation and telling me how exciting London would be when I got there. She continued to sit there for about half an hour and left only after I promised that I would be fine. I never knew who she was but shall always remember her kindness and compassion in comforting me.

Getting to be on the plane to England though had not been an easy ride. We had to find our way through a sea of bureaucratic rules and procedures. Pakistan in those days was in the tight grip of government officials running what was a called a ‘quota, licensing and permits’ regime, and they had unlimited discretionary powers. For a start, a passport was not an automatic citizen’s right as it is now and it was granted on a strictly ‘need to have’ basis. The Director General of Immigration and Passports though happened to be an Aligarh College friend of my cousin Baqir Hasan who took me to meet him and so that was that. Getting a British visa required a job offer letter from an English firm of chartered accountants which would normally be possible only if you were there already, a real chicken and egg situation. But this was somehow managed with the help of a distant relative in England, Sahab Alam bhai,  who arranged to send me an offer letter from the firm he was working with. Next, we had to arrange foreign exchange permit from State Bank of Pakistan which was allowed only to a limited number of candidates proceeding for studies abroad on merit and for this, Murtaza sahib, a school friend of my father working at SBP Karachi proved helpful. Networking perhaps was as much in vogue then as it is now.

My father had arranged for a person called Mr Mahmood, resident representative in London of a company owned by a business associate, to pick me up at the London Heathrow airport. After completing the immigration and customs formalities, I emerged from the airport to be greeted by a cold and wet evening already getting dark. Mr Mahmood somehow identified me and asked me to follow him to his car, parked some distance away in the car park. Driving through heavy traffic we reached our destination in about an hour which turned out to be a small room in the basement of a house he had found for my accommodation. After unloading my suitcase, he gave me his telephone number and departed saying that he would get in touch with me later on.

By the time I got settled in my room, it was late evening. It was a sparsely furnished single bed room with only a bed, small desk and chair. I had no idea what to do for my dinner and didn’t have an appetite anyway so decided to go to sleep. There was no heating of any kind provided in the room and with passage of time it grew intensely cold. I spent the night wrapped up in the single blanket that I could find shrunken in a heap in a corner of the bed. As the day broke, I noticed another blanket lying folded at the bottom of the bed and realized that may be people used double blankets here.

I changed and came out of the house trying to find some place where I could have a cup of tea and breakfast. I noticed an Englishman coming towards me and asked directions to a restaurant. He mumbled something and went on his way but I couldn’t catch a single word he said. I carried on regardless and eventually found a café where I had my first cup of tea in England.

Later in the morning, I managed to telephone Sahab Alam bhai from a telephone booth to tell him that I had arrived in London. He promised to visit me in the evening on his way back from office at my address which, as it turned out, was not far from his flat in Finsbury Park. He duly arrived in the evening, had one look at my basement flat, declared it totally unfit for any decent person to stay and took me to his flat. The next morning he departed for his office leaving me to stay at the flat where I slept most of the day enjoying the warmth of a heated apartment, going out only to have lunch and to send a telegram home advising ‘reached safely’. When he returned in the evening, we decided that I would be much better off moving to the Pakistan Students’ Hostel situated in central London, living in the company of people all having arrived recently and the availability of Pakistani food day and night. He took me there and arranged for me to be allotted a room.

The Pakistan Students’ Hostel, situated in the posh Belgrave area of London next to the Pakistan High Commission,  was a whole new world for me. Decently furnished with two  beds in each room, it was a hub of activity crowded with students coming from all corners of Pakistan. My roommate was Habib Khan who was about ten years older than me. He was a district education officer in Punjab arriving in England for some professional training, and despite the difference in our age we hit it off together immediately. Food served at the hostel canteen was tolerable but cheap, and having Pakistani food served in London was, in any case, a luxury, as was the freedom to talk in one’s own language as loudly as one wanted to. The nearest tube station, Knightsbridge, was only five minutes’ walk away.

———

My first priority though was to send a letter home and I bought a few aerograms from the nearby post office for this purpose. An aerogram was a thin lightweight piece of foldable and gummed light blue paper for writing a letter which also served as the envelope. The first few aerograms that I sent home were written in tiny little script by me because I had to say so much in the limited space available for writing: I had to narrate all the incidents in detail and also to express my feelings of homesickness. In those days, I used to write a letter home almost every day and my mother or sisters also sent a reply almost daily and these took about three to five days in transit.

We had to rely on letters so much because the long-distance telephone calls in those days were prohibitively expensive. Calls from Pakistan to UK cost fifty rupees per minute in those days (close to Rs 5,000 in today’s money). There was no direct dialling so one had to book a trunk call through an international operator who would take anywhere from a few hours to a day to connect your call, limited to maximum three minutes per call. Once connected, these also suffered from hissing, low sound level and delayed voice transmission making it extremely hard to talk coherently.  No wonder, during all my stay in England, I did not make a single telephone call to my home nor received any. It seems strange now that even in an emergency, one hardly ever used long-distance calls.

Later on, whenever there was a longish delay in my letter, I could expect to receive a telegram from my father with the stock phrase ‘wire welfare’, to which I would respond with something like, ‘everything fine’. Both letters and telegrams, which used to be such lovely means of bringing people together and share intimate personal experiences, have disappeared in folds of time.

Almost everybody used to write letters in those days, some long, some short, some using postcards for short messages, others writing pages and pages. Naqoosh, a Lahore literary magazine, had devoted one of its voluminous issues to publishing letters written by various Urdu literary figures – poets, story writers, scholars –  to each other through the ages, which were a fine commentary on their thoughts and lifestyle. Letters written and received by British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell form a major part of his autobiography. As somebody said, “Modern electronic communication methods are instant and direct but charmless. Letters, on the other hand, reveal the hopes, worries, excitement, desperation and humour of the writers.”

Our family members used to write letters to each other constantly. Each had their own style. The elders used mainly postcards writing in a scrawl only the other elders could decipher. My female cousins also exchanged letters all the time writing about comings and goings and juicy gossip. Often, the letters were accompanied by the latest photographs taken after full make-up and in studied poses. One of the photographs sent by one cousin to another, a beautiful portrait with long hair falling down one side of the face, had an expectant inscription on the back, “Tell me, how am I looking?”  Mansoor bhai, despite being an extremely busy person, was very fond of sending letters to all and sundry and would find time to write short letters even when he was in a hurry, calling them ‘khati’ (a small letter). I started writing letters to my elder cousins when I was barely five or six years old. In one of my earliest letters, I had announced jubilantly to a cousin living in Karachi that we now had a water connection installed at our new home (in Samanabad), and that our old servant ‘Boota’ had left and his younger brother ‘Younus’ had joined us.

One of the memorable postcards in our family was written by an aunt in Karachi to her sister in law in Lahore announcing the engagement of her daughter. The postcard gave long and interesting details of the prospective bridegroom ‘A’, his age, job, parents, background, everything, which covered the whole postcard. As the reader reached the end however, the last line of the postcard read, “Her marriage is not with bridegroom ‘A’ now, but with bridegroom ‘C’.” What !!!?

One could well understand the thought process going through the aunt’s mind. She had bought the postcard and then spent time and effort in writing it. It would be a pity, she would have thought, to let it all go waste. Much better to send it, and inform the reader of the minor matter of change of bridegroom too.

Like the dying institution of letters, one has fond memories of the telegrams too, now officially discontinued in most countries. Telegrams were sent by visiting a post office and writing out the telegram on a form using minimum number of words because payment was made for the number of words used. Some famous telegrams come to mind, like the ones exchanged between the New York Times’ war correspondent in Cairo during the early days of WWII and his boss in New York. To economise on words, ‘no’ was called ‘un’ in press language and joined with the next word. As it happened, the war correspondent was enjoying his life in Cairo and took his time sending reports to New York. The boss getting impatient wired a query, “Unnews?” meaning No News? The reporter considered himself clever and wired back, “Unnews, good news”. Back came the wire, “Unnews, Unjob”.

The English writer Lytton Strachey visiting Venice for the first time, sent a worried telegram to his friends back home, “Streets full of water, please advise.” American writer Mark Twain perturbed over his death being falsely reported in newspapers, wired a classic understatement, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”  The shortest ever telegram was sent by Oscar Wilde to his publisher enquiring about sales of his book, “?” to which the publisher replied appropriately, “!”.

When we moved to our first home in Lahore after our wedding, there was no telephone there. Communication with in laws living in Karachi was either through letters or telegrams. My mother in law was due to visit us later that week. A telegram from me reached her home late at night, people got up fearing the worst, Mansoor bhai tore up the envelope and read the telegram to everybody gathered around him, “ Bring Daal Maash Green. Dali (Betel Nut) Not Required.”

———

The day next after arriving in the Students Hostel was a Friday and after breakfast I and Habib decided to venture outside the hostel to see London. We decided to visit Hyde Park which was not far from the hostel, really at a walking distance, but being new to the area we decided to go there by underground train from Knightsbridge station to Marble Arch. It was a beautiful sunny morning, though quite cold, and being a working day the Park including its famous Speakers’ Corner, was almost deserted at that time. On Sundays though, the Speakers’ Corner would come to life when anybody wishing to address the public on any subject under the sun could mount a wooden box and start speaking, or addressing or preaching or shouting, whatever one may call it. People would keep moving from one speaker to another either cheering or making sarcastic remarks, and this drama would go on from morning till evening.

It was a huge park with walkways leading in various directions, one of which took us to Serpentine, the long winding lake in the park. We stopped to have a cup of tea and snacks in a café on lake side. I started munching a sausage patty which going by its name I thought would have some sauce inside it. When we came back to the hostel and I mentioned this to somebody, I was in for a shock when told that sausages were made of minced pork. I could not help immediately going to the bathroom and throwing up; there was nothing wrong with the patty, it was an automatic psychological reaction to something one had always believed to be haram. I then realised that I should better be more careful eating anything in this country.

After a day or two, I telephoned Mr Mahmood to tell him about my new abode and he invited me to his place in West Kensington. The following day was the 1st of April and I went to see him at his third floor, one bedroom flat in a residential house near Barons Court which doubled as his office. On pressing the bell, the door was opened by an elderly white lady who directed me to go up through thickly carpeted stairs. Mr Mahmood this time proved to be very friendly, we talked about this and that, and he showed me how to tie a tie using English knot.  Everything in London was new for me and that day sitting there I saw my first snowfall through the flat’s windows; soft white flakes slowly floating towards the ground. I agreed with him to use his address for all my correspondence till the time that I moved to a more permanent address of my own.

Politics reigned supreme in the Pakistan Students Hostel in those days with most residents expressing their affinity to either of the two students unions: Bengali Union and Sindhi Union. Other students like Punjabi or Urdu speaking either supported one of these two or didn’t care for either. Bengalis were highly vocal, organized, and politically conscious. As a result, the hostel canteen was controlled by them though one couldn’t say that the food served was Bengali, it was more or less neutral .

Within a few days, I began to notice the strong feelings that most East Pakistanis in London had against West Pakistan. I was first surprised and then stunned by the intensity of such feelings: they simply hated what they called, West Pakistan’s ‘domination’ over their land, their resources, their earnings and their well-being. Mujibur Rahman had presented his Six Points Programme back in 1966 which meant an almost total autonomy for East Pakistan. Most people in West Pakistan considered the demands as extreme, almost fantastical, assuming (incorrectly as I realized) that the people in East Pakistan would hold the same views. Mujib was, however, much more politically adroit and his detention under Agartala Conspiracy trial, combined with the long Army rule under President Ayub Khan made his popularity grow exponentially. Though there must be millions of East Pakistanis at that time who held the concept of a united Pakistan dear to them, an overwhelming majority was swayed by the extremist and incendiary rhetoric of Mujibur Rahman; for anybody freshly arriving from West Pakistan, this was a rude shock.

In those days, I started to develop a lifelong friendship with Mohammad Ashraf. Originally belonging to a landholding family in Sargodha, he was in England to study for bar at law at Lincoln’s Inn and had many friends from East Pakistan. In fact, he was the only person from West Pakistan I knew who could count so many East Pakistanis among his acquaintances. Living in a flat in north London near Holloway Road, he was a dear old fellow, totally devoid of mischief or ill feelings towards anybody. He had a permanent smile on his face and was ever willing, even eager, to be as helpful to you as he could. He looked and behaved so innocent, it was difficult to believe that he was a law graduate; but then he qualified as a barrister from Lincoln’s Inn, alma mater of such giants as Iqbal and Jinnah and Gladstone and Asquith, so he must have a lot going for him, though he never showed it. He lives a retired life now in Sargodha, close to his lands, and is still as happy and contended as ever.

———–

(4)

I had to start looking now to get a job with a firm of chartered accountants because a four years training contract with an approved firm was a requirement to qualify as a chartered accountant, in addition to passing three exams. The next morning, I went to the stationers, W.H. Smith, bought a supply of plain paper and envelops and found my way to the nearest local library, as there happened to be one in every district in London. I went to the library’s reference section and borrowed a thick red book titled ‘List of Members – Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales’, containing names and addresses of individual members as well as firms. I selected a secluded corner of the library, settled myself comfortably and started to write applications, selecting firms of medium and large size situated in central London. This was a tedious job because the applications had to be written very carefully without any mistake, as the one containing even a single error had to be trashed. At the speed I was going, I could not manage more than ten applications a day. In total, I wrote about 75 applications which produced interview calls from about fifteen firms.

One of my applications written on 7 April hit the jackpot as I received an interview letter on the 9^th for an interview just two days later on 11 April. It was from a medium-large firm called Tansley Witt & Co with eight partners and looked promising. I presented myself for the interview on the due date and received an appointment letter the next day for joining them just three days later on 16 April.

Just like in Lahore a year earlier, I again had to start at the bottom of the ladder and this time the ladder was slippery too. I was not considered fit to be sent to the clients even, and had to remain in the office from nine to five. One of the jobs assigned to me was the usual calling over of letters and accounts I was familiar with, but this time the person at the other end listening to me calling over was an old grey-haired lady, Miss Collins. She  was short and stout, who it seemed was permanently in bad temper. Any mistake from me elicited a swift reprimand and, when this did not prove effective, she threw an eraser at me from her desk which could hit me anywhere in the face – for her age she had an incredibly strong arm. It was up to me to fend off the attack in whatever way I could. It was sometimes hard for me to believe that all this was happening as part of the noble cause of qualifying as a chartered accountant.

The other jobs were not much more creative either – updating Moody’s company information sheets daily; moving furniture between floors as the firm occupied all four floors of a building; getting sandwiches for partners and managers on need basis; or carrying papers between offices, etc. I remember getting home in an exceptionally good mood one day and telling my friend Razzaq how happy I felt. When he queried the reason, I told him that this was the first time in about six months when I had actually taken a fountain pen out of my pocket and written some figures on a piece of paper. He thought I was crazy but I assured him that this was true; none of the jobs that I had been doing up to now required the use of a pen! This was in fact the result of working in a large firm, in smaller firms one started audit and accounts work right away. On the other hand, in a large firm, one swiftly moved up the ladder to supervising audits of fairly large companies after a couple of years while the smaller firm boys were still dealing with the same kind of jobs they had started with.

Our office supervisor was a Mr Taylor, a New Zealander in his early fifties, usually a cool and kind character but capable of enforcing strict discipline in a firm full of headstrong British boys straight out of school or college. They were predominantly from a middle or upper class background, all speaking in a bewildering variety of English accents. I asked a senior his name and he said it was Robin Wyke and so I started to refer to him in the office as Mr Wyke. To my embarrassment some days later, I came to know that the name was in fact ‘Wake’ and he, being an East Londoner, had pronounced it as Wyke in his cockney accent. This accent was, of course, immortalised by the great actress Audrey Hepburn in the film ‘My Fair Lady’ playing the part of a flower girl from East London. The prescribed dress for the office in those days was strictly a black or dark blue suit and tie, with either a white or light blue shirt. Anything else was frowned upon and a staff member arriving in office once wearing a brown coloured suit was told to immediately go back home. The length of our hair was kept under close scrutiny too and an upper-class type boy, Mark Jennings, who preferred to keep his blond hair long was frequently in trouble.

One thing which immediately struck me as odd, though pleasantly, was the total lack of formality between the partners, senior managers and other staff members. The partners would frequently come out of their offices to the main hall and start talking to a person standing in front of his table while this person as well as the other people would continue sitting, or the partner would sometime sit perched casually on the office desk. Nobody would notice their comings and goings in the least, unlike Fergusons back home where the entry of a partner in a room would force everybody to immediately stand up and behave in a highly deferential, even servile, manner.

After the completion of my six months’ probation in Tansley Witt, I was articled to Mr Christopher Gee, a handsome, tall and lean young partner who had been elevated to this position only a few months ago. This was only a formality though and I hardly ever saw him again after the contract documents were signed. My reporting was mostly to the managers, Nick Simpson or Chris May, both highly competent, understanding and friendly personalities. This was an all ‘white’ firm, the only overseas clerk other than me was another Pakistani, Sharif, a couple of years senior to me, but I hardly ever saw him because he belonged to another section of the firm. There was only one female, Roseanne Keeble, in our section. With one or two exceptions, all the boys were graduates from ‘red brick’ universities in England, so called to distinguish them from Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

——–

After a few days of moving to Pakistan Students Hostel, Razzaq also joined me there while Abdullah was already here in London having arrived a few months back. Razzaq had initially found accommodation at his uncle’s home in East London but wasn’t particularly happy there  especially with his aunt asking him before every meal, “How many chapattis would you like to have, Razzaq?” It was now time to start looking for a permanent accommodation of our own and, with our meagre resources, decided to share what was called a ‘bed-sitter’ meaning one room with a kitchenette in a corner of the room. There was usually one bathroom provided on each floor of the house shared by the tenants on that floor. Ads for rent or purchase of all kinds of accommodation were published daily in the two evening newspapers, pages and pages of it, and we started phoning the prospective landlords or landladies.

For such rentals, men with Asian background were usually considered close to the bottom of the list with White girls topping the list followed by White men and then Coloured girls. West Indians were mostly living in South London. We too preferred to avoid certain areas, such as East London. Our persistent search bore fruit and after about a week, we found what we were looking for: an apartment situated on Westbourne Park Road in North Kensington. It was a first floor medium-sized flat at the back of the house facing a small garden down below, at a rent of £6 per week. Our landlord was a tough looking heavily built Greek-Cypriot in his thirties who seemed gentle enough as long as you didn’t step on his toes. We bid farewell to the Hostel in the last week of April and moved with our modest belongings to our flat, the start of a new chapter in our lives.

As none of us knew how to cook, we continued to visit the hostel daily in the evenings for our dinner. There we were joined by Abdullah and some other class mates from Hailey College who were trickling in one by one to London, and it became a sort of club  for daily meeting of old class fellows. This was proving to be costly though for our budget and we started to collect an assortment of pots and pans and crockery and cutlery to set up a kitchen of our own. I started a regular correspondence course with my mother to take lessons in cooking, starting from the very basics – ‘heat the oil in a pan, fry chopped onions until light brown’ – and slowly got the hang of it.

Habib Sb, our friend from the Students Hostel days, was a frequent visitor to our place. About ten years older than us, he was a delightful character. Of medium height but heavily built and with a slightly bulging tummy, he was always clad in a three piece suit and a tie, showing himself off as a model gentleman. Slow and ponderous, he regarded us as two naughty and worrisome kids and we didn’t disappoint him.

Razzaq once telephoned him posing as his boss, Mr Cow, the principal of the school where he was teaching. Picking up the phone, Habib Sb naturally became extremely attentive and respectful receiving a call from Mr Cow. Razzaq, speaking in an authoritative and menacing tone started to admonish him, after which Habib Sb became even more submissive. Razzaq could not control himself at this point and began to giggle, listening to which Habib Sb, surprised, asked him, “You are laughing, Sir?” Razzaq now speaking in an even more menacing tone, shouted, “How dare you say I am laughing, you fool? Shut up.” Habib Sb, now at the point of fainting, managed to mumble, “Sorry, Sir. I’m very sorry, Sir.” Feeling that this was quite enough,  Razzaq now speaking in his natural tone, announced, “It is me, Habib Sb.” One can well imagine the explosion that erupted at this stage, but thankfully things soon calmed down.

Self-locking doors of England did not match Habib Sb’s personality; he would frequently forget to take the house key with him with the door inconveniently locking behind him. This would leave him stranded outside on the road in his dressing gown running here and there trying to find somebody with a key to let him in. He would then start cursing the entire white race for their ‘stupidity’ in inventing such messy locks.

The word punctuality did not appear in his dictionary and one always had to be on guard while making plans with him. Once when visiting our place, Habib Sb wanted us to accompany him to go to Hyde Park. We were not in a mood for some reason and declined. After long arguments lasting more than half an hour, he suddenly announced that, in that case, he should proceed to Holborn station to keep an appointment with a Mr Shaikh, a friend of his, who would be waiting for him there right at this moment. We were astounded to hear this and felt sorry for Mr Shaikh who would have continued to wait indefinitely at the Holborn station had we agreed to go with Habib Sb to Hyde Park.

For a punctuality freak like me in any case, even Razzaq proved to be challenging sometimes. We had agreed once that he would meet me at 1:00 pm in front of my office; I stood there for full half an hour but he failed to turn up. Reaching home in the evening, I was naturally expecting some kind of an explanation from him but, to my utter dismay, he not only didn’t offer any excuse, rather – after I had chided him for this – he had the nerve to say, “So I didn’t come. But you were only standing in front of your office, weren’t you.” This made me real mad and when I insisted on an apology, he mumbled, “Ok, I am sorry.” This didn’t satisfy me at all and when I continued to nag him, he blurted out, “ I have said sorry, haven’t I. Do you want me to fall down on my knees now?” There was nothing more one could say to this.

There was an interesting incident one evening. Habib Sb, Razzaq and I were walking on a street close to our home when we saw a man walking unsteadily towards us in the distance. It was a giant of a man, a black guy, who appeared to be heavily drunk as he was wobbling from side to side. We talked between ourselves that we must try to walk past him as lightly as possible. As he went past us however, Habib Sb somehow felt that he had touched him and being ever polite said, “Sorry”. The giant suddenly stopped in his tracks, peered at us with half open eyes and shouted, “What are you sorry for, man?” Habib Sb got totally nonplussed at this unexpected query. “Nothing, Sir, nothing,” he mumbled in his usual soft voice. The giant refused however to be mollified by this feeble explanation and persisted, “No, no. Tell me, man. What are you sorry for?”. We had no idea how to resolve this argument and I pushed Habib Sb forward telling him to leave the man alone. We started walking again not daring to look back, fearing that at any moment we would be hit violently on the back. Mercifully, however, the giant considered us too small a fry to merit his further attention and started walking away from us.

After a few months, Habib Sb departed to the United States for further education. We missed his company and were sorry to see him go.

——–

By this time, London had become thick with our Hailey College class fellows trickling in one after the other, all aspiring to become chartered accountants one day. At one time, we could count close to thirty of them there. Almost all of them knew me and Abdullah in Lahore while Razzaq also had a wide circle of friends. Our place started to look more like a club and friends like Abdullah, Ina’am, Khalid, Nasir, Naseer and Ifitikhar  became much like members of a family.

The card game we used to play on the weekends was not my favourite Bridge but another game called ‘Seep’ (originally ‘Sweep’), the popular card game of Punjab. This in a way was more mentally tough to play because it required you to keep in your memory not just the cards of a particular colour (like, Spade or Heart) as in Bridge but the cards of each denomination (like, how many Aces or Eight or Ten). We would spend hours playing it with various combination of partners and time would pass quickly.

Sometime during the winter, Razzaq’s younger brother Amjad, having recently arrived from Lahore, came to stay with us for a few days. New to the country and naturally homesick, he would stay all day alone closeted in the room and by the time we arrived back from our office in the evening, would be close to tearing his hair out. My pleasant remarks used to fall like a ton of bricks on him. Asking him, “How are you?”, he would respond, “ “Of course I am ok, what else do you think I would be?” And when I would follow it up by asking, “How was your day?”, he would retort, “My day? What do you mean, my day? My day was just like your day.” Not accepting failure, I would persist, “And I hope everything remained well with you today.” To which he would say, “Why are you asking if everything remained well? Do you think I have cholera?”  Having concluded these pleasantries, I would then start preparing dinner. Some of the married guys may find this line of conversation familiar to them.

Amjad left us to complete a study course in a small town somewhere in the south of England. After a few weeks when he was fed up eating vegetables day and night as halal food was not available at the college, he approached the principal. “Yes, what do you want?” asked the principal. “I want to,” replied Amjad boldly, “slaughter a cock, Sir.” When the principal said, “What?” because he thought he may not have heard the boy correctly, Amjad repeated the request, “I want to slaughter a cock, Sir.” The principal now having collected his wits, thundered, “Get out, and never dare to use such filthy language with me again.” Sometime later, Amjad telephoned us to complain about the principal’s strange and angry response to his, what he said, very reasonable request.

———-

(5)

One of the bonus points of living on Westbourne Park Road was that it was at a walking distance from Portobello Road market, a famous street market selling all kinds of antique and used goods, which attracted people from all over London on Saturdays. Hawkers selling their wares thronged the street carrying everything you could think of on their handcarts : clothes, electronics, fruits and other things of everyday use. Shops sold cheap second hand furniture, dresses and electronic items. In the afternoon, there were so many people walking on the street, it was difficult to move around handcarts. We used to go there almost every Saturday – I was especially looking to buy a radio cum record player – but usually returned in the afternoon carrying only a bag of bananas due to my tiny budget. This went on for a few weeks when I finally found something I was looking for: a second hand portable radio and record player amazingly within my budget.

From that day onwards, the radio would be kept playing nonstop in our flat during all our waking hours. It was permanently tuned in to Radio One of BBC belting out the latest pop songs. Radio One was later on replaced by Radio Luxembourg performing the same job. Razzaq was already a music fan and refreshingly took to English songs in no time. The memory of Tony Blackburn show in the morning brings to my mind visions of hectic activity: its timing coincided with myself and Razzaq running back and forth in the room to get ready in time for a fifteen minutes’ walk to the Notting Hill tube station on our way to the office. The various shows following one another hour after hour played only the latest songs; it was survival of the fittest in the most brutal fashion, any song going down in the pop charts was quickly discarded and replaced by an emerging new song. I still remember the songs which started to become popular in 1968 because we used to hear them from morning till evening, like, ‘Those were the days’, ‘With a little help from my friend’, Classical Gas, and the greatest of all, Hey Jude by Beatles which shot up through the charts to land at the number one spot in the very first week that it was launched.

BBC Radio had four channels, all catering to different types of clientele. Radio One was pop music all day long; Radio Two was more into specialist music like, folk, jazz and light entertainment; Radio Three was devoted to classical music and Radio Four was everything else like news, current affairs, art, history, science, in-house drama and comedy, etc. On Sunday afternoons there was a very interesting hour-long talk show run by the famous DJ, Jimmy Seville on Radio One. It was a discussion participated by four or five people on some controversial or hot topic of the day. The tempo of discussion would gradually build up, egged on by Jimmy, leading to some heated comments by the participants at which time, Jimmy would start playing a record. This would tend to make people cool down and they would restart the discussion in a fairly civilized fashion. In one of the programs the topic under discussion was, would you believe, Jesus Christ. Opinions of participants of the program ranged from those who regarded him as the son of God to those at the other end of the spectrum believing that he didn’t exist at all and it was all a myth. Other participants held views somewhere in between these two. As one could imagine, the talk quickly became heated and as tempers flared up, it was time for a song. This process repeated itself many times over until the end of program. I could not help myself feeling amazed at the level of maturity and broadmindedness of these people who would tolerate any opinion and be prepared to discuss it, howsoever extreme or even resentful it might be.

Having the ‘freedom’ to listen to a song as many times as one liked turned out to be a huge luxury for me, used to as I was back home listening to an English song once and not knowing when, if ever, I would have a chance to listen to it again. I became hooked on to the English songs in school listening to the weekly ‘Western Music’ program broadcast every Saturday at 12:30 which happened to be our lunch time. This was the hay day of singers like Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin and Nat King Cole. The only other source of English songs other than this weekly fare was BBC radio on shortwave transmission which one could listen to in the evenings, though the connection was always uncertain and accompanied with lots of static noise.

I used to park myself on a chair in front of our Normandy brand radio every evening and try to explore all the shortwave bands in search of any hidden treasure one could find,  a hint of an English song. Usually, most of this time was spent hearing meaningless radio noise or chatter but sometime one could hit pay dirt in the most unusual places and in strange sounding languages. It was one such evening in late 1963 when I bumbled on to the Beatles’ ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ on some unknown channel. The song electrified me – it was out of this world – and I had never listened to anything like this before. My search for English songs on the radio took on a fresh impetus trying to listen to the Beatles again. In time, one came to know about the phenomenon of Beatles just hitting Europe and America through news and magazines and, along with the millions of screaming and shrieking teen-aged girls welcoming them all over the world, I too remained one of their most devoted and passionate fans until their break up a decade later.

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In Tansley Witt, I had started at a princely salary of £500 per year on joining the company, paid weekly. The exchange permit allowed to me by the State Bank of Pakistan was £625 per year reduced by the amount of my net salary, and my father was in this way sending me about £17.50 every month This was barely enough for the daily food and other expenses after paying rent and train fares. For about six months, I made do with only two white shirts laundering them over the weekend. The American Woolworth department store, situated near my office, proved to be my life support in those days. It was an economy store with everything offered within a limited price range which suited me very well and though the quality of goods was naturally much below par, I couldn’t afford to be choosy.

If I was feeling it hard to make ends meet, Razzaq was even worse off. His passage to England had been funded by his elder brother but there the financial assistance ended. Though he had also found a job with a firm of chartered accountants, the salary was small like mine and in order to balance his budget, he had to find a second job. This he did by working at a car park in the evening shift. There was not much traffic during night time thus allowing him time to study and to doze off for a few hours in the ticket booth. He would rush back home in the morning, in time to change and to set off for the office. This was truly hard work and I marvelled at his energy and stamina in remaining cool and cheerful throughout the day in the face of such back breaking daily routine. When we look at successful people leading comfortable lives, we often tend to overlook the amount of incredible suffering and hardship they had to endure to arrive where they are now.

The tiny size of our domestic budget in those days can be gauged by one example. One of my cousins in Karachi was proceeding to US for studying for MBA and stopped over in London overnight staying with me. After I picked him up at the airport, I suggested that we take the underground train to proceed to home, this being our usual mode of travel, but he insisted that we take a taxi. After a brief argument, I backed down and we had a comfortable ride home. Looking at it from his point of view, the request was quite reasonable as hiring a taxi was routine in Karachi.  However, here in London, the taxi fare of around £5 from Heathrow to Kensington was exactly equal to half my weekly pay, putting some strain on our limited home budget.

We weren’t the only ones living from hand to mouth in those days. Visiting our place once, Khalid mentioned that he was going to visit his sister in Birmingham next week;  when we met him next however, he said that he had cancelled the program and bought a shirt instead. The same thing happened a month later when he told us that he had cancelled the program once again and bought a tie this time. Razzaq wasn’t going to let an opportunity like that go by and quipped, “Why do you keep making plans to go to Birmingham? Better make a plan to visit Paris next time, then cancel the program, and buy yourself a nice three-piece suit instead!”

I also began to sense during those days that ‘giving’ was not always co-related to ‘having’. Despite his meagre resources, Razzaq told me one evening that he had advanced a cheque of £100 to one of his senior office colleagues, a Pakistani, moved by his sob story and a promise to return it within a month. After receiving the cheque however, the senior had declared that may be he could return the loan in instalments over a period of six months or a year. I was horrified, realizing immediately that he had been conned and told him in very strong terms to visit his bank first thing in the morning to ‘stop’ the cheque’s payment. This he did and a disaster was thankfully averted. I then sat with him and made a rule: he must never advance money for an amount more that £5; that was the cap. Though he continued to dole out money here and there – he couldn’t help it – the outflow remained within limits.

The exchange permit which allowed my father to send monthly remittances had to be renewed every year by the Education Attaché of the Pakistan High Commission in London, and for this I had to make occasional visits there. As soon as one entered the building, one realized that the High Commission staff had made strenuous efforts to replicate the Pakistani style of maintaining shabby offices and disagreeable attitudes exactly as these were back home, and in this they had succeeded brilliantly. The reception area looked like one was back in a Pakistani post office with indifferent clerks sitting on raised chairs behind counters shielded by an iron grill, with huge piles of dirty, decaying files lining the shelves. The officials behaved as if you were somehow disturbing their hard earned leisure time and made every attempt to dismiss you as quickly as possible. It was beyond belief how they had made this possible in the middle of London which had an entirely different kind of ambiance in their offices.

In this sea of inefficiency and indifference there was one exception. And fortunately, this was the person responsible for managing the annual renewal of exchange permits. Was this a coincidence that this gentleman was not a Pakistani but an Englishman, Mr Conquest, working as an officer at the Pakistan High Commission. I used to meet Mr Conquest once a year for the next three years and my case was always dealt with quickly and efficiently. In fact, he used to plead my case with the State Bank if they made an error in calculation. RIP Mr Conquest, wherever you are, and God bless you.

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A few months after arriving in England, I developed cold and fever. Nothing hits you more living away from home than when you get sick. There is nobody to take you to a doctor; to attend to your medication; to prepare light foods for you; you are all on your own and brooding over your misery. I had a cup of tea, got dressed and then lumbered off to a nearby telephone booth to get in touch with the doctor. In England, the National Health Service appoints family doctors in each area whose services are free. The alternative is either to go to a hospital or to consult highly expensive private specialists. I thumbed through the thick telephone directory hanging in the booth to find the name of the doctor in my area: it was a Dr Levy and I rang him. He picked up the telephone immediately and asked me what seemed to be the trouble. I explained to him that I had a cold with fever and wanted to see him. He replied that the earliest appointment he could manage for me was next Wednesday, which was about a week away. I told him in a slightly aggrieved tone that I was feeling sick now and asked what I should do in the meantime. He said: no problem, just have some aspirin and hot cups of tea, have lots of rest, and you’ll be fine. I had no choice but to do what he had recommended. By the next day I was feeling much better and was able to resume office a day later.

Another kind of medical emergency was waiting for me in a department store, Gamages, situated near my office. It was my lunch time and I was rushing through the aisles to get something in my usual brisk manner when, turning a corner, I suddenly slipped on the floor banging my head sideways on a shelf. My left ear hit a can of food and started bleeding. It seemed that somebody had dropped a sugar bag which had burst open spreading its contents on the well-polished floor. I was immediately taken to their in-house well equipped first aid section. A nurse dressed in a starched white uniform awaited me; she cleaned the wound and stopped the bleeding with a few stitches. I was also given a Tetanus injection with a card to record the follow up shots. I was good as new and went back to my office after a few minutes.

By the evening I had almost forgotten about the incident. Recounting it to Razzaq however, he suggested that we must sue the store because the accident was caused due to their negligence. I was reluctant to do this at first but then deciding to give it a try just for the fun of it, wrote to the store demanding appropriate compensation. A reply was received from the store’s solicitor who, though denying liability for the incident, offered a compensation of six and a half pounds. I accepted it with alacrity because there was no way I could challenge it in the courts and, in any case, it was a welcome aid to our tight budget.

A year had now passed in our Kensington flat and Mario, the landlord, was demanding an increase. Somebody told us that Rent Control Act was very strong here and we could file a complaint with the authorities against undue demands made by a landlord. We thanked our stars to know what a nice country we were living in, and immediately filed an application at the relevant office. When I got back home in the evening a few days later, I found Mario waiting for me in the lobby. Razzaq usually arrived much later. Mario followed me going up the stairs and entered the room with me. Before I could ask him to take a seat and offer him some drinks, he advanced towards me and grabbing my face with the fingers of his right hand started to squeeze it violently. He had a big enough hand and held my face so tightly, I could hardly breath let alone raise an alarm. He then told me in a firm menacing tone that making a complaint won’t do me any good and that we must vacate the premises as soon as possible, failing which there would be trouble for me. I did not want to test him on his threat and promised that we will. He left as quietly as he had come. I had an aching jaw to remind me of Mario for many days to come.

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(6)

The hunt for an apartment started again, this time with some urgency. We were much more experienced this time however, knowing the kind of districts we should aim for and how to go about it. Even then we were more than lucky. I saw an ad in the paper for a vacant apartment in South Hampstead, a mildly expensive area, and took an appointment to meet the landlord. He, or rather they, turned out to be Mr and Mrs Wright, a couple in their early fifties, highly refined and cultured, offering a second floor flat in their house on Canfield Gardens, a street containing neat, well maintained semi-detached houses with big gardens in the back. They interviewed me and somehow I passed their test. The rent was incredibly only slightly higher than what we were paying presently. We moved there on the weekend.

It was a sea change for us. We found ourselves moving from a lower-middle class to an upper-middle class area. The view looking at the spacious garden below in the summer was awesome with all kind of flowers blooming there. Our neighbour in the flat facing our apartment was a Mr Dasgupta, an Indian Bengali living in England for many years. He was an intellectual of sorts, dabbling in music as well, speaking in a thick Bengali accent but kind and affectionate.

There were few Indian or Pakistani grocery shops in London in those days and those that we could visit were mostly owned by Sikh families. The Sikhs were all remarkably mild mannered and friendly, not at all like the image we had of them of the partition days swooping down in hoards on Muslims fleeing towards Pakistan holding shining kirpans in their hands. They were in fact, for want of a better word, rather simple minded. I was shopping for some vegetables to cook at home once and not being able to locate the potatoes, asked Sardarji about it. He replied immediately, “They are just by the side of onions.” I resumed my search but couldn’t find the onions either. Asking Sardarji where the onions were, back came the instant response, “They are just by the side of potatoes, Sir.” I didn’t have the heart to ask him where both of them were. Another shop owned by a Sardarji had a notice permanently hanging on the glass door, ‘Open on Sundays”. This was a welcome change because most of the shops remained closed on that day. Having got there one Sunday morning to cook food for some friends we had invited for lunch, I was amazed to find a notice hanging on the same door announcing, ‘Closed on Sundays’. There was an explanation below, ‘Due to Staff Shortage’. Apart from the fact that the two notices happened to be contradictory, ‘staff shortage’ seemed to have been copied from somewhere because their shop was manned by a husband and wife duo!

There were very few Indian restaurants either, especially in Central London. The sole exception was a restaurant near Holborn Viaduct specialising in South Indian delicacies such as vindaloo. The few Indian restaurants in suburbs were almost all owned by Bengalis serving curries which for some reason all tasted the same. The mystery was solved when we found that all such restaurants used a single ‘all-purpose curry paste’ stored in a big jar, which they would mix instantly with whatever type of dish we ordered, whether it was a vegetable, chicken, mutton, fish,or anything else. It was therefore a rare occasion when we could enjoy a real Pakistani tasting food and this was possible only when were lucky enough to visit the home of a Pakistani family.

Perhaps it was the longing for a family atmosphere that moved me and Razzaq to start watching Indian films which were chock-full of intimate family relationships of all kinds. And, once started, we went about it with unmatched energy and determination. Naz Cinema, situated in east London, screened two Indian films every Sunday in those days, the first film starting at 12:00 noon and the second, after barely a ten minutes break, at about 3:00 pm. Coming out in the open after sitting continuously for six hours inside the cinema in darkness, one could hardly walk straight. But we got addicted to this routine. Every Sunday morning for many months to come, we would have a hurried breakfast and start on our one-hour underground train journey to east London, spend the whole day there, and reach back home nearly dead with exhaustion late in the evening.

But it was worth it. We watched priceless jewels during this period: classics like Mother India and Pyaasa as well as the new movies coming out of Bollywood film industry in those days. We watched enough films in those days to fill one’s appetite of a lifetime. They introduced us to the intricacies and complications in close family systems and the way these affected delicate relationships. I saw the way some ruthless mothers in law schemed to dominate or torment their innocent young daughters in law, and hoped that I won’t have to encounter such species in my life.

A truly memorable film I saw in those days was ‘War and Peace’, an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s novel which I had read recently, produced with help from Soviet government. The movie was eight hours long which started at midnight with refreshments served during the intermission and breakfast served in the morning. The Soviet army reportedly provided hundreds of horses and over ten thousand soldiers as extras. Amazingly, the film by its brilliance, managed to overshadow a novel described as the best fiction ever written. It has often been described as the grandest epic film ever made.

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Life at Tansley Witt was moving on. Time passes quickly when one is involved in daily routine and it was now more than two years since I had arrived in England. I had passed my first exam – one of three – called Intermediate in the summer of 1970, unexpectedly achieving 23^rd position in all England out of nearly two and a half thousand candidates. My name was selected for special mention in the office newsletter and I suddenly found myself being known to everybody in the office. This was all the more surprising for many of them because I had prepared for the exam through the ‘Foulks Lynch’  correspondence course rather than the highly expensive crash or crammer courses most of my office colleagues preferred, which I couldn’t afford anyway.

Most of the time at an audit firm is spent at the clients’ premises for audit assignments. My colleagues would usually go out for lunch to a nearby bar and I accompanied them there. While they would gulp pint after pint of beer, my favourite beverage used to be either a juice or bitter lemon; I must have had gallons of bitter lemon inside me in those days. It was amazing the amount of beer they could consume during one hour of lunch time, and it was never enough. Usually they took it well, but sometimes it produced funny results. The senior incharge at one of our jobs would come back from lunch flushed with sweat. Anything explained to him then, no matter how carefully, would be forgotten by the next morning, though he would vehemently deny it.

As usual, the new arrivals in the firm never failed to disappoint. I asked one of our fresh female juniors once to ‘cast’ a cash book which meant checking the additions of its figures. Normally the job would have taken a whole afternoon but when she came back after only half an hour, I asked her how had she done it. She replied, “I casted my eyes over the first page, then I casted my eyes over the second page and likewise I finished casting the whole cash book.”  Another junior, when asked to “tick off” cash book against bank statements (meaning comparing the two and listing the differences) literally ticked each and every item in both the documents and finished the job in a few minutes.

There were many memorable audit jobs but one or two stand out. One of our clients was Michelin Tyres, also famous for their highly coveted Michelin Stars awarded to top quality restaurants in Europe. Michelin happened to have a large factory in Belfast, Northern Ireland and I was assigned to go there for their annual audit along with my colleague Kevin Harkin in early 1971. We would take the early morning flight to Belfast every Monday, spend the week there and return to London Friday evening; this we did for four or five weeks. Entering the small plane early morning, I would be greeted by the overly cheerful and lively British Airways airhostesses, shouting something like, “And how are we this morning? Top of the world?” I would on the other hand, be half asleep cursing my luck having to travel this early, and couldn’t stand their cheery bubbly faces. I would nod to them gloomily and go and sit on my seat.

Northern Ireland, a part of UK, was a beautiful place, looking lush green everywhere, but at that time was in the middle of an armed conflict (1968-1998) with Irish Republican Army (IRA) fighting British forces to obtain freedom. IRA had the support of the minority Roman Catholics while the majority Protestants wanted to remain part of UK. There was frequent inter-communal rioting, house burning, shooting and bombing. I was not by any means averse to land in the middle of this strife torn area, in fact quite excited to see at first hand the conflict one read about only in newspapers. I didn’t hear any bomb going off myself and the only sign of troubles we were exposed to was to come out of the offices once or twice during our stay for police search after a bomb scare. We were staying the nights at a hotel about ten miles away from the city and thus far from the trouble-zone.

The local audit team assisting us were extremely helpful and hospitable. They spoke in a Northern Irish accent which has a tendency to raise the pitch towards the end of every sentence, even if the speaker is not asking a question. My London accent, in comparison, sounded somewhat commanding. I went to see their chief accountant once with an audit objection that it appeared that he had not properly inspected some vouchers before signing them.  “I can assure you, Saeed,” he told me, “I examine each and every voucher very carefully before signing them. I try to make sure that I sign nothing which is not proper.” All this time he was signing vouchers looking directly into my eyes at bullet speed, scarcely looking at any of them. I was left speechless at such a brazen contradiction between words and deed.

We were having dinner one night at the hotel in their elegant dining hall, with music playing in the background. We were deep in conversation when suddenly the instrumental version of the Beatles song, “Fool On the Hill” sounded in my ears. Its haunting tone forced me to stop in the middle of whatever I was saying and become totally engrossed in its music. Kevin was much amused by this but I couldn’t help it.  Music has that effect on me. I have stopped innumerable times in the middle of a meal  the moment a tune I like starts to be played on the music system. I once stopped in the middle of a sentence talking to a salesman in a shopping mall in Karachi when the haunting song Hiyonat by Ummon started to be played on their music system, leaving him clueless.

The other audit I remember distinctly was when we were visiting Yorkshire in the north of England later that year near Christmas time and were caught up in the miners’ strike. The strike had forced all power to be cut off with no heating possible. It was freezing in Yorkshire and it was the first time when I experienced what extreme cold could do to the human body. We would be sitting in the office hall together with the clients’ staff, busy in our work wearing overcoats all day long, and sometimes gloves as well. Even then, it was difficult to continue working normally because the brain would start to become dull with cold after a few hours and then stop functioning all together. Despite such conditions, we did not discontinue the audit and tried to cope with the situation as best as possible, finishing it on time.

On the last day of our audit which was Christmas eve and everybody was leaving after lunch, bottles of wine were brought to the office. Small portions were poured in glasses and everybody took one. I thought about declining the offer but then decided against it as it would have required a long explanation which was quite beyond me at that time, especially as everybody was in a festive mood. I finished my drink in one gulp and then started to wait for the time when it would hit me and I would start behaving in a funny way, may be climb the window sill and start dancing there. To my surprise and mild disappointment, nothing happened at all and I remained as much in control as anybody else. This was the only time in England when I can truthfully claim to have had a drink.

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(7)

Razzaq and I were getting tired of our mundane and monotonous lives in London and felt badly in need of some vacation, preferably in Europe. But our limited budget made it impossible and we couldn’t even think about it. Where there is a will, there is a way, and a solution soon presented itself – ‘Youth Hostels’. These hostels were spread though out Europe and offer almost free accommodation. There was only one condition: one must be young, and that we definitely were. I booked the passage through the famous travel agents, Thomas Cook and we departed London going by train to the port city of Folkestone, crossing the English Channel by the delightful hovercraft to the French port of Calais, and then proceeding to Paris again by train. During this leg of the tour, Abdullah was also with us, visiting the famous historical sites of Paris together.

From Paris we took the train for the next leg of our tour to Switzerland. French people are well known for not speaking even a word of English and we had an interesting experience as well at the railway station in Paris. We went to the ticket desk to ask about the time for the next train departing for Interlaken in Switzerland. We tried various ways to communicate this request to the clerk sitting at the counter with words as well as hand gestures but nothing seemed to work. Exasperated, I took off my wrist watch and placing it on the counter, gestured first at the time in the watch and then towards the Interlaken train standing at the platform. The clerk promptly took off his own wrist watch and placed it next to mine on the counter, indicating happily that his one was better! I accepted my defeat and left him in a happy mood.

French trains even in those days were second to none in comfort, speed and punctuality, far superior to anything we had seen in the UK. Once inside the train, one hardly felt it moving. We crossed the border at Basle and then passing through the capital, Bern, arrived in Interlaken, our destination, in the evening.  It is a beautiful city situated at the junction of two lakes, and hence its name. Arriving at the youth hostel, we were escorted to a big hall with rows of bunk beds lining one side of the wall. This was fine with us: it was warm and comfortable there and the beds had clean sheets and blankets laid out nicely for us. All the other boys were white apparently belonging to different countries of Europe and talking in their own languages. They looked at us once and continued to do whatever they were doing.  After putting our bags down, we went to the bath room to freshen up and then proceeded to the big dining room for the evening meal. This was being served in one corner of the room like any self-service restaurant.

Interlaken turned out to be a one-road scenic city with hills surrounding it on all sides. It was full of tourists at that time of the year and the main attraction was boat rides in the two lakes, Brienz and Thun. Upon seeing the clear blue water of the lake, Razzaq couldn’t help himself and took a dive intending to have a long and leisurely swim; he lasted barely a few seconds inside the water before jumping back out as it turned out to be freezing cold.

From Interlaken we proceeded to Grindelwald which offers a panoramic view of the mountains and is the entry point to Jungfrau, one of the highest points in Switzerland. There is a special train to take you there and the ride itself is well worth the trip. We had by now only six Swiss Francs (CHF) left in our kitty for excursions and I sent Razzaq to buy tickets for the train to Jungfrau as long as the price did not exceed three CHF. He came back and told me that the price was higher than our limit. I thought may be the price was 50% higher or even double that. He said, “No. The special train ticket price is sixty-three CHF; twenty-one TIMES what we have.” I gave a serious thought to joining the Communist Party there and then to protest against the unacceptable disparity in world incomes. I did realize my ambition to see Jungfrau eventually when we (me and my family) visited Interlaken many years later.

Overall, the Paris and Switzerland trip had been a great success, long to be remembered.

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In the winter, I took leave from the office for a badly needed vacation to visit home, reaching there in early December after a few hours stopover in Karachi. I had no idea that my physical appearance in the short period of the past two and a half years had changed me so much that nobody was able to recognize me in Lahore until I introduced myself. Lahore airport in those days had a cosy and informal look with none of the security checks that later transformed the character of all airports. There was a small ‘arrivals’ hall divided into two parts: the front portion for baggage delivery and the back, separated only by a three foot high wooden barrier, for the visitors.

After coming down from the plane, I arrived in the baggage hall and started looking for my two suitcases. I was not aware that a small army of my family, uncles, aunts and cousins was already there in the visitors lounge to receive me. They were trying to identify me among the scores of other people standing around in the baggage hall just a few yards away, but were not having any success. One of my sisters pointed out to me as a possible candidate but the other one firmly rejected it as being not possible. While still looking for a suitcase, I happened to glance towards the visitors lounge and spotted my father standing there. I jumped over the fence and started hugging my family members one by one. I was done only about half way when I realized I still had to collect my luggage, went back over the fence, picked up the two suitcases and re-joined the family. Apparently, it was my longish hair and change in complexion that had made the identification so difficult. Meeting my sisters, there was much change in them too who were all in their teens now. My brother and kid sister who were only six and three when I had left them appeared even more grown up.

Back home I was in a different world. People kept coming and going and I found myself speaking almost nonstop telling them about my life abroad. I was finding it difficult to speak in fluent Urdu and somebody commented that it was obviously because I must be speaking English all this time. I corrected them and pointed out that it was not English, it was Punjabi. All my friends that I was spending time with in London were Lahoris and we conversed in Punjabi most of the time. I was quite enjoying being the centre of attraction, especially of my kid sister, Timmy, who kept staring at me intently.

One of thing that surprised me was how freely my parents seemed to be spending their money. It was not as if they had suddenly started throwing money to the wind; I had been conditioned to count every penny in England to such an extent that the money passing through their hands seemed a fortune to me.

The entire country was caught up in the election frenzy in those days. President Yahya Khan had announced the first ever elections to be held on adult franchise basis to be held on 7 December. Members of national and provincial assemblies were this time to be elected directly by the votes of all adult people. The only elections held previously in the country were in 1965 when Ayub Khan had contested the presidential elections against Miss Fatima Jinnah but in those elections, people had voted only to elect a group of eighty-thousand ‘electors’ who then casted their votes for the two presidential candidates. Campaigning was in full swing and corner meetings were being held in every locality. Bhutto’s Peoples’ Party was very popular with young people, women and the intellectuals as it offered promise of a new, people friendly, anti-rich social order. Its slogan ‘roti, kapra or makaan’ meaning food, clothing and housing for everybody made a strong impact on people disapproving the growing inequalities resulting from the fast industrial growth experienced in the past decade. It had, however, few ‘electable’ candidates – leaders commanding loyalties of their clans or communities – in its cadres because most of the old established political parties like the three factions of Muslim League, Jamaat e Islami and Wali Khan’s National Awami Party were still likely to be the winners in the eyes of the political pundits; and these parties had commanded most of the political funding too.

My mother had always been politically conscious and she had taken care to get my vote registered in my absence. On the polling day, we made a trip to the nearest polling station as proud citizens of our country and casted our votes, my vote going to the PPP. Pakistan Television (PTV) was the only channel available in those days, broadcasting in black and white, and we made ourselves comfortable for an all-night session in front of the TV. PTV had prepared an elaborate program for the election night, transmitting election results as soon as these were announced interspersed with reviews, music shows and comedy skits. This was the first time the famous singer Tahira Syed appeared on TV with her mother Malika Pukhraj singing the famous nazm, ‘Abhi Tau Main Jawan Houn’ which was an instant hit. PTV had excelled itself this time and kept all of us glued to the screen throughout the night.

The first results started to come in just before midnight and then continued to trickle in a steady stream. After the conclusion of polling time, most commentators had started to forecast a comfortable win for Awami League in East Pakistan and a swing towards PPP in the West. However, as more results started to pour in, the size of the PPP vote astounded us. Most of the big names associated with Muslim League factions as well as the religious parties failed to win, some of them forfeiting their deposits. In the end, Awami League won 53% and PPP 27% of the total seats. Of the West Pakistan seats, PPP had captured 60%, ML factions 13%, religious parties 12%, NAP 5%  and independents 10%. This showed the almost complete domination of Awami League and PPP in their respective provinces. We were all very happy at that time that this augured well for the country ridding us of the weak coalition governments that were the norm in the fifties in Pakistan, responsible for much political instability. The elections were held in a remarkably free and fair environment with hardly anybody complaining about any  irregularity. The air was full of hope and optimism for our dear country and yearning to welcome the first ever elected government in our history. Little did we know that personal egos, parochial attitudes and individuals’ lust for power will soon sabotage the people’s will expressed so clearly and unambiguously in the elections, and tear the country apart.

It was soon time to pack the bags again and say farewell to my dear family. I moved from the brilliantly sunny Lahore to the usual wet and cold London. But this in no way compared to my arrival here three years ago when I had spent a night alone freezing in a cold basement room. I was welcomed this time to the warm embrace of my own comfortable apartment and the energising company of my roommate Razzaq.

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(8)

As the summer approached, and I was free from my Final Part I exams taken in May 1971, I started feeling the need for a change from living in a one room bed sitter. It had been three years sharing an apartment with Razzaq and we had a remarkable time together despite somewhat contrasting personalities, or may be because of it. We had our usual tiffs and arguments but nothing ever serious. Razzaq takes the full credit for this as it would not have been easy to live with a person like me. It had always been my view that it was better to make a change while the going was good.

One of my college friends, Naseer had taken up residence recently in a two roomed ground floor apartment in Wimbledon with his elder brother, Javaid Aziz, and was looking for another person to share it with. The apartment was located at Merton Hall Road, about ten minutes’ walk from Wimbledon station in the suburb. It had a large lounge-sized room furnished with a divan bed, a three piece sofa set and a small round dining table; a smallish bedroom with twin beds; and separate kitchen and bath. The lounge faced the back garden seen through large French windows. I had a look at the apartment and developed an immediate liking as I was being offered the use of lounge facing the garden. Having a separate kitchen away from the bedroom was an added attraction.

We had a marvellous time together for the next three years. Javaid sahib, about five years older and who I had always called Bhaijan, was a gem of a character. Having a permanent smile on his face, he never imposed his seniority upon us and always behaved as a slightly older friend. He had a large circle of friends and through him I had the good fortune to start getting acquainted with many Pakistani families settled in England for a long time. One of the families had three married sisters belonging to Karachi:  Bi Appa, Baji and Begum – the youngest – about ten years older than me. Baji’s husband was Yusuf Bhai, who was then in his forties wearing thick pebble eyeglasses and was a thorough gentleman whose passionate love for Pakistan was exemplary.

We would often discuss the political situation back home. Things had quickly started to go from bad to worse since last year, in contrast to the general air of optimism at the time when I had left Pakistan. I had kept myself fully in picture as, ever since my first day in England, I had started buying a British newspaper on a daily basis, first The Times and then The Guardian. I had the paper delivered to my apartment by a newsboy every morning and could never imagine starting my day without a newspaper and a hot cup of tea. Most Pakistanis however, relied mainly on Radio Pakistan’s overseas service for their news or sometimes the BBC Urdu news service, hardly ever reading a British newspaper. Fall of Dhaka therefore hit them like a bombshell, like it did most people in Pakistan.

Anybody reading British newspapers could see the drift of events as they were taking place in Bengal weeks, if not months, earlier. Bhutto had declared on the morning after the Army action of 25 March 1971, “Thank God, Pakistan has at last been saved.” To my mind however, living among the East Pakistanis in London and reading reports in the newspapers of mass killings of unarmed civilians, demolition of newspaper offices and elimination of intelligentsia, it was very clear that this was the end of united Pakistan. Bhutto had also failed to appreciate, in the words of Wolpert, “How seriously India would take it upon herself to get involved in our dilemma and ensure that the turmoil in the East be precipitated.”

As the endgame approached and the war started after the full scale Indian invasion of East Pakistan on 3 December 1971, Pakistanis in London fed on Pakistani radio reports, were jubilant hearing about the ‘heavy losses being inflicted on the enemy.” Yusuf Bhai used to tell me in very excited tones about the Pakistan army’s “resounding’ victories” taking place every day. I would try to calm him down but he wouldn’t listen. People had been feeling especially energised after General Niazi made a bold announcement in Hotel Intercontinental, Dhaka on 10 December declaring that he would fight the enemy to the last drop of his blood; secretly, he had already appealed to the President to try and arrange a cease fire.

I remember telling Yusuf Bhai and his friends around 12 December that most reports coming in from the front indicated that Pakistan seemed to be heading towards a crushing defeat. Yusuf Bhai did not take this very well and became angry with me. Peering at me from behind his pebble eyeglasses he accused me of being a defeatist. I could understand his feelings as his intense patriotism was not allowing him to face unpleasant facts. When the end came however on 16 December, despite having sensed the inevitable a long time ago, the terrible news made me as heartbroken and devastated as everybody else.

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Included in our group of friends was Mohammad Khalid, one of my class mates from Hailey College and a top student who had achieved fifth position in the University. A tall, sturdy fellow belonging to Faisalabad, he was living with the family of his elder brother who ran a successful travel agency business, in central Kensington. Khalid suggested that we could study together for our Final Part II exam due in May 1972 and I readily agreed. This proved to be a good move as both of us enjoyed this time very much and studying became a kind of fun. Usually he would come to my place and we would study for hours together.

After a few months of anxious wait, it was finally the results day: 15 July. As I picked up my morning mail there it was, a letter from the Institute. I hastily tore up the envelope to find that I had passed the Final Part II exam. I immediately sent off a telegram to my home: “QUALIFIED. WHAT A RELIEF.” And relief it was indeed; I was now free from exams for ever. I vowed to myself that day that I would not sit for any more exam ever, and have remained true to my words.

Razzaq had in the meantime been joined by another of our college mates, Bakhtiar Syed at the Canfield Garden apartment. As time progressed, Bakhtiar turned out to have  a slightly different set of preferences compared to what Razzaq (and I) were used to, listening to pop music on the radio all day long, for example. Bakhtiar had no time for music; even a nightingale singing far out in the garden would disturb his concentration while studying. Razzaq tried to find a solution by getting himself a set of earphones and then settled himself comfortably one evening to listen to his favourite music in peace. After a while however, he sensed that something must be wrong as Bakhtiar continued to stare at him with fiery eyes. Removing the earplugs off his ears, he found that the room was actually resounding with loud music: the earphones were for some reason not even plugged to the radio!

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(9)

At about this time, I started making plans with my friend Ina’am to go and see the Olympic games in Munich, scheduled to start on 26 August 1972. Watching athletic track and field events had always been my passion and continues to this day. A priority item also was to see our own Hockey team, then the world champion, playing against the top teams of the world. To be present at an Olympic game was really once in a life time opportunity and I didn’t want to miss it. Ina’am had developed friendship with a German girl, Barbara, when she was visiting London a few months ago and she generously offered to arrange our accommodation in Munich for the games. This clinched the deal and we had now no excuse not to go.

We reached Munich by train on Saturday, 2 September. Our lodgings were in a hostel not very far from the Olympic Village. Germany, we found, was far more developed than Britain and the cottages scattered on the rolling hills on the way to Munich and which we discovered later belonged to the miners living in that area looked more picturesque than even those found in the prosperous suburbs of south England. The second and final week had started at the Olympics and tickets were difficult to find, but we tried to watch as many events as possible. Barbara and her friend Victoria were our guides, showing us around the Olympic village and generally acting as our translator.

The ambiance of an Olympic village is difficult to describe in words, it was a city on its own. Apart from the sports arenas here and there, there were restaurants, shops, post offices and open green areas for the visitors’ use. We saw many athletics events in the main stadium which had been built with a special metallic canopy, crowded with people, and where new world records were being set and broken. After an athlete from the USSR won an event, their national anthem was played at the medal distribution ceremony. The moment I heard the anthem, I began to love its tune and composition. I prayed for more Russian competitors to win their events to it to be played again. This must be one of the most melodious anthems ever: British pop group, Pet Shop Boys, used its rhythm and tune for one of their most popular songs, “Go West”.

We watched the Indian Hockey team as well, also one of the best, playing against a European team. After the Indian team won the match, their Sikh supporters staged a cheerful bhangra dance atop a wooden bridge straddling a small stream in the village, their feet banging loudly on the wooden floor in perfect rhythm. The feeling created by this high-spirited dance is something which I have never forgotten.

The most important match for us however, was the Pakistan hockey team playing the German team in the final. Germany had only just begun to emerge as a strong competitor and Pakistan was still hot favourite to win this game. It turned out to be a historic match: fifty-two years rule of the hockey game by India and Pakistan came to an end on this day when West Germany won on home soil against Pakistan 1-0 to claim their first Olympic title in this game. It came as a total shock to us and to most people in Pakistan, especially after an emotional and biased radio commentary (there was no direct TV relay then) by the Pakistani broadcaster Farooq Mazhar who blamed the referee for Pakistan’s defeat. In reality, Pakistan had lost simply because it played badly: it did not adjust its game to the astro-turf and the team had also not trained enough to counter the fierce man-to-man markings by the Germans. Bhutto, being Bhutto, reacted so strongly to the commentary that he protested officially to the German government. It was only after the people in Pakistan could see the TV recording of the match that they came to know about the truth.

Another incident about the game was also reported incorrectly in Pakistan’s press. Shahnaz Sheikh, Pakistan’s Centre Forward, was reported to be so upset at the biased refereeing of the match that, as shown in some photographs, he had tied his silver medal to his shoe laces while standing at the podium for medal distribution ceremony. The fact was that the photograph was taken when he was tying up his shoe laces standing at the podium while holding the medal in his hand; I was a witness to this incident.

The famous German efficiency and discipline was at full display at the Games. In the main stadium there was a large ‘Standing only’ section without chairs, whose tickets were much cheaper than other stands. One fine sunny morning, we bought our tickets and went there to watch ‘heats’ of some track events going on there. As there were hardly a few dozen spectators at that time scattered here and there in a stand with a capacity of thousands, we sat down to watch the games. After about half an hour, a young policeman wearing a smart uniform entered the stand. He stood there for a few seconds, almost next to us, and then suddenly bellowed, “Stand.” Everybody sitting there obeyed his order instantly and stood up. We also reluctantly made ourselves to stand as we had no choice. The policeman stayed there for a few minutes and then left; everybody else however continued to stand. We were left speechless at this, in our view, sheer stupidity of having to keep standing in an almost empty stadium but as they say, discipline is discipline.

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The 1972 Olympic games would however always be remembered for the Palestinian militants attacking Israeli delegation at their flat inside the Olympic village on 5 September. Eight members of a Palestinian militant organization, Black September, infiltrated the village, killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team and took nine others hostage. They demanded release of 234 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails. The news spread through the city like wild fire. In the morning, we could actually see from a distance some militants holding shotguns walking around the first floor of the flat. The games continued for a while with the athletes oblivious to the drama unfolding nearby but were suspended later and the village looked like a ghost town.

In the evening, when we were having dinner at a restaurant downtown, we noticed a convoy of police vehicles, fire brigade and ambulances rushing towards the airport. It was only in the morning that we heard the news: in a late night ambush by the German police at the airport, five of the eight militants were killed but the rescue attempt failed and all the Israeli hostages were killed. Most of the hostages died by a hand grenade lobbed at them by the militants while they were lying bound up in a helicopter. West German government was later criticized for the poor execution of the rescue attempt. On 6 September, a memorial service attended by athletes and spectators was held in the Olympic stadium paying homage to the dead Israelis and one German policeman.

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My return journey to London a couple of days later saw a somewhat unusual episode. I was travelling alone as Ina’am had decided to stay back in Munich for a few days. Arriving at New Haven port in England from France by ferry about noon, I was booked to board the boat train, as it was called, to Victoria station in London reaching there well before the start of evening rush hour. The immigration officer at the railway platform  had, however, other ideas. He was an elderly man in his fifties with a tired face. He started by asking the usual questions like, where I was coming from, what was the purpose of my visit, etc. I told him that I had a job in London and was going back to my home there. For some reason, he asked me to step aside and wait until he had finished dealing with other people in the queue. It took him about an hour to do so and soon after that the train blew its whistle and started to move slowly out of the platform. I could do nothing but to watch it sullenly as the next train to London wasn’t scheduled to leave until about three hours later.

After sometime the immigration officer called me back and restarted his questioning. The platform was now deserted as everybody had already left. I told him where I worked and he then asked me about my salary. My answer seemed to upset him greatly. He changed his tone and, to my surprise, started shouting about how people were now coming here from all sorts of places to take away local people’s jobs. He said he had worked hard all his life but still received a salary which was less than mine, a foreigner. I told him patiently that I was a chartered accountant, a profession much in demand, and was being paid only what the market allowed. My submission did not satisfy him and he continued to rant and rave against immigrants. He then took hold of my passport and stamped it with a ‘conditional entry’ stamp, meaning I could not enter into an employment in England. After I explained that I already had a job, he remarked sarcastically, “You can take your chances.” I took the next train which reached Victoria bang in the middle of rush hour with packed trains and it was hours before I managed to reach home lugging my heavy suitcase. The ‘conditional entry’ stamp was later removed by the Passport & Immigration Department.

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(10)

One of Bhaijan’s friends was Moeen Ahmed, a charming fellow about the same age as him, who along with his wife Abida, a consultant physician at one of London’s hospitals, became our lifelong friends. He was looking to replace his small car, a maroon colour Mini Morris, with a bigger one and offered it to me at a reasonable price of £175. At the spur of the moment I decided that I must have a car, though I didn’t know how to drive, because to me having moved into the suburbs a car was now a necessity. I paid him the price and became the proud owner of a car for the first time in my life. Having a car demanded driving it, and the only vehicle I had driven so far was my father’s scooter in Lahore. One fine cool winter evening I decided that I must take the car out on the road. This proved to be a fateful decision leading to many unintended consequences.

I started the car and drove very slowly forward on my street using the clutch and brakes, same as I would with a scooter. Having reached the main road, I turned left as turning right would have meant crossing the road, and continued to drive slowly. So far so good. However, I found that I was moving towards the city centre, the traffic was getting thicker and, unknown to me, I was caught up in the evening rush hour on a very busy road crawling bumper to bumper. I was not used to driving in this traffic at all, or any driving for that matter. Numb with fatigue, my left foot slipped off the clutch pedal, the car jumped forward, hit a motorcyclist in front, who in turn bumped into the car crawling ahead of him. I had well and truly landed myself in trouble this time. The three of us moved our vehicles to a side lane to exchange addresses and to give our ID’s to the police, all done very amicably. Having completed these formalities, I managed to reach back home safely though in a considerably agitated state of mind.

The next evening I went to see the motorcyclists at his home. He turned out to be a white haired senior citizen, an Irishman living alone in a bedsitter, who told me he wouldn’t like to press charges even though he had a slight bruise on his left leg. The car owner, a black guy, proved to be a tough customer though. His car had only suffered a tiny dimple of a dent on the bumper, hardly visible. But he insisted on getting paid, to which I readily agreed because this was the least of my worries.

Many months passed and I almost forgot this incident as a bad dream. My Final Part II exams, the last exams before qualifying, had started and I was studying frantically one evening for the auditing paper next morning. Naseer and Bhaijan were out when the door bell sounded. I went out to see who it was and found a policeman in blue uniform standing outside. He asked me if he could come in, my heart jumped into my mouth, but I welcomed him calmly inside. He sat down and told me that they had completed the investigation of the car accident I was involved in and were ‘considering’ to charge me for reckless driving and some related offences. He added that I would be contacted sometime later for further proceedings and then left the room. I somehow managed to get back to my books and continue studying as best as I could.

The drama reached its finale a couple of months later. I received a notice by mail to report to the Wimbledon police station to discuss my case. I presented myself there, another policeman in uniform received me and we went to a small meeting room with a desk and some chairs. The policeman informed me that my case had been reviewed by the crown prosecution service and it had been decided not to proceed further. The file had been closed.

The prosecution actually had no case after the soft spoken, gentle, white haired Irishman had declined to pursue it any further. For so many times in my life, I have been blessed with people who have come to my help when I needed them most.

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I never stopped driving after my accident, in fact driving regularly and going across town from south to north London frequently over the weekend to visit Razzaq. It was like having gone through a baptism of fire. What astounds me now is that I was brave (or reckless) enough to drive many months all over London without a license, which is really a serious offence. I was stopped by policemen twice during this period, thankfully not because of any driving offence, and let off both times with a mild warning without having my license checked. I was stopped once in posh Belgravia late evening by a uniformed policeman performing a guard duty outside an embassy. He told me that I had been stopped because my back light was not working. When I said I was sorry and would attend to it immediately, he asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was studying to become a chartered accountant. He then said something I would never forget: “So you are not the kind of person who goes round breaking the law, are you, Sir.” I said I wasn’t and he let me go.

I am not sure how they find people who could utter such gems effortlessly. Razzaq was coming back home from a town outside London one evening with his boss Dobson driving. Anxious to get home quickly, he was going over the speed limit and was stopped. The uniformed policeman calmly walked towards him and told him so. “But officer,” protested Dobson, “I was just following that lorry.” “You should follow the rules, Sir,” said the officer looking into Dobson’s eyes, “not the lorries.”

There was a tough driving test to pass to get a license; I took help from a coach to help me do this and he was really good. There is a simple rule, a basic one, that you always have to look into the rear view mirror before initiating any move like starting, stopping or turning, etc. He told me to make a turn and when I did so, he said that I hadn’t looked in the mirror, I said that I had. He then told me something that would prove to be a golden rule not only for the driving test but generally for everything. He instructed me to jerk my head emphatically forward towards the mirror to look in it. This looked really funny to me but he said, “Doesn’t matter if it looks funny. It is not enough for you to do something, you have to make the examiner know that you have done it.” The way he said it, I understood the wisdom of his words. So many times in our life we do things for others assuming that the other person would be aware of it, but he or she may not be. Like loving your sweetheart, for example. Wouldn’t it be better if from time to time we indicated to her by some small gesture, like bringing a gift, how much we value them. We take so many things for granted and ignore the inestimable value of visible gestures.

My little car served me faithfully for a long time, taking me from city to city for audit assignments. Razzaq also took driving lessons from me on the same car when, according to him, I would be so tense that I would be constantly grinding my teeth and grunt out instructions to him to turn left or right, though I didn’t think so at all. We were driving out to Kingston once to visit Abdullah’s place with the car loaded with friends, when the front wheel suddenly started to wobble dangerously. The brakes failed too and the car went out of my control. Fortunately, it was a Sunday morning and there was not much traffic on the road. I tried to continue driving while moving the car all over the road first in one direction and then the other to slow it down, and finally had to bang it to the three foot high metallic barrier on the right to make it stop. The right fender took the blow and fell silently down on the road. Everybody was shaken out of their wits but I managed to drive the car slowly to a car repair shop.

This had happened just a few weeks before I was due to go back to Pakistan. The mechanic repaired the wheel but refused to have anything to do with the fender as, according to him, the car had by now become too brittle to undertake repairs. I managed to glue it on to the bonnet (hood ) of the car with the help of some metal adhesive. The car was left standing on the street in the same condition when I departed for home. It was picked up later by the local authority people and deposited in the junk yard.

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(11)

Our group of Hailians was now living in England for more than three years, had started to feel financially secure, though only just, and felt the need to organize itself into some kind of society. The aim was to provide social support to its members in times of need as well as act as a forum to air our views and give us some political leverage. It was named Pakistan Accountancy Students’ Society (PASS). I was elected as its president by consensus and Nasir the general secretary. Funding was arranged through voluntary contributions by its members.

At the same time we began to take an interest in the activities of Chartered Accountants Students’ Society of London (CASSL), representing chartered accountancy students resident in London. Normally a staid and quiet body, it was in a state of considerable unrest in those days. A group of students led by Paul Hendrik, a super active and inspirational character, was striving to make the student body more independent of the Institute and become truly representative of the students. In the present set up, the qualified members of the Institute together with some unelected members were able to exert great influence over its activities. All this changed dramatically at the annual general meeting of CASSL held on 6 June 1972 in the Great Hall of the Institute, and PASS played a major, in fact crucial, role in the proceedings.

Paul Hendrik proposed a special resolution at the meeting to set up a Special Sub-Committee of five student members to draw up a new set of rules for the Society to make it more independent and democratic. The only votes counted at the CASSL meetings were of those members physically present there, and each member could also carry up to three proxies. PASS members made it a point to be there in force as well as carry three proxies each, which made it a formidable presence. The special resolution passed with a thumping majority, mainly with our support. A special sub-committee was set up consisting of five student members elected by members, to “draw up a new set of rules for the Society and to report back to a Special General Meeting within six months with their recommendations.” I was elected as a member of this sub-committee. At its first meeting, Paul Hendrik was elected chairman and I as the secretary of the sub-committee. The Institute’s members had no idea what had hit them.

Thanks to the zealous work performed by committee members, it managed to complete its work in less than six months. It presented its report as well as a set of new Rules at a Special General Meeting of CASSL held on 5 December 1972. The resolution proposed by Paul Hendrik and seconded by me for adoption of these Rules and revoking all previous Rules and Constitutions was carried by a comfortable majority. The meeting also instructed the sub-committee to present the Rules to the Institute’s Council and negotiate their approval. This was made possible only because of a sizeable presence of PASS members at the meeting with their proxies once again supporting adoption of new Rules, even though the Institute’s representative and even ACASS, the parent body of all CA students societies, had strongly argued for voting against the Rules.

Working at the committee level at the Institute to negotiate acceptance of CASSL’s new Rules with the London and District Society (LDS) of the Institute – before its submission to the Institute’s Council – proved to be a great experience for me. We used to meet in one of the many committee rooms of the Institute at its office in Moorgate Place. There were usually three people from the LDS and the same number representing CASSL, Paul Hendrik, CASSL’s chairman Richard Vinson and myself. The elderly Secretary of CASSL Mr Derek Du Pre served as the committee’s secretary. Despite the extremely contentious and heated nature of the matter in hand, the discussions almost always took place in a cordial manner with the two sides calmly presenting their respective cases. Mr Du Pre circulated well written minutes to all participants immediately after each meeting to keep an accurate record of the proceedings.

Despite our best efforts however, there was not much progress in obtaining LDS’s support for the new Rules and it continued to drag its feet. Faced with this situation, a resolution was put up at the next CASSL annual general meeting held in June 1973, proposed by Paul Hendrik and seconded by myself, expressing concern at LDS’s lack of support for the new Rules and endorsing the decision of the sub-committee to submit the Rules directly to the Institute for approval. It also instructed the CASSL Executive Committee to launch a major campaign for adoption of these Rules in case negotiations with Institute did not prove successful. The elections of the CASSL Executive Committee held later showed interesting results: eight of the fifteen elected candidates were Asians including two PASS members, Razzaq and Qadir.

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PASS held its first annual dinner on 15 June 1973 in a grand manner at the majestic Chartered Accountants Hall and invited Mr Kenneth Sharp, Deputy President of the Institute as chief guest. Paul Hendrik, now Chairman of CASSL, was also invited to the dinner as a special guest. Welcoming the chief guest as the President of PASS, I said that changes in the attitudes of students societies that we were observing, whether good or bad, were here to stay and the Institute would be better served by accepting this. The event was extensively covered in the next issue of the prestigious ‘Accountant’ magazine and managed to establish PASS as the only society representing Pakistani chartered accountancy students in London serving the interests of its members.

PASS complimented its efforts at CASSL with a vigorous campaign launched in the press, mainly steered by Razzaq. He started writing a series of letters to the accountancy publications, such as ‘The Accountant’ in support of CASSL. These letters, written in somewhat strong and emotional tones, created a furore among the students body, starting a war of reply and counter reply, much to our amusement.

Flush with our success at CASSL, we then ventured into the muddy political arena of politics at the Pakistan Students Federation (PSF), head-quartered at the Pakistan Students Hostel. PASS now commanded considerable political leverage, and all political players at PSF were now eager to enlist our support for their campaigns. PASS was also able to help when a Hailian named Azmat committed suicide due to personal reasons and money was raised through contributions to send his body home. We arranged for another possible suicide candidate Shahzad to be sent back home before it became too late, surprisingly in the face of considerable opposition from his own family who had regarded his qualification more important than his survival.

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(12)

At Tansley Witt, I had moved on from being hit by Miss Collins by erasers to becoming a senior, supervising medium-large jobs. The firm offered excellent experience in terms of varied nature of jobs, very small to very large. If I had decided to stay back in England and make it my home, this would have been an ideal firm for me, where I could easily aspire to be a manager and, who knows, even a partner. However, as I had always planned to go back to Pakistan after my studies, I started looking to move to a firm with international connections which could eventually help me in getting a reasonable job there. The firm that I ranked above all was Price Waterhouse, one of top four firms in the world.

I applied to Price Waterhouse and surprisingly almost immediately received a letter setting up a date for interview. An offer letter followed and I joined the firm sometime later. The first few weeks were spent in training. This was a huge firm, divided in four groups in London which were almost four different firms because we had no contact with members of other groups. I had been appointed as an investigating senior, one level below assistant manager, manager and partner. People making the grade were able to advance smoothly through these ranks but many of them didn’t and either left the firm or remained stuck as assistant manager or manager; I could see many elderly people working in these two positions, content to be where they were.

After arriving in England and looking at an average Englishman, many Pakistanis had often wondered how it had been possible for the British to rule over us for nearly two hundred years. Granted their industrial revolution and advances in technology, the people living and moving around us did not inspire much confidence in the human race. These were my views too for a long time. Within a month of joining Price Waterhouse, however, I knew exactly how the British had managed to build an empire and to rule over us for nearly two centuries.

Price Waterhouse was a nearly 100% graduate entry firm:  About 60% of people working there were Oxford University graduates, 30% Cambridge graduates and the rest from others universities. I had tried to analyse what it was that was different here from my previous firm. The characteristic which distinguished the people in PW from my colleagues in Tansley Witt was not necessarily their academic brilliance, though it might possibly be. It was more so their competitiveness, their dedication, and most of all, what can only be described as ruthlessness. Almost all of them were incredibly serious towards their job, worked ferociously hard to achieve the given objectives and were prepared to tear their peers or subordinates to pieces if results did not match expectations.

Being an Oxford or Cambridge graduate opened all kind of gates for you in UK. One could choose to join the civil service and enjoy all kinds of power and perks available to senior government servants. Or one could opt for technical courses, such as medical, engineering or business, or join politics with the aim of ‘serving human kind’. Oxford or Cambridge alumni who chose to become chartered accountants did so to make money and then went about it in no uncertain terms.

Oxford has produced thirteen of the 16 prime ministers since the world war and thirty  overall. Ted Heath, a carpenter’s son and Margaret Thatcher, a grocer’s daughter, both prime ministers, effortlessly moved into the ruling class after they graduated from Oxford. In the words of Anthony Sampson writing in his book, ‘The New Anatomy of Britain’, “Their prestige and wealth is perpetuated by the large number of their alumni who themselves control corporate wealth.” It was this group of people, relatively small, whether in government or business or in other fields, who had built and then ruled the empire, and ruled their own people as well, content to be governed by them as long as their job and wellbeing was assured.

PW had some very large clients naturally but they had smaller clients as well. One was an agricultural farm near the town of Godalming in south-west London, a charming little place, and commuting on my car there every day was a great pleasure. Returning from there in the evening during winter, my car would often be covered with snow and viewed with amazement as London would be snow free. Most of the 1973 summer however, was spent by me working as part of a team at an assignment involving investigation into the murky affairs of a huge business empire which was incredibly complex involving multiple currencies and exchange transactions. We were all driven hard by the manager in charge, Steve Cuthbert, for more than four months sitting inside dark gloomy rooms, and I very nearly suffered a nervous breakdown. There was a reward however, in the form of a generous ‘special effort bonus’ belatedly credited to my London bank account months after I had already returned back to Pakistan.

As the winter approached, I was getting more and more inclined towards going back home now. I had worked nearly one and a half years post qualification and this should have been good enough for a job in Pakistan. In December, I took an appointment to see our staff partner, Chris Burley, and told him that I was having an excellent time with PW but would like to say goodbye now to go to Pakistan. Upon his asking me why would I want to do so, I replied that Pakistan was my home and that’s where I wanted to settle now. He asked me if I had a job back there. I told him that it had been nearly six years since I had left the country, didn’t know anybody and would try my luck once I got there. Upon hearing this, he asked me if I would like him to help me in this. I did a double take and said I would really like nothing better. He mentioned that an ex-partner of their associates in Pakistan, Fergusons, was presently working in London and he would see if I could be interviewed by him.

As promised, an interview took place a few days later in one of the conference rooms there. The ex-partner turned out to be Faizol Alam, who I already knew by name from my days of working at Fergusons, Lahore many years ago. He had been a resident partner there before Hassan Shoaib and, being from East Pakistan, had decided to settle in London after the fall of Dhaka. The interview was conducted in a strange manner; both of us kept standing on our feet throughout the interview on either side of the conference table. I have never found out why this was so; Being only an assistant manager working in PW tax department, Mr Alam probably thought that the proceedings might become too informal for his liking if I was allowed to sit, or maybe there was some other reason.

I didn’t hear anything more until one fine morning about two weeks later in January when opening my mail, I found a letter from Fergusons, signed by their senior partner J.P. Patel, offering me a job at their Karachi office. The letter referred to correspondence exchanged by him with Mr Burley. I was happy but my parents, when I told them about it, were much happier because even after my decision to relocate to Pakistan, they feared that I might have to go back to England if couldn’t find a reasonable job there.

I am not sure why Chris Burley worked so diligently to find me a job in Pakistan. But throughout my life I have been blessed with people who have come to my help when I needed them most.

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Three months later, having completed my audit assignments and settled my domestic affairs, I flew back home. I had mixed feelings this time: immense pleasure at being able to go back and join my parents and sisters and brother again and, at the same time, sad to leave my dear home in England where I had spent so many happy and memorable days. A beautiful country, I could never reconcile myself with England’s long cold and wet winters with bleakness all around. So much so, that even now when I hear the songs of that period, I can immediately relate in some way to whether I had heard it first during the sunny summer or dark cold winter. I can never forget looking at the first lone flower of the season at the start of spring and the absolute joy it filled me with.

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(13)

General Yahya Khan tried to hang on to power after the fall of Dhaka but had to step down in the face of a near open revolt in the army ranks. On 20 December 1971, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, leader of Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) which had emerged as the largest party in West Pakistan in the December 1970 elections, became the President and Chief Martial Law Administrator of Pakistan.

Z.A. Bhutto (1928-79) belonged to the landholding classes of Sindh. His father Shah Nawaz was the Diwan (chief minister) of the State of Junagadh, now part of India. “Bhutto,” according to his biographer Stanley Wolpert, “was the son of his second wife, a young Hindu dancing girl with whom he had fallen in love at first sight.” The marriage with Lakhi Bai, later named Khurshid when she converted to Islam, took place at the palace of his good friend, the Khan of Kalat. At 37 he was more than twice the age of his bride who bore him two daughters, Manna and Benazir, and son Zulfiqar Ali.

Bhutto obtained his bachelor’s degree at University of South California (USC) followed by a degree in law at Oxford and bar at law at Lincoln’s Inn. It was during one of his visits home in 1949 that he first met his future wife, Nusrat Ispahani, a friend of his sister Manna. Daughter of Kurdish-Iranian parents, she was at that time one of Karachi’s most beautiful debutantes, living at her home in 23 Clifton. “To me he did not look very handsome or dashing that first moment . . . . Of course, later on I thought he was very handsome and I loved him,” Nusrat recalled later. “Then he proposed to me, and I took it as a joke,” she added. Time did not dim his resolve however. Returning to Karachi after two years, he again proposed to her to make her his second begum. Initially, both families opposed the marriage on account of their different culture and background but then had to relent in the face of the couple’s strong emotions for each other.

Bhutto started practicing law in Karachi but his heart lay elsewhere: diplomacy and politics. He had close family relations with Iskandar Mirza, now the President of Pakistan, who was often invited to Larkana for annual hunt at his ancestral estates. Mirza appointed him first as a member of Pakistani delegation to the United Nations and then as Chairman of another delegation to UN in Geneva. Bhutto appreciated this gesture so much that he wrote to Mirza shortly after to reassure Mirza of his “imperishable and devoted loyalty to you.” He then raised his admiration to another level by adding, “I feel that your services to Pakistan are indispensable. When the history of our Country is written by objective Historians, your name will be placed even before that of Mr. Jinnah. Sir, I say this because I mean it, and not because you are the President of my Country.” He then thought it prudent to conclude his remarks by declaring that, “I do not think I could be found guilty of the charge of flattery.”

Returning to Pakistan, he was appointed minister of commerce in Mirza’s cabinet, a post he retained when Ayub Khan sent Mirza packing and become the President himself. Soon however, he would be allotted the portfolio he coveted most: foreign affairs. This proved to be only a stepping stone for Bhutto’s ultimate ambition, the highest office of the land – Presidency.

The most crucial issue Bhutto had inherited from the previous regime when he became President was the sense of acute despondency the nation was feeling after the loss of East Pakistan; it had been a year of bitter disappointments. He had to take some immediate decisions, even out of the box. To the surprise of many, just a week after taking charge, he ordered the Bengali leader Mujibur Rahman to be transferred from his prison cell to an army bungalow in Rawalpindi . Bhutto held long meetings with Mujib there, pleading with him to find a way to be able to still live together, East and West Pakistan, even if it was only a loose Confederation. He even promised to accept him as the country’s President if he wanted. Mujib replied that this should be left to him and Bhutto should trust him. Mujib then flew to London on 8 January 1972 by a PIA plane from where a chartered plane took him to Dhaka to receive a hero’s welcome from thousands of cheering Bengalis.

In the summer of 1972, plans were being made for Bhutto to meet Indira Gandhi to resolve the pressing issues of ninety-three thousand prisoners of war and Indian occupation of Pakistan’s territory in Sindh and Punjab. The process however did not get an auspicious start. The famous Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci had just published her interview with Indira Gandhi who had described Bhutto as, “not a very balanced man.” Burned by this, Bhutto invited Fallaci to Pakistan. In his subsequent interview, he spoke of Mujib as “mad, mad!” and called Indira Gandhi “a mediocre woman with mediocre intelligence . . . .  a diligent drudge . . . . a woman devoid of initiative and imagination.” He however expressed his willingness to “meet her when and where she likes.”

This they did in the mountain resort of Shimla, near Delhi in June. President Bhutto’s delegation of ninety-two people was personally received by Prime Minister Gandhi at the Shimla airport. The agreement signed on 2 July 1972 stated that India and Pakistan had resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means; Indian troops were to be withdrawn from the roughly 5,000 square miles of Pakistan territory; and each nation agreed to respect the line of control in Kashmir resulting from the cease-fire of 17 December 1971. No mention was made of Pakistani prisoners of war as India had refused to discuss this without Bangladesh being present while Pakistan had still not recognized Bangladesh. It would in fact be not until 28 August 1973 when an agreement was signed between the two countries that started the repatriation of prisoners of war and allowed Bengalis still living in Pakistan to be sent to Bangladesh. The fate of the 50,000 persons left in Bangladesh who considered themselves Pakistanis was however left in balance and shall forever remain unresolved.

Bhutto’s second major achievement, and his enduring legacy, was the building up of consensus among waring politicians to pass the new constitution on 10 April 1973. This is a constitution which has stood the test of time, including two Martial Laws, and is still respected by all. The constitution provided for a federal and parliamentary system of government. For the first time, there would be two houses of parliament – the upper house would be called the Senate and the lower house called the National Assembly. Members of National Assembly shall be directly elected by people of Pakistan on one-man-one-vote basis while Senate would be elected indirectly by members of provincial assemblies with equal number of votes for each assembly. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto stepped down to become prime minister and the speaker of the Assembly, Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry, became the fourth president of Pakistan.

The third crowning achievement of Bhutto was to hold the second Islamic Summit on 22 February 1974 in Lahore. The luminaries attending the conference included King Faisal (Saudi Arabia); Presidents Sadaat (Egypt), Boumedienne (Algeria) and Assad (Syria); Colonel Qaddafi (Libya) and Yassar Arafat (Palestine). The presence of much awaited Mujibur Rahman was made possible by Bhutto’s announcement of his decision a few days earlier to ‘recognize’ Bangladesh. “With Qaddafi and Sadaat seated on one side of him,” commented Wolpert, “and Faisal and Mujib on the other, Bhutto already felt potentially much stronger than India; it was an overwhelming transformation, less than three years after the disastrous Bangladesh War.” Though it was Mujib who received a brotherly welcome from Lahoris, the event’s superstar was undoubtedly Qaddafi, the handsome young Libyan colonel who captured their hearts. Qaddafi stayed back in Pakistan for four more days and Libya was the first Arab nation to ship its oil to Karachi at production cost.

Foreign relations and diplomacy had always been Bhutto’s forte. He had the vision to chart a new course for Pakistan’s foreign policy formulated during the days of Liaquat Ali Khan and then followed more or less faithfully by his successors including Ayub Khan. Soon after becoming president, Bhutto flew to China in early February 1972 meeting Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Premier Chou En-lai. The latter asked him why he seemed to be in such a hurry about his reforms to which he replied frankly that army may not give him a chance to consolidate his position; prophetic words indeed. Chou En-lai also told him to build a ‘People’s Army’, an advice which he took to heart and later used to set up the Federal Security Force, his personal elite force reporting directly to him. Bhutto then visited Moscow for two days in March meeting Premier Kosygin and signed a five year treaty reviving trade relations which had remained frozen since the beginning of Bangladesh War. USSR would later help to set up the country’s first steel mill at Pipri near Karachi, inaugurated in December 1973.

Bhutto visited China again on 11 May 1974 and received promises of military support including aid in developing nuclear capability. This would come in handy when exactly one week later, India exploded a plutonium device in a deep salt cave in Rajasthan on 18 May 1974. Bhutto made a solemn resolve on that day to make Pakistan a nuclear power as well and assembled a team immediately to start work on the project. He had earlier inaugurated the country’s first nuclear power plant in November 1972 under supervision of the famous physicist Professor Abdus Salam and had personally chaired the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. His dream came true twenty-four years later when Pakistan carried out a successful nuclear test in May 1998 in the hills of Balochistan.

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(14)

One of the first major steps after assuming power was Bhutto’s announcement on 3 January 1972 of immediate nationalization of thirty-one companies. These belonged to ten major industrial sectors: iron and steel, basic metals, heavy engineering, heavy electrical, motor vehicles, tractors, basic chemicals, petro-chemicals, cement and public utilities like power and gas. The total value of these industries came to about Rupees one billion ($100 million). These were now to be managed by a newly created Board of Industrial Management, headed by the then finance minister, Dr Mubashir Hasan.

This one single move by Bhutto dealt a severe body blow to the then thriving industrial sector of Pakistan. Quite well managed and profitable factories were handed over to be run by an army of inexperienced, unmotivated and sometimes corrupt government officials who turned them into a shell of their previous self. Soon they became loss making entities, gulping hundreds of millions of tax payers’ money. Capital started to move out of the country. The country’s international credit rating started to drop rapidly hurting its exports and foreign exchange reserves. For the first time in its history, Pakistan had to look for financial support from its friends, Libya, China and Abu Dhabi.

Nationalization proved disastrous for the country: the average industrial growth during the years 1958-70 had been 9.5% which plummeted to less than half, 4.5%, during period 1972-77. Large-scale manufacturing in particular achieved a miserable growth rate of only 3% during the latter period and that too helped by huge public sector investment. The carefully planned and implemented industrial policy of the previous decade, an envy of nations like China or South Korea in those days, was taken to pieces by a coterie of selfish and greedy politicians and bureaucrats.

Faced with an acute economic crunch and desperately short of cash, Bhutto then raided two other vital sectors of economy. At a formal dinner on the night of 31 December 1973 attended by Karachi’s industrial and banking leaders, he had declared that they had ‘nothing to worry about.” However, the next day, as a new year’s present to the people of Pakistan, Bhutto announced the immediate nationalization of all banks and insurance companies.

The noted economist Ishrat Husain summed it up, ”The nationalization of the major manufacturing industries, banking, insurance, education and the like caused a major disruption of the economy and an erosion of private investor confidence that continued for the next twenty years . . . . The substitution of a culture of entrepreneurship, risk taking and innovation by rent-seeking and patronage supressed the dynamism of the private sector. The emergence of bureaucrats as business leaders reinforced the new culture,“ concluding, “Nationalization did irreparable damage to Pakistan’s economic take-off and pushed it behind its competitors.” Worst of all, this experiment with socialism done ostensibly to break the stranglehold of the famous 22 families on the economy, failed to provide any relief to the common people, especially the poor classes. Inflation shot up to 16 per cent during 1971-77 adversely affecting the buying power of poor sectors. Workers were not getting wages and went on strike joined by students demanding cheaper food. Things rather than getting better had in fact got only worse.

Not content with the nationalization of country’s major industrial and financial sectors, Bhutto now turned his attention to the agro-based industries, comprising medium and small, even tiny, industrial units involved in simple processing of industrial produce in rural areas. Twenty-six vegetable ghee units had been nationalized in September 1973. Then quite out of the blue, an announcement was made to nationalize nearly three thousand cotton ginning, rice husking and flour milling units in July 1976. This must rank as one of the most senseless, ill-planned and reckless acts of the government at that time. Residential houses were nationalised if the owner had found it convenient to install machinery in one part of his large rural compound. Cattle, poultry and fish ponds were also nationalised if they were on the premises of the factory. The three corporations set up to manage these units were used mainly to recruit thousands of people and ended up making huge losses. The worst affected province was Punjab and the mass discontent felt after the forcible acquisition of private properties worth nearly one billion dollars from tens of thousands of mainly middle-class people was one of the major causes of the downfall of Bhutto regime a year later.

There is evidence that Bhutto was made to realize his mistake soon. Finance Minister Hafeez Pirzada announced on 11 April 1977 appointment of a committee to “reconsider the position of” recently nationalized agro-based industries. But it was too late by then to control the backlash.

A question arises as to how could a highly intelligent, shrewd and well informed person like Bhutto take decisions which turned Pakistan from being a prosperous industrial economy into a nation tottering on financial crutches in less than two years. The answer lies partly in the political philosophy he had preached for many years to win the votes of masses – Islamic Socialism, and also his family background. He tried to rule Pakistan, not as a skilled administrator, but as a feudal lord, and in the words of Wolpert, “with alternate threats and promises, with carrots and sticks, with bribes and hunting rifles, curses and tears, and solemn oaths to God.” Like most large landowners, he had always been suspicious of Karachi businessmen, industrialists, and bankers; they were not his type of people, not his class anyway, even going to the extent of calling them ‘parasites and blood-suckers’ in a speech he made shortly after nationalization.

He also failed to gather people around him of competence and integrity, the ones he did, failed him time and again. Bhutto was always suspicious of everyone around him fearing some conspiracy. It is intriguing how he could entrust the control and management of huge industrial companies to the members of Civil Services of Pakistan, the same group of people for whom he had nothing but contempt and derision. He had retired some 2000 of them in 1972 declaring that, “They were sucking the people’s blood. They were parasites,” in a public speech made on 19 March 1973. It seemed that he had managed with great effort to transfer the stewardship of the ten major industrial sectors of Pakistan to a group of, what he had called, ‘parasites and blood suckers’.

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Chapter-3 the Teen Years

An ancient Assyrian clay tablet dated 2800 BCE has this to say about the end of the world: “Our earth is degenerate in these days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is approaching.” The world as it existed nearly 5000 years ago seems surprisingly similar to the present day, announcing the imminent end of the world just like many people are doing today. But what about every man wanting to write a book? Does it mean that writing my biography is also, along with bribery and corruption, hastening the arrival of doomsday? Indeed a sobering thought. I shall continue to dig for more proof of this, but in the meantime, shall plod on with my writing as before, doomsday or no doomsday.

(2)

The first Martial Law led by President General Ayub Khan was generally welcomed by common people who were fed up with the continuing political intrigues, instability and poor governance. They wanted somebody to take charge. “The military regime,” in the words of author M.R. Kazimi, “succeeded on cracking down on corrupt civil servants, black marketers and notorious smugglers. It also imposed strict traffic regulations and civic rules, thereby earning the gratitude of the common man.” I remember myself the day after the imposition of martial law visiting a butcher shop. To my surprise, the shop had been fitted overnight with wire netting protecting meat from the swarms of flies floating everywhere until the previous day. I had felt very impressed with the power of the government and the good it could do if it wanted.

The appreciation was not limited to common folk; it was shared by the few perceptive political leaders who had the feel of the people’s mood. The ex-prime minister Suhrawardy, when asked why he had accepted Martial Law replied, “Because things were deteriorating very fast and I could not stop it. Maybe Ayub Khan can. I want to give him the chance to do so by not putting hurdles in his way.”

One of the first actions of the new government was to promulgate an ordinance known as Elected Bodies Disqualification Order (EBDO). Anyone who had held office could be charged for corruption or misuse of power which, if proved, carried the penalty of not standing for election or holding office in the government for six years. This effectively removed all existing politicians from the political field giving a clean field to the President.

Ayub Khan introduced a system of indirect elections, called Basic Democracy, replacing elections on the basis of adult franchise. Under this system, the people would first elect an electoral body consisting of 80,000 members who would then elect the president and members of national and provincial assemblies. As expected, Ayub Khan was elected as president by this body on 17 February 1960. The basic democrats would also run the local government and union councils. In theory, it was a good system bringing governance closer to people but in practice it lent itself to coercion and corruption.

Many reforms were initiated in the law, education and population planning sectors. There was exemplary industrial growth in this period, spearheaded by Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation setting up units in the public sector and selling them to private sector, incentives for private sector to set up small and medium scale industries and liberal imports of capital goods. A green revolution in agriculture was achieved by mechanized farming, chemical fertilizers and sinking of a huge number of tube wells.

A major achievement of President Ayub Khan was the signing of Indus Water Treaty with India in 1960, brokered by the World Bank. The treaty gave the waters of the western rivers – Indus, Jhelum and Chenab – to Pakistan and those of the eastern rivers – Ravi, Beas and Sutlej – to India. It also provided for the funding and building of a huge infrastructure of dams, link canals and barrages. Warsak Dam on the Kabul River, Tarbela Dam on the Indus River and Mangla Dam on the Jhelum River were built under this agreement. These schemes compensated the loss of water to Pakistan that it had previously received from the rivers now given to India and also helped in producing thousands of megawatts of hydroelectric power cheaply.

Installation of two nuclear power plants was sanctioned, in Karachi and Dacca. Dr Abdus Salam personally approved the Karachi project. An oil refinery was established in Karachi. Work on building of a new capital in Islamabad started in 1961 and it was officially declared the capital in 1967.

Ayub Khan firmly believed in a liberal religious policy. Muslim Family Laws were promulgated for the first time in 1961 under which consent of wife was made mandatory for a second marriage and rules were made to restrict the practice of instant divorce. Arbitration Councils were set up for grant of sanction to contract a second marriage, reconciliation of domestic disputes and grant of maintenance allowance to the wife and children. These were fiercely challenged by the orthodox religious bodies but the government remained firm.

President Ayub Khan leaned towards United States in foreign policy because he considered military aid necessary for quick modernisation of Pakistan armed forces. He was invited as a state guest to Washington DC by President John Kennedy in 1961. However, the American supply of arms to India after the 1962 Sino-Indian War came as a rude awakening. Pakistan started to renew its ties with China, signing the historic Sino-Pakistan Frontier Agreement with China in 1963. President Ayub became the first Pakistan head of state to visit USSR in 1964. As a balancing measure, a three country friendship treaty – Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD) – was formed with Turkey and Iran as its members.

The Martial Law was finally lifted on 8 June 1962 and replaced by a constitution introducing presidential form of government. First elections under this constitution were held on 2 January 1965 with Miss Fatima Jinnah consenting to stand as the presidential candidate for the combined opposition parties. The elections were held under the indirect election system favoring the government in power and, furthermore, opposition felt the absence of the only politician of stature, ex-prime minister Suhrawardy, who had died in 1963. Ayub Khan won by receiving 64% of the electoral college votes. It is believed that had the elections been held via direct ballot, Fatima Jinnah would have won. The elections showed that people had no prejudice against women holding high offices, and they could be key players in the politics of the country.

Ayub Khan was fiercely opposed by the student body all over Pakistan. I was studying at the Hailey College of Commerce at that time for my bachelor’s degree which, along with the M.A.O. College nearby, was the hub of political activities in those days. There were daily processions against the government, hot speeches made on the streets and attempts to break down barriers, which were met with strong resistance from the police. I encountered the tear gas for the first time in those days and remember having to wash my eyes constantly from the buckets of waters being made available by student volunteers. Most of the students were really non-political but were swayed with emotions generated by the entry of Miss Fatima Jinnah in the contest. Overall, it was good fun and very exciting. Life reverted back to normal after the elections.

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(3)

I started the transformation from being a child to a young boy in 1957 when I moved from the junior school to Government Central Model School, Lower Mall, and got admitted to the 6^th class. There were three elite boys schools in Lahore in those days: Aitchison College, Saint Anthony School and Central Model School. The first two were English medium schools while Central Model was Urdu medium. Aitchison College was founded in 1886 for educating the princes and, even after partition, retained the tradition of catering to the elite classes propped by its high fee structure and the upper class life style of its students. Saint Anthony was started in 1892 by catholic priests and was a good quality school. Central Model School was also an old institution established in 1883 and its building is included in the list of National Heritage of Pakistan. It was arguably the top ranked school in Lahore in those days judged by the highest number of A+ grades it produced in the matriculation (higher secondary) exam. A very high number of its students got admitted to the Government College situated next door, the top ranked college of Lahore if not of Pakistan, which accepted only the cream of the students applying for admission.

In fact, when I was in the tenth class, I took it for granted that I should be moving to the Government College later on and decided with a friend to visit the college in the evening to get a feel of this august institution. Unknowingly, we walked into the principal’s residence which was situated within the college premises. We found ourselves being chased by a ferocious looking black hairy dog and managed to get away only by scaling the boundary wall. The first impression of the college was not very encouraging but that didn’t deter us from applying for its admission next year. We discovered that the dog happened to be a pet of the then college principal Dr Nazir Ahmed, more about him later.

The school was an all-boys school supervised by male teachers which was a change for me having arrived from a co-education school under the care of lady teachers. The other surprise was the school fee –  two rupees per month. Even in those days, two rupees was a relatively small amount, at least compared with Rs 11.25 which was the fee at Junior Model School. Getting into a government school also provided another bonus, Tazeen who had just got admitted into the Government Junior Model School had to pay only half fee. For this, I had to obtain a half fee voucher from my school’s admin office, which I continued to do every month for the next seven years until I joined the university. My sisters did the same for their younger siblings and all of them paid half fees for almost their entire educational career.

The school maintained its high standards not only by the high quality of its teaching staff but also by enforcing strict discipline as part of its culture. Corporal punishment was allowed but kept within reasonable limits. I got a taste of it within a few days of my moving to the new sixth class. Our class teacher was Imtiaz Sahib, a cool and competent English teacher and a strict disciplinarian. He was checking my homework once which was fine but, as he was about to hand the copybook back to me, happened to look at its last page. My heart sank what I saw there. My kid sister Nageen had picked up a lead pencil to have some fun and had drawn thick big circles on the page with it. Imtiaz Sahib asked me what it was and I tried to mumble some explanation but this was not found satisfactory. He told me to show my hands and caned me once on each hand, though mildly, but it still hurt a bit.

Punishments varied from teacher to teacher but we became so used to it, it was taken for granted. When I moved into the ninth class, the class teacher who was also our maths teacher, Mahmood Sahib, had a reputation according to the school gossip of breaking a student’s jaw with a slap the previous year. During the first week of joining the new class, he picked me to solve a maths question on the black board. I felt really terrified of him and found my hand slightly shaking while writing on the blackboard. However, my luck held and to my surprise I heard him commenting in mild tones how nicely the question had been attempted. This continued to be his general behaviour with everybody and, contrary to his reputation, he turned out to be an extremely efficient and kind teacher.

Our Persian teacher in the ninth class, Saqlain Sahib, had his own policy of handing out punishments. It was a small class of about a dozen students and he caned everybody immediately after the announcement of results of  term exams. Punishment varied from student to student but nobody was spared. This was an equitable treatment, though to what purpose, nobody knew. In the tenth class, our maths teacher Allama Sahib, also had a simple rule. He asked us to solve theorems or problems in the class room and gave two canes for every question not solved correctly. This formula worked and almost all of us could solve the questions by heart before the end of the year.

By the time we reached the senior year we actually began to prefer the strict teachers, because getting good grades was vital for getting admission to Government College, especially in the medical and engineering faculties. Mohsin Sahib was the class and maths/science teacher of section C. Most top students wanted to be placed in this section despite him being known to be liberal with his cane because he was otherwise an excellent teacher and always managed to show the best results in school.

There were notable exceptions and my English teacher in the senior year, Alvi Sahib, was one such person. A thoroughly decent man, he could never dream of holding a stick. Nevertheless, he taught us with such passion and mastery over the subject that he developed in me a love for the English language that has remained with me ever since. He told us that words were like jewels and needed to be treated with as much care. He would encourage us to use our imagination to craft words and phrases creatively to suit any given situation. His kind and caring demeanor is a sweet memory with me.

Central Model School was known not only for its high academic standards, its debating society, drama society and cricket and athletics teams also won prizes. We were all members of Junior Cadet Corps supplied with army boots and uniforms; once a year there were army-type competitions followed by a mock battle played on our grounds with mock ammunition. There were frequent debates participated by students from other schools. The school’s big hall could accommodate hundreds of students sitting together. I remember a drama ‘Shah Jehan’ having been staged with almost real stage props and painted backdrops. The boy playing the part of emperor Shah Jehan, Shaikh Ilyas, was one class senior to me. We met again six years later in Hailey College when he was in M.Com contesting elections as president of the students union.

While corporal punishment is understandably looked down upon these days, I feel that it had its merits if kept within reasonable limits. This is especially so when I see some undisciplined students driving their teachers to frustration, even exasperation. The teachers feel helpless, and the only course available to them is to ignore and sideline such students. This only results in making them even more difficult and unruly, and deprives them of education. This was never allowed to happen in the old days; teachers took full responsibility for their charges and did not shift responsibility for keeping up the grades or maintaining discipline to their parents, as they do now. I have never attended a parent-teacher meeting in my life, because there used to be none. The parents’ job was to get their child into the school; preparing him or her to be fit for the college was the responsibility of the teachers. And they managed to do it admirably well, at least in Central Model School, as the results showed.

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(4)

Construction of our new home, N-889, started in 1957 and we moved there next year. This was a 700 square yards plot situated on Poonch Road which served as the western border of Samanabad. Beyond the plot there were vast agricultural fields stretching right up to the Multan Road highway about three kilometers away. We could hear the distant sound of buses and trucks hurtling along the highway throughout the night. On the southern side too, there were lush green fields between Samanabad and the newly built Wahdat Colony. Going to my mamoon’s house there simply meant twenty minutes’ walk through these fields which would otherwise take close to an hour’s travel by road. There was the added bonus of stopping midway and enjoying freshly milked goat’s milk bought from the shepherds living there.

The land for the plot happened to be three or four feet below ground level and had remained submerged in water for a good part of the year. Foundations of the house were therefore dug very deep and then fortified with extra thick walls. We didn’t need an architect to make the house plans because Sajid bhai, a family friend and a senior architectural draftsman, was at hand to offer his services. The construction of the house was supervised by a local builder called Mistri (technician) Khuda Baksh who was an old style professional; a mason, carpenter and plumber rolled into one. He was an extremely competent, experienced and sincere house builder, who remained associated with my father for almost thirty years supervising various alterations and extensions to the house over these years.

The kitchen was fixed with an old style cooking burner using wood and coal as fuel. One of my errands in those days, when our servant was on leave, was to fetch wood for the burner from the nearby log shop (called Taal) just round the corner. There the khan would make a small bundle of split logs, or split them there and then, and hand them over to me. It was a big place with surrounding walls made up of tons of logs packed one on top of another. Coal used to be delivered in jute bags. In the winter, when it was cold, we would often sit around the fire to have our meals. There would be smoke in the kitchen, either when the fire was being built up, or if the wood happened to be damp, and my mother would often be cooking dinner with teary eyes. Wood and coal gave way to oil stoves using kerosene oil after some time, and finally to natural gas in the mid-sixties.

There was no running hot water supply because geezers had not yet arrived. To have a bath in the winter required some planning. Water was heated up in kitchen in big pots which were then carried to the bathroom by hand. This was mixed with tap water to make it suitable for taking a bath. Tap water was not very cold in any case because it was received directly from the supply source and not from underground water tanks.

This was an era much before tiles or marble; floors were laid simply with cement mixed with assorted colours. Similarly, walls were white washed with lime instead of emulsion or distemper. When I see the modern houses and flats here, even the modest ones, with beautifully patterned tiles on the floor, plastic emulsion paint on the walls and shiny bath room fittings with running hot and cold water, it seems a different world altogether from those early days. Foam and spring mattresses have replaced charpoys or cotton webbing tape mattress. I remember watching English films in those days and looking with envy at the beautifully furnished apartments with elegant furniture and shiny kitchens shown in the movies. Now there is hardly any difference in the furnishings there and here, talking in general terms, though of course there are huge disparities in the living styles of upper and lower classes in both places.

Talking of homes, people used to play all kinds of home-grown games in those days, which few people would know now. Gulli-danda was a very popular game but it required big, open spaces to hit the gulli powerfully with the danda. Also common was playing marbles using colourful little glass orbs called Bantay, or playing Dabbi with flattened cigarette pack covers and little pieces of stone. Little girls used to play Keerri-Karra all the time. Other popular games for girls were Kokla-chapatee and Kho, played during the long summer evenings under cool moonlight.

———

In the summer of 1960, my father decided to take a break and planned a trip to the northern areas. The journey was to be undertaken on crowded inter-city buses and the quality of hotels in the far off areas was suspect; it was only myself therefore who accompanied him on this long journey.

Our first destination was the Swat valley, a highly picturesque but largely undiscovered resort in those days. We went north to the city of Nowshera, took a right turn towards Mardan, climbed to Malakand and then down again to Mingora, the largest city of the former State of Swat. There was a brief stopover at a hotel in Mingora, which was not unlike any other city hotel in Punjab. This was the start of the Swat valley and the road from this point onward ran more or less next to the beautiful Swat river, coming very close sometimes and drifting away at other times. The weather now started to turn cool and the scenery on both sides of the road became breath-taking in its beauty. The river started to slowly getting narrower going up the mountains. Our bus followed the river until it reached the town of Madyan in the afternoon where it crossed the river to the other side.

Madyan Hotel, built on the side of the river, was our first stop and opened a whole new world for me. It was an elegantly built hotel with bright airy rooms facing the river. However, it wasn’t until we went for dinner that had my eyes popping out. The tables were laid elaborately with English style crockery and cutlery. This was the first time that I had seen multiple sizes of knives and forks laid artfully on both sides of the shiny white plates and a folded napkin placed next to the knives. The first course was a soup, also a first for me. After I had finished, the waiter arrived to take my plate away; I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t quite finished with my dinner yet, but my father nodded to indicate that it was all right. The soup was followed by fish, then the main course and, finally, the dessert. I was too excited by the surroundings to enjoy the meal but relaxed after a while. Breakfast the next morning was similarly an elaborate affair. I did not know then that I was to stay in Madyan Hotel once again, after nearly fifteen years, when I and my wife spent our honeymoon week there.

After a couple of days stay, we boarded the bus for the major attraction of this area, Kalam, then the last stop accessible by car or jeep. The road still following the river which was now even narrower, was crudely paved and not very wide and we frequently had to give way to the traffic coming from the other direction. There were occasional mud falls which made going even slower. We passed Bahrain and finally reached Kalam sometime in the afternoon. My father was quite taken in by the incredible beauty of the surrounding mountains, the rapidly flowing waters of the river and the streaking streams making little waterfalls, their water freezing cold to the touch.  For me in those days, if I had seen one mountain I had seen them all, and so waited patiently for the return. We stayed there about an hour for a late lunch, and then started back.

By the time we reached Bahrain it had turned dark and my father decided to spend the night there. Bahrain, now a bustling town crowded or rather overcrowded with all kinds of hotels and boarding houses, was in those days a one hotel village, provided one could call a set of six small rooms built on top of shops facing the river a hotel. Each room had two charpoys, two wooden chairs and a small table as the furnishing. The menu for dinner was a freshly prepared chicken, hastily cooked on an oil stove placed on the balcony outside, served with naans. We went to bed immediately after having dinner because that was all that we could do. It was pitch dark outside with not a soul around and the only sound one could hear was the water constantly rushing down the fast flowing river across the road. I tried to imagine myself having dinner in the brightly lit dining room of the Madyan Hotel with a knife and fork and soon went to sleep. My father didn’t, as I found out the next morning. He told me that the surroundings made him so uneasy that he had hardly slept and began to relax only after sunrise. We packed our bags and began the long journey back, but there was still a lot more to see.

Our next stop was Abbottabad, a scenic town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on the way to the picturesque Kaghan valley. Abbottabad had a serene calm and cool ambience which was unique to this town. In the evening we strolled down from our hotel to see a film, the famous English movie The Vikings, starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, which had been released recently. There was a scene in the film with high drama, the only one I still remember: Kirk Douglas’s character, a prince, throws a kick at Tony Curtis’s character, his slave; and in retaliation, the slave orders his falcon to attack the prince, taking out one of his eyes. Kirk Douglas appears in the rest of the film wearing a black patch over his eye. As a punishment, the slave is left standing in the sea to drown slowly with the rising tide.

The next morning we took the bus for the journey through the winding mountains of Himalayas, going steeply up from Abbottabad (1200 meters) to the commanding heights of Nathiagali (2600 meters). The scenery on the way is probably one the most breath taking and beautiful in the country offering views of the hills full of pine, cedar, walnut, maple and oak trees. My father was engrossed in enjoying the scenery when he noticed me reading a magazine as usual. He told me in a somewhat pained tone to please look outside and start enjoying the breath taking views going past the window. I glanced at the mountain outside, watched the next one trying to see the difference between the two, couldn’t find any, and went back to my magazine. This scene was repeated almost exactly many years later when we were visiting Hunza and my son hardly ever raised his eyes from his cell phone to look at the mesmerizing beauty of the mountains there, much to the disappointment of his mother.

Nathiagali in those days had retained the colonial outlook and was a laid back town known for its scenic beauty, hiking tracks and cool weather. After having a short break there we proceeded onwards to Murree, the famous hill resort, for a one night stay. It was as usual crowded with tourists and shops were doing hectic business. My father now felt tired and wanted to rest in the evening so I took his permission to watch another film. There was a cinema hall in Murree in those days at the intersection of the road coming up from Rawalpindi and I walked down the Mall to watch an old Indian film Deedar, starring Dilip Kumar, Nargis and Nimmi. This was the end of our tour and we boarded the bus for Lahore the next morning.

———

(5)

My father’s business had been doing well helped probably by his intense hard work and professional integrity. Progressing from the business of trading in hides and skins, the venture now acquired a tannery, naming it Bufco Tanneries. Tanning is a process where hides and skins are treated to produce leather and, in modern jargon, it would be called forward vertical integration though it is doubtful if my father had ever heard this term. The tannery was located at Kot Lakhpat, an outlying industrial township about 12 km away from the city, which in those days was mostly an unpopulated open land area. We also had a car now, a Morris Eight saloon. I don’t remember my father in those days ever coming home before ten or eleven at night and we were usually asleep by that time except my mother who would wait for him in order to have dinner together. Sundays were reserved by him for visiting the tannery early in the morning when we, my sister and I, would hitch a ride with him to go to our mamoon’s house in Wahdat Colony (which happened to be on the way) to play with our cousins there, coming back home by lunch time.

Our car, the black Morris Eight, was bought in a slightly used condition but was still in a perfect shape. It had a push button ignition which surprisingly has been reintroduced in some very modern cars. The other distinguishing feature of our car was the starting handle which proved very useful in winter when the battery didn’t have enough power to start the engine. Rather than having to find people to give the car a push, one simply inserted the starting handle in the engine at the front, cranked it once or twice and the car would come to life. The starting handle had another use as well, to move the car out of mud or sand. I am not sure why this extremely useful gadget was done away with in the later models. The car remained with us for a few years until it was replaced with a light blue Ford Prefect.

Around those days, there was a major change in our life when the family of my taya (my father’s elder brother), Syed Ali Jafar, migrated from India to settle in Pakistan and started living with us. My father’s family in India had belonged to a class of land owners, called zamindars, who had a comfortable living being owners of large tracts of land. However, all this changed dramatically because unlike this country, the land reforms in India introduced in the early fifties through abolition of the zamindari system were really effective. It took away all the rights of the zamindars – mostly Muslims – over their lands and destroyed their political and economic power. At a stroke of pen, it made more than 20 million mostly Hindu tenants the owners of the land they cultivated. My taya tried to survive in the changed conditions as best as he could but life was eventually made so difficult for them that they had no option but to say good bye to the land of their ancestors where they had ruled with almost unchallenged powers and try to make home in a new country.

Tays’s family consisted of his wife, three sons and three daughters, in ages ranging from about seven to twenty five, three of them being older than me. Three elders daughters of his were already married and settled with their families. It was a big enough family to accommodate in an existing household but my mother rose to the occasion and welcomed them wholeheartedly. Tai Amma too was a kind and delicate lady who adjusted to her new life with grace and dignity; and the two women between them ran the household as smoothly as if we were borne into it. We had two spare rooms built on the upper story which were put to use to house the new family. The kitchen was however common with shared cooking between the two families which meant that ‘our’ family was introduced to ‘their’ way of cooking meals, with mixed results. Generally, all went well except that the food they cooked was done using mustard oil which was something new for us and its taste and smell was not at all to my liking. Gradually, however, I started becoming used to it though by that time Taya’s family had moved their cooking to ghee.

My mother was extremely particular that we treated our guests with due consideration and dignity and never do anything which could hurt their feelings. One of my elder cousins used to stutter slightly in those days. Once, while listening to him talk, I too said something in a stutter, forgetting that my mother was standing next to me. I received a resounding slap on my left cheek which I remember to this day.

It was a crowded dining table in the evening. This was the usual eight seat table which meant that a good number of people had to have their meals standing round the table but we became so used to it that it looked totally natural. It was a noisy meal as well because there was constant talk between all of us interspersed with witty remarks and then loud laughter echoing round the room. Taya had a great sense of humour shared by the members of his family; little incidents happening during the day turned into funny jokes which my cousins shared with us accompanied with loud guffaws.

About a year later, some portions were added to the upper story structure including a drawing/ dining room and kitchen, and my taya’s family moved upstairs. There was much discussion during this time about how best Taya could support himself and his family now that they had decided to settle here. The best option seemed to be to start a bookshop and stationery store in the local market as there was none in this area while the Samanabad locality was fast expanding. My mother came up with the name, Variety Book Stall, and the bookshop was soon in business. My elder cousin, Hibbi bhai, took charge of the shop and worked day and night to make it a success. It soon became a household name far and wide and our family started to be known as ‘Variety Walley’.

Hibbi bhai used to visit the market in the morning to get supplies and Taya was in charge of the shop during that time. This time was not particularly popular with the kids to visit because Taya chose to deal with his young customers in his own way. He would not allow the kids to buy expensive items of stationery if a cheaper option was available or to buy too many items in one go. This was obviously against all marketing principles, but fully in keeping with his own ethical principles. The parents however didn’t mind and the sales soon started to grow quickly.

Taya was the kind of person who would always remain true to his principles. His proud and dignified personality and perfectly erect posture was about the same as it probably would have been when he was lording over his lands back home. Taya had a commanding demeanor but treated people with care and kindness. He would mellow down considerably over the years forced by the massive change in his life style but studiously maintained his dignity and composure to the end. A few hours before he left us, he called me to his bedside. I kneeled down beside him listening to him talking in a feeble voice. He had turned very weak and thin by this time. He said he was soon going to leave us which made me start crying. He tried to console me and said something which I would never forget. He told me to be kind to all family members and to always try to live in harmony with them. He then closed his eyes. These were the last words I would hear from him.

My cousin, Hibbi bhai, was a charming character in every way. In his twenties at that time, he was pleasantly handsome with a naturally smiling face. Being the eldest son, he understood his responsibilities only too well and took over as the sole earning hand for his family at a young age to ensure that his younger brothers and sisters could receive a decent education. Usually, the earning hand in a family is known to throw his weight around, expect special treatment and demand obedience. Not so with Hibbi bhai. It was just not possible for him with his sweet nature to order people around. But still, by the sheer force of his personality, he commanded respect and affection from everybody he came in contact with. I had become his fan almost from the first day I had set my eyes upon him when I was a little boy and remained so for the rest of his life He treated my wife too with brotherly affection and regard and she felt the same. He reciprocated these sentiments and later in life used to visit us riding his bicycle almost every week to our home in New Muslim Town.

He never married and remained single all his life, the ultimate sacrifice for his younger brothers and sisters. He saw to it that they were happily married and settled in their own homes. By the time he left this world, he had achieved his life’s goal; to give his family a decent start in life as best as he could.

———

(6)

It was now the beginning of my teen years. These years bring many physical, mental and social changes. Adolescents develop the ability to think abstractly, make long term goals and compare oneself to one’s peers. They tend to want independence from their parents or guardians. Peer influence and acceptance become important to young people and they start to develop long term commitments in relationships. All these changes affected me in one way or another.

One of my cousins, about four years older than me, had recently arrived in Lahore and I began a lifelong friendship with him. Having a thin body frame, short hair and wearing thick glasses, he gave the appearance of a conscientious student immersed in his books but this was deceptive. He had seen the world from an entirely different perspective compared to my secluded and protected upbringing which had made him much more mature and worldly than I was, greater in fact than the difference in our years. By nature, he was quite candid and even cynical and held most people in low esteem. I craved his company like any typical boy would for a young man and his comments used to make a deep impression on me.

It was a warm summer evening and we had gone to see a musical show at the Lahore cricket stadium. There was the usual long delay before the start of the event and there was nothing to do except to just sit there on the bare floor of the stand and look at other people. After a while, my cousin started getting bored and said that he wished there was somebody to give him company. I innocently said that I was there to give him company. To this, my cousin retorted that he wished there was somebody there for a more lively company.

More lively company?  These words fell like a ton of bricks over me. They travelled like a clot through my veins up to my brain where they ricocheted furiously around the skull. More lively company?  I felt numb with self-pity and shame. I knew I was a nerd and would always remain a nerd. My life revolved around books and magazines and newspapers. But I guess there was still a tiny element of self-respect left there and my cousin’s candid appraisal was an unexpected blow.

When I came home, my cousin’s remarks were still echoing around my brain. More lively company? I started thinking about it to dissect their real meaning. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the comments were in fact true. I was not a lively company and in fact quite a tame and boring company. I also realized that I would have to do something about it. From that day, I began consciously and purposefully to change myself. To present an image to people which may not be my true self but a more likeable and endearing self. It took me a little while to do this but eventually I was successful in developing a side of my personality which I wanted.

Whenever I am sitting in the company of many people, recounting funny anecdotes on the spur of the moment, making witty remarks and drawing laughter all around, my mind goes back to that warm summer evening in Lahore. I wonder whether it would all have been possible without my cousin getting bored and demanding to be provided with a more lively company.

———–

Looked at from the eyes of an adolescent, this period – roughly between 1960 and 1965 – appears to me as a long running film. At that time, our immediate family and some close family friends numbered more than 200 people in Lahore, all living in close vicinity and in close contact. There were frequent parties and all day picnics. Life was a never ending series of family events. There were undercurrents of romance, but all very decent and subdued. There was much laughter and some heartaches. Lahore had a number of beautiful picnic spots: Shalimar Bagh and Jehangir’s tomb had vast gardens where people could sit under the shadow of tall trees all year round to have picnic with their families. Jallo Park about 20 km and Changa Manga forest with its wild life park, lake and jungle train about 70 km from the city were even more attractive spots for picnic. My favourite picnic place was Kamran’s Bara Dari ( a building with twelve gates), also a Mughal era monument, located on the banks of River Ravi. The river used to be in full bloom throughout the year with a pleasantly cool breeze blowing in the summer. We could hire boats for a ride in the river and then enjoy picnic in the gardens.

I had just joined college and started to build friendship with three of my cousins; the cousin mentioned above was studying at Islamia College. The second one had joined FC College, another reputable college in Lahore, while the third was still in his last year at school. We started spending most of our free time together and for the first time discovered the joys of freedom from the watchful eyes of our guardians. We started playing card games together and became hopelessly addicted to the game of Bridge, as only the newly addicted could.

One of my elder cousins was a geologist by profession. His work took him to the construction sites of big hydro-electric dams, some planned under the Indus Water Treaty. The geologists had the job of testing the terrain and soil of sites around the dams and were therefore an integral part of the construction process. In those days, he was working at the site of the Mangla Dam built on the River Jhelum about 20 km from the city of Jhelum and then the Khanpur Dam situated about 40 km from Islamabad. He used to invite us, me and my three cousins, to visit him and we stayed in the officers’ mess enjoying his hospitality.

It was an entirely different life for us altogether living among the bachelors. It was amazing to see how well trained the waiters and other staff serving them were, and everything seemed to operate like clockwork. We loved being served two half fried eggs for our breakfast every morning in addition to the bread, butter, jam, fruits, parathas and a lot of other delicacies which was the height of luxury for us. We would then go out to visit the site on jeeps and comeback tired for lunch and rest. In the evenings after dinner, we would watch them play card games including flash (a kind of poker) wagering bets for amounts which had our eyes popping out but were routine for them. Our cousin was an expert in his game usually winning, and recounted his gains to us gleefully the next morning. One of the players we noticed once looking especially haggard at the breakfast table and it turned out that having lost heavily the previous night he had shaved himself with tooth paste!  After a few days, having enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, we would come back to Lahore very excited and full of stories to narrate to our families.

Our Bridge addiction was getting worse by the day. We would play not only in our homes, we would continue playing even while visiting homes of our uncles or aunts. In the beginning this was viewed as nothing more than childlike exuberance. However, it soon reached disagreeable proportions. We would reach the home of an aunt, say hello and then immediately retire to a secluded room. The hosts’ welcome comments would be greeted with some mechanical responses leaving them in no doubt that we would rather get down to business as soon as possible. After staying there a few hours and having played a couple of rubbers, we would get up, take leave from our hosts and head back home. We would have probably much to learn from the book ‘How to win friends and influence people’ by Dale Carnegie.

The disagreeable part of our childlike exuberance seemed to grow with every passing day. Once we went to visit an uncle and played cards till late in the night. While the hosts were sleeping, we raided the fridge, found some mangoes and finished them off in a few minutes. However, instead of throwing the mangoe peels in the dustbin which would have made our raid known to the hosts which we wanted to avoid for some reason, we lobbed them off to the roof of the house one by one. The peels were duly discovered sometime later and the discovery, along with many other similar pranks, did not help to endear us with our family members.

A cousin returning once from East Pakistan brought two pineapples with him which were a kind of delicacy here. These were peeled and put in the fridge to be served after lunch. We raided the fridge to have a piece or two but ended up finishing off almost a whole pineapple, rearranging the remaining pieces. As soon as the meal finished, the fruit was brought to the table and my aunt removed the cover. We observed a surprised look on her face but all she could say was, “Oh my God! I shouldn’t have put the pineapples in the fridge. They seem to have shrunk.” We kept a straight face.

We had explored and then perfected the art of getting in the cricket stadium and other sporting events without paying for the ticket because we thought that only fools did that. The trick was to join and become part of the entourage of somebody important entering the stadium, because the security staff is usually too scared to question everybody accompanying the VIP. There were three essential requirements to do this successfully: one ought to have confidence, dress should be appropriate and, most important, one must be shame-proof. We even went in the stadium with President Ayub Khan’s party once and enjoyed the match. However, at another time, though we did manage to enter and sit comfortably on our seats, some security guy spotted us and motioned us to leave. We did so immediately while everybody was staring at us pitifully but that didn’t worry us in the least; in fact that became another daring adventure to recount to our friends.

One would have thought that indulging in such activities on a regular basis meant that we were unconcerned with what other people felt about us and couldn’t care less what they thought. Strangely, the opposite was the case. We were not only concerned, after sometime we became hyper-sensitive to their feelings about us. We had invented a term called ‘value’ meaning the regard placed by the family members about us, and constantly debated within ourselves whether it had increased or decreased during the day. It would increase after some good deed and decrease when, for example, some ugly remark did not go down too well with others. We were possibly experiencing some kind of  inferiority complex. The males older than us had good jobs, and though unmarried were what we used to call, ‘feeding their families’, and thus extremely popular with girls of their age and the family members generally. They were loved and respected. The boys younger than us, though not offering any competition, were also well liked. It was only us, the gang of four, we thought that was always singled out for contempt and derision.

Mind you, this was never so within our own families, possibly because they were never at the receiving end of our pranks anyway. My cousins were frequent visitors at our home where my mother would join us in our discussions. We were all reasonably attentive to our studies, did not suffer from any addiction, and did not give them any cause for concern. Even then, there was still the question of this stigma attached to our name in the family at large which bothered us greatly. Matters came to a head when one of our sisters in law, Hameeda Bhabhi, who used to live in Calcutta with her family, was visiting Lahore. When she saw us together, the first comment which came to her mind was something like, “suna hai tum log tu bahut burey nikal gai” [It seems you people have turned out to be real bad]. Though at the time, we dismissed her comment with a laugh, we were shaken. It meant that our reputation, whatever it was, had travelled globally. And it was so unfair we thought. Something snapped within us and we decided to hit back.

The hitting back took a novel form. We decided to stage a variety show, invite all family members to watch the show and then conclude the evening with light refreshments. What they didn’t know was that the skits we had prepared for the event were carefully scripted to include all kinds of insults thrown at the family members. The skits were no doubt funny and humorous but had enough barbs in them to make them feel uncomfortable. For example, most uncles and cousins were given hilarious names relative to their jobs or personality. Others were made fun of by mimicking their mannerisms or way of speaking. It was all quite mild and benign but it did its job; it created quite a bit of resentment and indignation across the board. It was talked about for days. One could say the event was 100% successful, both in attendance and in achieving its given objective.

However, it did have a positive effect on us. Having let off steam, we cooled down, became somewhat more mature and stopped being hyper-sensitive.

———

(7)

It was time for me to say farewell to the long school life and move to college, an entirely different style of life for any student. My matriculation examination results showed that, as expected, I had secured enough marks to get admission in Government College. The marks were below my expectations and somewhat disappointing but thankfully served the purpose. They had at least secured a government scholarship for me for the next two years. The top achievers as usual opted for medical and non-medical science faculties to become doctors or engineers where the cream of the country’s students always chose to go. I opted for humanities section according to plan with Mathematics, Economics and Statistics as my subjects.

Discussions about the choice of my career had been started by my parents during my senior years in school. I was naturally inclined for the science subjects, with Maths as my eternal love, but this was dismissed as of no consequence. What mattered was the material success in life. I am not sure who had suggested accounting as a possible career to my parents. It could be my father’s business contacts while my mother always believed it was the wise man of our family, Munna Bhai, but one thing led to another and it was finally decided what I would be: a Chartered Accountant. I had heard mention of this word occasionally in school as something like the ultimate in academic achievement but had no idea what it meant. However, being an obedient and dutiful son as always, I accepted the decision of my parents.

Year later, when I was studying in England, one of my colleagues, Ron Sheldon, told me once how he stumbled on to chartered accountancy. He said a career counsellor had been visiting them at their school and asked him if he had made any plans yet for his future career. “None,” replied Sheldon, at which the counsellor immediately said, “become a Chartered Accountant, then.” And that’s how, Ron had said, he had ended up there. In this country also, if you did not have sufficient marks to become a doctor or engineer, the best you could do was to obtain a degree in arts or commerce, and then try one’s luck at either civil service or accounting/business studies as an option of last resort.

Government College in those days was an institution in itself, built in neo-gothic architecture with pointed arches and ornate carvings. The entrance looked like one was going up to a castle with roads leading from two sides climbing steeply up to meet at a vast porch in front of the main building. In the center was a bell-tower with a huge watch. Between the two roads there was the Oval Ground with benches placed on the grass sloping down towards the ground. There was another beautiful garden called Loggia on one side of the building where one could sit in seclusion to study. On the other side of the building, there was a vast open-air theatre built in the Roman style. More than the concrete structures, the aura and history associated with the college made it a special place.

Surprisingly, for an institution known for its very high academic standards, the emphasis there was always on the extra-curricular activities, like drama, debating and sports. Those who excelled in these activities were put on roll of honour and, for sports, earned the college blazer. Annual sports competitions were held in the Oval ground and the annual cricket match between Government College and Islamia College had become a hotly contested tradition. Achievements in academic field largely went unnoticed as I was to find to my consternation later on.

Surprises awaited us when we started the classes. Our Economics professor was none other than Shoaib Hashmi, the famous playwright and TV actor. He had a dazzling personality, was a captivating speaker and a chain smoker. It was a small class, about a dozen students, and on the first day he offered each of us a cigarette from his pack of Three Castles – the most expensive brand in those days. More than half accepted the offer including me because we considered it improper to decline a professor’s offer though none of us had ever smoked before. His delivered his lectures peppered with his classical dry humour. He would have been an excellent teacher but unfortunately his varied interests, in particular his involvement with the Government College Dramatic Club, took him away from us after only a month and we were left without a teacher for the rest of the year. [While I was writing these lines, a news flash announced that he had passed away after a prolonged illness. May Allah grant him a place in Jannah].

Another kind of surprise awaited us in the Statistics class. After introductions, the respectable teacher advised us solemnly that if we wanted to receive a good education, Government College wasn’t the place for us; we should rather move to Islamia College or Dyal Singh College – two institutions not generally known as elite sources of learning in Lahore. Though surprised, none of us took his advice and chose to take our chances with whatever came our way; it didn’t turn out to be too bad in the end.

It was the Mathematics teachers, however, who fully justified Government College’s sterling reputation by their competence, dedication and firm grasp of the subject. Maths had always been my favourite but it reached the levels of adoration after I discovered Calculus. It became my passion, my hobby and my relaxation. I became even more convinced that my career should really commence with a doctorate in Mathematics but, as before, this was brushed away as being too dreamy and impractical. I acquiesced as before.

Our English teacher, Abdul Hameed Khayal, also taught us with due attention and care but everything changed suddenly when the English-medium students from Saint Anthony and Aitchison joined us after three months subsequent to the announcement of their exam results. Their command over English, confidence and polish overwhelmed us – the Urdu-medium students. As soon as the lecture started, they would start debating issues with Khayal Sahib in bullet speed English and most of the dialogue went over our heads. We might as well be a fly on the wall as far as the lecturer was concerned. For a few days I saw this drama going on and then finally decided to take matters in my own hands. The next day, I stood up as soon as the lecture started and started to mumble in my broken Urdu-medium English, “Sir . . . . I want to say something, Sir.” Khayal Sahib immediately turned to me, “Yes, yes . . . . please speak.” I then took the courage in my hands and continued, “I can’t understand anything you say, Sir.” By this time the English-medium boys had caught on to this exchange and started to shout derogatory comments telling me to sit down. But Khayal Sahib to his credit was now really interested in what I wanted to say and asked me again to explain myself. I said, “Sir . . . you are always talking to these people. We can’t understand a word of what you are saying because you are speaking so fast, Sir.” By now, there was a visible change in the way he looked at me, realizing for the first time that there were two types of students in his class. He promised that from now on he would talk slowly and involve us also in the discussions. This improved matters greatly. Whatever complexes we had about the Saint Anthony students were removed further when the results of the mid-term exams showed that in general there was hardly any difference in the marks secured by the two categories of students.

We had many colourful classmates also, such as Khalid Abbas Dar, the famous comedian, who was two years senior but had joined us after failing his exams twice. He was a well- known character even then and continued to amuse us with his pranks. He made us laugh uncontrollably when he pretended to talk to our Urdu professor posing as a silly, dumb character with his tongue hanging out of his mouth leaving the teacher speechless.

But the most colourful, and even legendary character of all, was our principal, the famous Professor Dr Nazir Ahmed. Books can be written about his iconic personality, and he made a very deep impression on me too. He was a person of medium height and of slight build with long black hair falling down to his shoulders. What he lacked in his body, he more than made up by his resounding voice and towering personality. He used to live in the principal’s house built next to the college and could often be seen in the evening strolling around the college with his dogs, with a pipe in his mouth.

During the day, he moved around the college talking freely to the students. His favourite expression when talking to us was ‘beta’ meaning son and he meant it. I had a first- hand experience of his power over the students a year later when they started agitating over some local issue in the college. All of us assembled in the open-air theatre, close to a thousand people sitting shoulder to shoulder. Tempers were running high and the air was resounding with loud slogans against the management. In walked the principal standing calmly at the lectern down below. The crowd hardly noticed him continuing to raise slogans. Dr Sahib looked down, raised his head and said ‘beta’ once, which went unnoticed. He said ‘beta’ again and the noise went perceptibly down. He said ‘beta’ the third time and there was a pin-drop silence around the theatre by then. He talked for about five minutes asking us to calm down and resolve the matter by discussion rather than agitation. He left after this and soon all the students dispersed as well.

I once had a personal experience of his kindness too. I had gone to the head clerk’s office, which was adjacent to the principal’s office, to ask for something. The head clerk told me that my verbal request won’t do and I would have to write an application. I then asked him for a piece of paper, to which the clerk replied in his usual imperial style that papers in his office were not meant for my personal use. While all this was going on, the principal walked in from his office next door and asked us what the fuss was about. I told him that I wanted to write an application and wanted a piece of paper to do this. Dr Sahib responded to this by picking up a thick sheaf of papers from the clerk’s desk handing them over to me, and said, “All right beta, now go and write your application.” I can never forget the bewildered expression on the clerk’s face when I was leaving the room.

He proved his popularity again in 1966 when the then governor West Pakistan, Nawab of Kalabagh, intoxicated in his power ordered his transfer to another college. This was the college’s centenary year and he was removed apparently to shift the limelight away from him during this important year. The college students revolted, marching from the college to the Governor House holding banners saying, “Don’t snatch our father.” Dr Sahib was reinstated within a few days.

After his retirement, he could be seen cycling slowly down the Mall. Some student of his would greet him; he would get down from his bicycle, say salaam, get back on it and proceed with his journey. A few hundred meters down the road, another person would greet him, he would dismount and the whole process would start again. I am a personal witness to this spectacle and have often wondered how many people in this world could possibly match his kindness, humility and decency.

———-

A few months or so into the college convinced me that I would have to do something about my English reading and writing ability. In my school, all subjects – even physics, chemistry and maths – were taught in Urdu. There was now a sudden change to English and we, the Urdu-medium students, were totally unprepared for this.

I was not unfamiliar with Urdu literature. From my childhood, I had been reading books and magazines of various types, starting from kids magazines such as Khilona, Delhi or Taleem-o-Tarbiat. Khilona was the most popular children’s magazine in those days read all over Pakistan and India containing long running popular serials like Krishan Chandra’s Ulta Darakht and comics like Mian Nastoor. Later on, I started reading literary magazines like Naqoosh Lahore subscribed by my mother. It used to be a voluminous tome containing hundreds and sometimes thousands of pages. Urdu short stories written in those days could compare honourably with any written in the west.

Around the same time, I got hooked on the ‘Ibn e Safi’ novels. These books – a blend of crime thrillers and light comedy – had achieved a massive popularity in those days among teenagers and others much like Archie comics in the West. I was visiting Izhar bhai in Mughalpura once when he casually handed me a book called ‘Qatil Sangrezay’ [Deadly Pebbles) to read which I did after coming back home, not knowing that I would end up reading more than a hundred of such books over the next couple of years. The main characters of these novels like Col Fareedi, Captain Hameed and Imran had assumed a life of their own and had become household names. In a way, this was made possible for me by Hibbi bhai starting a ‘one anna’ library at his bookshop where one could borrow books from his massive collection paying one anna per day. I was surprised to learn some years later that my sisters and brother Naveed had also followed my footsteps finishing even more Ibn e Safi books than I had.

I had been told that the best way to improve English was to start reading English novels which in the beginning appeared tough but I soon got the hang of it. The first English novel I read was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte which of course I could not help but liking very much. It was followed by Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, another all-time classic and still one of the best stories I have read. Other favourites in those days were The Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

Most often I buy the books that I read from shops selling old books and mainly paperbacks because it is easier to read them reclining on the bed or sofa which is my favourite pose while reading. Second hand bookshops hold a strange fascination for me, with the stale smell of old books all around you matching nothing else in this world. If I was the owner of a perfume factory, I would order a scent to be made with the fragrance of old books and wear it all the time. Bookshops selling new books can never match the breadth and variety of the titles available in second hand bookshops and the gems one could often find there, including the ones long out of print, would be unthinkable in the former. In Lahore, my favourite haunt for old books used to be New Anarkali, just outside the Bible House, where there were several vendors selling thousands of old books. It wasn’t really a bookshop, rather an extended open-air book stall. This had become an institution in itself and I had seen many known literary figures browsing through the stalls at one time or another.

It was from one of these shops that I picked up a copy of Anna Karenina. The book appeared to be daunting at first, with close to a thousand pages, but I had wanted to read one of Tolstoy’s books for a long time and decided to try my luck on this one. Anybody who has read this book would know that it is hard going at first. The very first sentence is an engaging one, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” a sweeping statement which is as true today as it was nearly one hundred and fifty years ago when it was first written. But then the pace becomes rather slow; the heroine Anna notices the hero Vronsky for the first time on page 60, they have their first, very brief, exchange nearly fifty pages later. But the remarkable thing about such novels is that by the time you get to something like 300 pages, you have become part of the novel; you eat, drink and move as one of characters in the novel and can feel their emotions as deeply as they do. After a few days, I was coasting along with Anna and Vronsky in the 1870’s Russia as happy as I could be, with no worry in the world, when suddenly, without any warning, Anna commits suicide. And this she does in a most horrible manner; by putting her neck between the front and back wheels of a moving railway carriage!

The suddenness of the event coupled with the manner of its happening, left me shattered. In the typical Tolstoy style, there is no further mention of her death until two  strangers are shown having a general chit chat on a railway platform nearly a week after when one of them casually asks the other, “Do you know Count Vronsky is also going by this train?” This nonchalant attitude about such a tragic event compounded my misery further. I felt as if I had lost somebody very close feeling utterly helpless. I lost my appetite and spent the next two days without eating or even bothering to change my clothes. My mother then started getting concerned and I received some counselling. This had the effect of slowly bringing me back to reality. I still consider Anna Karenina to be the best novel I have ever read; better than ‘War and Peace’ by the same author, which I read about five years later and also one of the best ever novels in my reckoning.

Reading such books met their objective. One can always read history or biography later in life but if one wants to improve one’s English proficiency, there is no better start than an English novel.

——–

Two years in the Government College passed quickly and we took the Intermediate exam in summer. Result was announced a couple of months later but to my surprise there were some students against whose roll numbers the result showed ML meaning marks later-on, and I was unfortunately one of them. This was the time for applying to the universities and I had planned to apply to the Punjab University for a three years bachelors course in commerce. However, nothing could be done in the absence of a result and I started to get worried after weeks passed without any news. I decided to visit the Board of Secondary Education, the examining authority, to find out what the problem was.

We, me and my friend Razzaq, located the official dealing with the Intermediate results and asked him why the result was delayed and when could we expect to receive the marks. He yawned and said he didn’t know. Further dialogue went something like this:

Me: But, without the results I won’t be able to get admission in the university.

Official: I suppose you won’t be able to get admission in university.

Me: But, then I would lose a year.

Official: I suppose you would lose a year.

Me: But, this will destroy my career.

Official: I suppose it will destroy your career.

Concluding this highly encouraging and fruitful exchange of information, we begged our leave and came out of the room. As we were walking down the lane, I must be looking much distressed because a man suddenly came in front of me, mumbled something I didn’t catch, smiled and then asked if there was anything he could do to help me. He was a tallish, good looking man in his thirties but it was his dress which did not inspire much confidence in me. He was wearing a white kurta and dhoti with a white turban on his head, a typical villager’s garb. I tried to brush him aside and move forward. But he persisted and said again that something appeared to be bothering me and could he help. I looked at Razzaq, who was also nonplussed, but then blurted out that my marks were announced as later-on and I had no idea what to do.

Strangely, he told us to follow him and darted forward. We looked at each other and  finding nothing better to do, decided to go after him. He moved confidently to the exam results section, called secrecy branch, which had a steel barrier guarded by a tough khan. He greeted the khan and passed through the barrier as if he knew him well, with us following him. We entered a long hall which had a dozen tables set in a U shape with big registers lying in front of the clerks sitting there. Our guide paused, asked my roll number, looked around and then headed straight to a table. Before we could say anything, he had opened the register, ran his finger down a column and told me that I had secured 344 marks. Not believing him, I pushed forward to look at the register myself and, sure enough, it showed 344 marks against my roll number. Our guide then thanked the clerk who had watched these proceedings in the manner of a detached observer, and then started to move back towards the door. Stunned beyond belief, we followed him out of the door. As we were walking towards the exit, I suddenly stopped after a few seconds and asked Razzaq who this person was and that we must at least thank him. We looked back but by that time the man had disappeared somewhere.

To this day, I am not sure what kind of a person this man really was. If you can believe that a man dressed like a character in a Punjabi film can walk through the secrecy branch gate, know which register contained my results, open it and then locate the result, all this time the clerk  watching us like a zombie; was a real person, you can believe anything. Whoever or whatever he was, somehow I have always been blessed with people who have come to my help when I needed them most.

———-

(8)

There are some events about which everyone remembers exactly where one was when he or she was first told about that event, like the death of President Kennedy. For most Pakistanis sixty five years or older, the moment when one heard the news that Indian armed forced had launched an attack on Pakistan, was one such event. The day was 6 September 1965.

As a coincidence, I had stayed at the home of my mamoon located at the outer fringes of Gulberg III the previous night. Geographically, this must be the closest colony in Lahore to the border with India and, as the morning broke, we could hear the distant sound of guns firing artillery shells very clearly. We immediately put the radio on and heard the news about the Indian attack. We had known about the war going on in the disputed Kashmir region, and newspapers were announcing the rapid advances our forces were making at the front, but the news about the attack on Pakistan territory was totally unexpected.

Soon the news spread throughout the city like wild fire and people, like the true Lahori they were, became extremely excited, rather thrilled. This was evident when Indian jet fighters zoomed across our skies the next day and air raid sirens sounded. Instead of going down the trenches, the people rushed to their house tops to watch the planes. They were not disappointed as they watched the Pakistani F-86 Sabre fighter jets chasing down the Indian Hawker Hunter fighters away from our skies. In a famous dog fight on 7 September, our ace air force pilot M.M. Alam made history by shooting down five Indian planes in less than a minute.

Gradually, the reality of war started to sink in and people became more conscious of the risks involved. Our mamoon’s family moved from their Gulberg III house, which was too close to the border and could come within range of the shelling, to our home. There was a total blackout during night and we had shuttered all windows of the house. The voluntary air defence wardens would check each house to make sure that no light was visible anywhere. We heard about some people playing cards in a jeep near Jhelum in the dim light of a lighter, and though the windows were shuttered, the light was enough for a direct hit from an Indian plane destroying the jeep. Some of these stories may be true while others may have been spread around to make people aware of the need to take precautions.

During the night, when the air raid siren sounded, every member of our two families would have to get up from deep sleep and hunker down to a store room which was surrounded by other rooms and considered relatively more secure. We would remain there sitting on the floor groggy with sleep for a few minutes until the siren sounded again to announce all clear. After a few nights of this routine, I announced that I would prefer to be bombed rather than woken up from sleep and should not be disturbed, my cousin joined me in these sentiments and she and I spent the rest of the war sleeping peacefully through the sirens.

Our poets, singers and music composers rose heroically to the occasion. The poets  wrote heart-warming uplifting songs, music was quickly composed, singers sang them in their melodious voices and the radio sound waves were brimming with all kind of patriotic songs within a couple of days. Songs written by Jamiluddin Aali or those sung by Noor Jehan for the 1965 war sound as fresh today as they were in those early days. Nationalistic fervor was at its peak, never seen again.

The only activity possible in the evening during the blackout was to sit in the lawn under the starlight, and listen to the radio. The nine o clock news were much awaited giving latest news about the progress on the war front. When the newscaster announced the hits made by our fighter bombers on major strategic locations in India or the places captured by our army jawans, people cheered. One newscaster in particular, Shakeel Ahmed, had become a hero in those days due to the very bold and ringing tones in which he delivered the news, especially the exploits of our airmen. Earlier at 8:00 pm we would also tune in to the BBC for their version of the news although it had lost its credibility when it announced on the very first day of the war that Lahore had been captured by the Indian forces!

The war came to an end after seventeen days when, as a result of diplomatic efforts at the United Nations Security Council, India and Pakistan agreed to cease fire on 23 September 1965. The general mood among the population was a sullen resignation because, while the Indian attack on the territory of Pakistan had been successfully repulsed, Pakistan had also not been able to capture any worthwhile targets in Kashmir. The general dissatisfaction with the outcome of the war burnt like a slow fuse until foreign minister Z.A. Bhutto was able to exploit it and turn it into a public agitation for his own political gains a few years later.

———–

(9)

My aggregate marks for the Intermediate exam were sufficient to get me admission to Hailey College of Commerce, Punjab University, comfortably. If fact, I had the highest marks among students getting admission that year and, as the roll numbers were assigned in the descending order of the Intermediate exam marks, I was allotted roll number 2, roll number 1 having been reserved for the sole female student in our class. I also secured the National Talent Scholarship which was awarded to the top ten students of Punjab (later split into eight divisional boards) in each of the three faculties – medical, non-medical and humanities –  receiving it every month for the next two years.

Hailey College was a different experience from Government College altogether. For the first time in my life, being a nerd started to pay dividends because having the top roll number made me known to the whole class. Other students frequently consulted me for guidance in studies which I was only too happy to provide, basking in the new found glory. Only two students from Government College had joined me in Hailey College, Razzaq and Abdullah Yusuf – later Chairman, Federal Board of Revenue – who then became life-long friends. My cousin Sabihul Hasan, part of our gang of four, having done his Intermediate from FC College also joined Hailey College and became a constant companion both in college and at home. The college principal in those days was Akhtar Alam Hashmi who unfortunately passed away in March 1966 replaced by M. Murtaza Khan with Anis Ahmad Siddiqui as the Vice Principal.

The medium of instruction in the college was obviously English but some students joining the college were expected to have done their Intermediate in Urdu-medium. Our admission interviews were conducted in English but one of the professors, teaching Economics, suddenly decided that he better ask some questions in Urdu also. There is a well-known term called ‘Utility’ in Economics translated as ‘Afaada’ in Urdu. He promptly shot a question at the next candidate, “What is Afaada?”. “Sir,” back came the prompt reply, “my father is a businessman.”

One of my subjects in Part I was Commercial Geography and the textbook prescribed for the subject was written by the famous British author Dudley Stamp. Going through the book I noticed some glaring errors revealing the author’s casual attitude towards Pakistan. I checked with our professor who confirmed the mistakes but taking it casually remarked that these kind of things were quite common in foreign books. I, on the other hand, could not share his views as I considered it an insult to our country when its biggest and most important city was shown in a map as part of another country. I decided to write a letter to Sir Dudley pointing out at least four mistakes that I was able to detect giving chapter and page references.

Firstly, in describing the countries affected by tropical monsoon climate, he omitted Pakistan from that list; secondly, Lahore was mentioned as representing Punjab “which is North West India”; thirdly, India was supposed to be exporting wheat ‘through Karachi”; and fourthly, rice was mentioned as being the staple food grain of many Asian countries, again omitting East Pakistan from that list. Having typed it myself, I posted it to him at his publisher’s address though with little hope of ever hearing from him. Reading my four page letter to him again, I cringe at my verbosity and overplay of patriotism.

I was pleasantly surprised when a foreign looking aerogram soon landed in my mailbox. The letter should better be quoted in full to enjoy its flavor (punctuation as in original).

“From Sir Dudley Stamp, C.B.E., Ebbingford Manor, Bude, Cornwall,

March 16^th 1965

Dear Mr. Haider,

Thank you very much for your long and helpful letter. I am always very grateful to the users of my books who take the trouble, as you have done, to draw my attention to points which require correction. This book, of course, was first published in 1928 and there had been ten additions before the partition of 1947. Although the book was then re-written in order to separate quite clearly India and Pakistan, it does happen that words and phrases from the old edition get left in and in several of the instances you have noticed this is, of course, the case. Now thanks to your co-operation I shall certainly make the necessary corrections in the next printing and I shall always be glad to hear from you any further points which you notice.

Yours sincerely

(signed Dudley Stamp)”

I was over the moon and showed the letter to my professors and the principal who were all somewhat surprized but happy to see it and congratulated me on my initiative.

This is the thing about British culture I discovered later; they always respond to the letters sent to them even if it is only an acknowledgement or regret. They regard it as the minimum level of courtesy and never deviate from it. When I was in England later and posted close to 175 applications for interview, only about fifteen responded positively but each one of them responded to me even if it was only to convey a regret. Even the government departments, like the Passports & Immigration, never fail to send a response though it may not be always to your liking.

I was able to maintain my top position in Part I and again in Part II when my marks turned out to be the highest ever in the college’s history, breaking the record set some 28 years ago by a Hindu student. About ten years later, I was attending a seminar arranged by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Lahore when a young looking man approached me asking me if my name was Saeed Haider. When, I replied in the affirmative, he asked me if I had established a record of highest marks in B.Com Part II. Surprised by this question, I said yes, I suppose I had. He then told me shyly that he had managed to break my record only two years later. I told him jokingly that I wanted to break his leg but then congratulated him saying that I felt happy for him. This man was Ishaq Dar, later the Finance Minister of Pakistan.

_______

A large part of the credit for my results of Part I and II belonged to Razzaq and Sabihul Hasan.  As soon as the Part I session had started, Razzaq had proposed that we start studying together and make notes from our study books. I had never done this before but liked this idea as it helped to reduce the monotony and maintain a steady pace. My cousin Sabihul joined us soon and all three of us would study together on most week days for an hour or so.

Sabihul had of course been a permanent presence in my life in the last two years as well, going through all the joys and pains together. He had been at FC College in those days and because of his sincerity, pleasant nature and sense of humour, was the kind of person who could make instant friendships. He became quite close to the famous writer and critic Dr Agha Sohail, his Urdu professor, and was a frequent visitor to his house located within the college compound. The son of famous music director Rasheed Attre, Wajahat Attre, who later became a music director himself, was also his college friend.

Sabihul could enliven any gathering instantly. He had a vast repertoire of jokes and anecdotes that he could fetch from memory and recount when required. At the same time he was very serious about his studies because being the eldest son of the family he understood his responsibilities well. We used to make plans for the future and then dismiss them as being too farfetched.

In the summer months we would often go down to the Lahore canal which was not far from his house to beat the heat and have a swim in its remarkably cool waters. The water used to be about waist high flowing calmly and, though none of us could swim, it was quite safe to go there in the company of hundreds of other people also bathing there. We made a plan to go their one evening as it was quite hot and sticky outside and the cool waters of the canal appeared tempting. There were four of us, three cousins plus a neighbour of Sabihul, an old friend, slightly lame but an expert swimmer. The canal was unusually full on that day but feeling assured by the neighbour’s presence among us we slowly climbed down into the water. As was our usual practice, we remained close to the bank, floating in the water and enjoying its coolness.

After about half an hour like this, the neighbour felt a burst of energy wanting to have some fun and leapt towards me to grab me and take me down to deeper waters. He had done this many times before when he would jokingly try to push our heads down the water to choke us. I immediately sensed his intention and hurriedly moving towards the ground, took hold of some weeds for support and climbed up. The neighbour looked around for the next prey, saw Sabihul, grabbed him by the neck and started to push him towards deeper water. Sabihul started to resist but being in the water could not do much. The neighbour took Sabihul a few feet inside but then pushed by the rapid flow of water, quickly lost his balance and started to gulp water. This seemed to unnerve him totally and, fearing for his life, he left Sabihul and started to swim back towards the shore. The current in the meantime took Sabihul almost to the middle of the canal. We saw him bobbing up and down a few times and then disappear in the water.

It was turning dark by this time. I and my cousin started calling Sabihul at the top of our voices running alongside the canal. The neighbour having taken a lot of water inside him was lying flat on the ground breathing heavily and of no use to us. Some passers-by stopped to enquire what had happened but couldn’t offer any help. After about half an hour like this, we cycled back to Sabihul’s home and broke the news to his family. Sabihul’s body was found on the third day only about half a mile away from where he had drowned.

I felt three kinds of emotions in those days, quickly following one after another; The first was shock, my senses refusing to believe what had happened. All of us kept hoping that somehow or the other Sabihul would have been able to save himself and could be alive, until the body was found dashing all such hopes. The shock then slowly gave way to grief – but this was short-lived. Slowly, another emotion started to creep up on the second one, it moved like a silent mist around it, and then totally engulfed it. This was guilt. From that day onward, I have hardly ever felt grief, only guilt.

It started with me asking myself the usual questions, why did I do this or why didn’t I do that. That was the easier part of it. I then started to look at Sabihul’s mother, his father, his sisters, his little brothers. The guilt started to grow as I could not reconcile myself with the enormity of the tragedy that had hit them. And then the reality started to sink in, we were responsible not only for what had happened but also that it had been done purposefully. I could very well understand such emotions which were natural in the circumstances. My parents were also aware of such talk but had taken it coolly as well.

The more difficult part of it was to face the accusing eyes present everywhere, the silent stares, the unspoken words. It would have been so much better, I thought, if I had been taken to the town square as in the old days and given a hundred lashes. All settled and done, one could re-join the society having paid his debts. But that would have been too easy. The modern world was much more demanding; it preferred the Chinese punishment of death by a thousand cuts.

________

The senior year of B.Com proved very hectic from social and political point of view. Abdullah Yusuf decided to contest the elections of Hailey College Students Union for the post of General Secretary. The Union used to be very active in those days holding debating contests, musical evenings and sports functions every year. Shaikh Ilyas, my Central Model School colleague was contesting election for the post of President. His chief supporter was a student called Jehangir Bader, who achieved fame in later years as President, Law College Union and then as a leader of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party and senator. We decided to form a joint panel after tough negotiations for allocation of Union posts. Eventually our panel won the elections by a wide margin and I was appointed as head of the editorial panel of the College Gazette. I had already written articles and short stories regularly for the College magazine and was not unfamiliar with this kind of work. This was a job close to my heart, I enjoyed reporting and editing, and it kept me busy for most of the year.

“From sport to sport they hurry me,

to banish my regret.

And when they win a smile from me,

they think that I forget.”

Mr marks in Part III fell much short of expectations, one of the lowest ever. But fortunately combined with the marks of the first two parts, I managed to maintain my top position in aggregate – by a slim margin. My friend Abdullah Yusuf attained the second position. I was awarded the roll of honour and received two merit gold medals – Sir Ganga Ram Gold Medal and Sohan Lal Gold Medal.

Some years later when we were in England, our circle of friends included Iftikhar Husain, a calm and soft-spoken fellow, who had been our class fellow in B.Com. I and Razzaq had arranged a small lunch party at our flat for our friends including him and Abdullah and were having some chit-chat when he casually mentioned that it was he who had checked and marked our Part III Auditing and Income Tax Law papers. We were flabbergasted, and incensed. We knew that he had been close to our B.Com professor for these two subjects, who by the way later wrote many books and became head of another faculty in Punjab University, but could not imagine in a million years that this relationship would extend to paper checking, especially because Iftikhar had always been quite a mediocre student.

.

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(10)

I was looking forward to enjoying summer vacations after a very busy academic year but this was not to be as we were required to do a four-months internship for the bachelor’s degree. I decided to do this at A.F. Ferguson & Co., Chartered Accountants, as this was the usual route for applying to the same firm later for articles of apprenticeship to qualify as a chartered accountant. Fergusons, part of Price Waterhouse group, was the oldest and most reputable firm of chartered accountants in Pakistan. Three of my class fellows also joined the firm at the same time, including Abdullah and Razzaq and we had good company there. Their offices were situated in those days on the top floor of an old building on the Mall near Beadon Road intersection.

Life at Fergusons was as different from the college as anything could be. It was a strictly regimented life and as an internee I had joined right at the bottom of the ladder. The unqualified staff was classified into juniors who had just started their training period, semi-seniors and seniors. Qualified chartered accountants were called managers and, at the top of the pile, was the partner in charge of Lahore office, Mr Hassan Shoaib, who ruled the office with an iron hand. Managers had to wear suits all the year round and, if working in shirtsleeves, had to hastily put their jackets on when summoned by him even in summer. There were three managers when I joined the office, Jafri, Safdar and Khalid Hussain, later joined by Mohammad Arif, who happened to be Razzaq’s distant relative. With the exception of Khalid Hussain all were foreign qualified.

This was the era before calculators and the junior’s job was confined mainly to casting, that is, to check the additions of the amounts listed in big accounting ledgers. This could go on for days. The other job was calling-over, meaning reading out a draft to another person holding the typed letter to check its accuracy; any error left undetected could mean hell for you. After about a year or so of this drudgery, one could hope to progress to becoming a semi-senior when you became the proud owner of a stamp bearing your initials to put on the receipts and vouchers being checked, and then a senior after some more time.

All the staff held Mr. Shoaib in great awe and talked about him in hushed tones. He always used green ink in his pens and during calling-over we could see draft letters written by managers heavily and rudely edited by Mr. Shoaib in his trade mark green ink. We were told that Mr. Shoaib went every weekend to Karachi by plane to spend time at the race club there which was his hobby. This bit of information served to enhance his status further in our eyes and I started to think that perhaps my parents’ decision to make me a chartered accountant was correct after all.

I was sent to the offices of Associated Cement Limited situated at bank square. It was a Karachi office audit and the senior, Mr Roshan, had arrived from Karachi to supervise the assignment. He happened, I found, to be a strict disciplinarian firmly believing in the sanctity of hierarchy. As soon as I arrived, I was told to cast a huge ledger which was so big I had to move it down towards me sinking deep in my chair. Mr Roshan finding me in this pose became angry, shouting, “Where do you think you are sitting, your drawing room? Sit straight.” I immediately said, “yes sir” and sat up. At another time, I had to ask him something about the work assigned to me but instead was severely reprimanded. “Never speak to me directly,” he ordered. “Always speak to me through a semi-senior,” meaning that I should always put my questions to a semi-senior who would, if considered appropriate, ask the senior. Mind you, he was only a senior, not a manager, but still commanded full authority. Later on, however, he became much more friendly and I used to take him sometimes to visit his relations in Chauburji sitting on my bicycle. This audit would always remind me of a tragedy; its partner in charge was flying to Rawalpindi when his plane met with an accident and he died along with other passengers. Who said that an accountant’s life was risk-free?

The auditors’ respect and awe in those days was at another level altogether. We had gone for the Glaxo company’s audit once and, coming back in the evening, joined a long queue for boarding the company bus. The conductor saw us standing in the queue and shouted –  “auditors”. The queue parted instantly and we marched proudly to the bus, after which the queue formed again.

My internship was coming to an end and I was becoming anxious to negotiate a three years training contract – articles of apprenticeship – with them. I decided to see our manager Khalid Hussain because I found him to be a cultured and humane person. I started by telling him that I knew that potential candidates would pull all kind of strings to get a place in a reputable firm like Fergusons. I, on the other hand, I told him unfortunately did not have any such contacts and was on my own, asking if I stood any chance. He looked at me and I still remember the exact words of what he said, “You don’t have to worry, Saeed. As long as I am a manager here, I guarantee that you would get articles with Fergusons.” He kept his word and I received a letter on 13 November 1967 signed by Mr Shoaib confirming the offer of articles. I often wonder why he had said this and why did he use the word ‘guarantee’. He could have said something banal like I would get the job if I deserved, etc. but he didn’t. I would remember his kindness and compassion as long as I live.

During winter, I spent most of my time at Packages, an elite company owned by the Babar Ali group manufacturing various kinds of packaging materials. Its modern offices fronted a big garden famous for its annual rose festival held in spring. Due to the tight audit deadline, we had to sit late in the evenings and the dinner was provided by the company served in its vast dining room. It was a luxurious affair; a whole chicken roast per person served with kebabs, vegetables and salads. The company transport used to drop me off at Mozang Chungi every night around ten from where I had to march down to my home about four km away. It used to be bitterly cold in those days and with my hands deep in the pockets of my overcoat I could feel warmth seeping into my veins only after twenty minutes brisk walk. It did my health a lot of good.

We also used to audit the Lahore offices of American film studios, nearly all of whom had their branches here due to the very large number of Hollywood films being exhibited in Pakistan in those days. I remember visiting the offices of Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Studios looking at the prints of many old films stored there. This had reminded me of the film Cleopatra produced by Twentieth Century Fox starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison. We had watched this film at the huge Todd AO equipped screen of the then newly inaugurated Bambino Cinema in Karachi a few years ago. I had immediately fallen in love with the mesmerizing beauty of violet-eyed Elizabeth Taylor and had sent her a poem written by me which ran something like this:

O my dear Elizabeth Taylor

I love you like the sea is loved by a sailor

You are the queen of my heart

Your love has made me weaker and paler.

Among your slaves there are men of all sorts

You are the beloved of so many hearts

That I feel myself very lonely

When I think you are not for me only.

Unlike Sir Dudley Stamp, Elizabeth for some reason did not care to respond to me.

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(11)

The September 1965 Indo-Pakistan war fought for the beautiful valley of Kashmir had actually started five months before and a thousand miles away in a barren desert area called Rann of Kutch.

Rann is a large area of salt marshes in Kutch district of Sindh that spans the border between India and Pakistan. Its ownership had been disputed between the two countries since British days but was currently under a standstill agreement. India had received a serious drubbing from China during the 1962 war and its government was under some pressure to rehabilitate the morale of the army and restore its prestige. It was decided that a small scale conflict with Pakistan in a remote and desolate area might do the trick.

Indian forces started to edge forward in March 1965 and occupied some Pakistani territory despite our protests. Counter attack was launched on 26 April and the captured area was recovered. However, our forces were then ordered by the high command not to capture a causeway which allowed the Indian forces to make a safe retreat through this only exit. According to General Gul Hassan Khan in his memoirs, “Thus a godsend opportunity to humiliate India was lost which may have contributed to them opposing us confidently in Kashmir later. As a saying goes: in a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.”

The Kutch skirmish had the effect of prompting Pakistan to begin actions to defreeze the long stalemate in Kashmir because seventeen years of diplomatic efforts both at United Nations and with other countries had failed to produce any results. This thinking was further influenced by the belief firmly held by the foreign minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and consequently by President Ayub Khan and the political leadership – fortunately not shared by the military – that regardless of the hostilities in Kashmir, India would never breech the sanctity of international borders. The strategy involved as a first step launching guerrillas in the disputed area of Indian-held Kashmir to disrupt conditions and to help locals to rise against the Indian Army of occupation. It was named Gibraltar. Another operation complimenting it was called Grandslam, its aim being the capture of Akhnur in Occupied Kashmir severing the only road link between India and Kashmir. Though it was a well-planned strategy, later events proved that intoxicated by the victory in Kutch, the army rushed into Gibraltar and Grandslam before time and without enough preparations. Pyrrhus, the King of Epirus, after defeating the Romans in the battle of Asculum in 279 BC had said, “Another such victory and we are lost.” His words proved prophetic for us.

Guerrilla operations by their nature depend upon help from locals for logistics, communications and intelligence and this requires setting up a web of close contacts with them well before start of operations. This was not done: leaders in Azad Kashmir had been kept totally in the dark supposedly for reasons of security while it had simply been hoped that political leaders in the occupied zone would rise to the occasion when the time came. Despite their goodwill towards Pakistan, this lack of coordination cost our forces heavily. Similarly, Grandslam was launched without ensuring reinforcements which created a huge imbalance compared to the Indian forces present there.

Launch of Gibraltar in August caught India totally by surprise. However, they recovered after some initial setbacks and began attacks all along the cease-fire line with the aim of sealing off the bases of guerrillas in Azad Kashmir. They intended to capture Muzaffarabad, its capital, and link Uri with Poonch. This had been foreseen and operation Grandslam had been planned for this very purpose. However, instead of starting this part of campaign automatically according to plan, the high command procrastinated for a week and it was not launched until the night of 31 August. And then the bombshell dropped the next day. The operation commander, Lt. General Akhtar Hussain Malik was replaced by Lt. General Yahya Khan just a day after the start of operation. The purpose behind this change has never been fully explained. The combined effect of these two decisions was the failure of our advance on Akhnur when, in the meantime, India decided to attack across the international border.

Reports of Indian troops advancing towards our border had started arriving on 4 September, opposite Lahore, Sialkot and Kasur sectors. It was obvious that Indians were reacting to our offensive towards Akhnur. A signal was sent to all formations the same evening warning troops to exercise greater vigilance and move into defensive positions on the night of 5 and 6 September. The only formation which failed to comply with this directive was the 10 Division at Lahore; first reports of Indian attack at the Lahore front on 6 September were sent by observers of Pakistan Air Force, who thankfully had their eyes watching the ground as well as the skies.

It was the same Division that was the first to feel the full brunt of the Indian attack. The enemy forces crossed the border and began marching towards Lahore. Our advanced positions ahead of the BRB canal fought valiantly, gaining valuable time for the rest of the Division to retreat and occupy the defences along the BRB canal. It remained there for the rest of the war repulsing all attempts by the Indians to cross the canal. The BRB canal proved to be as potent a barrier for Indians as the English Channel had been for the Germans in the 2^nd World War.

The second front opened by India was Sialkot attacking Jassar bridge, defended by our 15 Division. Pakistan happened to have a small enclave on the Indian side of the River Ravi whereas they had one on our bank. On the night of 6/7 September, both sides attacked each other’s enclaves and occupied them. Here was staged a classic battle of the tanks over the next few days with the Indian First Armoured Division facing our 6 Armoured Division. Indian armour was treading with caution as it hesitated to bypass Chawinda which they attacked ceaselessly. Had this town fallen, the enemy would have had the means to reach the main Lahore-Rawalpindi Road presenting horrendous consequences. The courage, resolve and bravery shown by the Chawinda defenders on these days will always be remembered with golden letters.

The third front was Kasur, defended by 11 Division which was already occupying defensive positions when Indians attacked it on 6 September. The attack was halted and then on 8 September, advancing in enemy territory, our forces captured Khem Karan.

Further down south, Sulaimanki head-works were being defended by 105 Brigade. It took the offensive, attacking enemy positions opposite the head-works and forced it to retreat, securing the head-works. In Lower Sindh, 51 Brigade repulsed an Indian attack, took the war into enemy territory, and captured Monabao railway station.

In terms of aerial warfare, the Pakistan Air Force managed an upper hand over the combat zones despite being numerically inferior. Indian forces attacking Sialkot had done so under cover of a heavy contingent of their planes which could have proved fatal were it not for the PAF planes clearing them off quickly. PAF lost some 20 aircraft in the war while the Indians lost 60–75. When hostilities broke out, the Pakistan Air Force with around 100 F-86s faced an enemy with five times as many combat aircraft; the Indians were also equipped with comparatively modern aircraft inventory. Despite this, the PAF had the advantage of pilots with long flight hours experience and did much better in the conflict. The Pakistan Navy too, though ill equipped, took the Indian port of Dwarka and gave a good account of itself overall.

Counter-offensives launched by both combatants met with resistance; the war was soon heading for a stalemate with both countries holding territory of the other. After a hectic diplomatic activity at the United Nations Security Council, a cease fire was agreed by both countries on 23 September 1965. According to Kazimi, “1965 war is one of the most curious wars in history. Initially, both sides claimed victory, subsequently both sides admitted defeat.” Gul Hassan summed it up: “Pakistan had taken the initiative in Kashmir but failed to exploit it; India had a huge superiority in manpower and equipment but was unable to use it to its advantage.”

India and Pakistan were both invited for talks by USSR which were held in the city of Tashkent in Uzbekistan on 4-10 January 1966. Pakistani delegation was led by President Ayub Khan, Indian delegation by prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and USSR delegation by prime minister Alexei Kosygin. The agreement signed on 10 January provided for withdrawal of all forces to their pre-5 August 1965 positions and a promise to settle disputes by peaceful means.

Pakistani public generally reacted unfavourably to the settlement. Foreign minister Z.A. Bhutto exploited the sentiments to gradually turn it into a widespread movement and his arrest on 13 November 1968 did not help matters. On top of this, the government’s ill-advised decision to celebrate the ‘Decade of Development’ with overblown fanfare and indecent publicity infuriated the masses further and turned even neutral people against the President. Frustrated by the political storm blowing all around him, and failing to appease the growing demands of political leaders – who had now combined to form Democratic Action Front – President Ayub Khan resigned on 25 March 1969, handing over power to the Commander-in-Chief Army, Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan.

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(12)

The ten years rule of President Ayub Khan can be termed as one of the best in the country’s history from the points of view of political stability, economic prosperity and religious tolerance.

The Economist/banker Ishrat Husain in his book ‘Governing the Ungovernable’ informs us that, “There is a virtual consensus among the analysts and economic historians that Pakistan had three episodes of rapid growth: 1960 to 1969, 1979 to 1988 and 2003 to 2007.” Pakistan grew faster in South Asia by an average of 2 percent through most of the 1960’s and according to the World Bank (2002), Pakistan exported more manufactured goods than Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Turkey combined in 1965. Industrial sector grew by an average of 9.1 percent per annum during period 1958-70.

Analysing the causes of such stellar performance during the Ayub era, Hussain believes that, “Continuity and consistency of policies, combined with incentives to the private sector, a strong planning commission setting a clear direction, and the green revolution in agriculture, all made significant contributions. . . . .  The green revolution, brought about by high yielding varieties of wheat and rice, along with large scale public investment in storage dams and irrigation, made Pakistan self-sufficient in food production. The construction of the Indus Basin Works increased the availability of irrigation water by 40% over the 1960’s.”

Land reforms prohibited farms smaller than 12.5 acres and larger than 1000 acres. Larger farms encouraged mechanization producing higher output while distribution of surplus land to tenants also raised productivity. The effect of these policies was a sharp rise in economic growth. The growth rate in the 1960’s hovered around 6 percent annually, notwithstanding the shock of war with India in 1965.

However, there was a flip side to all this. This period also experienced sharp income inequalities, both individually and regionally. Living standards of most of the people improved only marginally – index of real wages improved by only 2 percent during the 1960’s. Public expenditure on education and health remained dismal. The Chief Economist, Mahbub ul Haq, revealed in 1968 the startling statistic that 22 industrial family groups dominated the economic and financial life-cycle of Pakistan, controlling about two-thirds of industrial assets and 80% of banking and insurance assets. It did not go unnoticed in East Pakistan that almost all these families belonged to West Pakistan.

Resentment was already growing among Bengalis who accused Ayub’s government of reducing the East to an internal colony. It was said that the majority of development projects were being set up in West Pakistan (WP), civil and military services were mainly staffed with West Pakistanis, and that WP had fattened itself on the foreign currency earned by the export of jute grown in Bengal. These beliefs were partly true but ignored the fact that common people in WP had also not benefited from such  development. Awami League president, Mujibur Rahman had in 1966 come up with a Six-Point formula for provincial autonomy under which all powers would rest with the provinces with the exception of foreign affairs, defence and currency. Initially treated as unrealistic and even fantastical, agitation for this demand gradually grew in East Pakistan during the next three years and was the leading cause of success of the political movement against President Ayub Khan.

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And with this we close the third chapter, which covered the second decade reflecting some very crucial years of our lives. I was then hoping to turn from a boy into a man. Who was it that said once, “A boy plays at being a man. A man steps up and acts like one.” The third decade was going to unfold a script for us, both I and my country, dramatically different from the one we had experienced so far, so decisive and pivotal in fact, that our lives had changed forever by the time it came to an end.

Chapter-2 Early Years

The new country had come into being against all odds but it immediately ran into a bucket load of problems. First and the foremost was the settling of millions of refugees pouring in from all parts of India. They had arrived destitute and had suffered heart rending tales of loot and plunder. But they generally showed remarkable patience and resilience, and were full of hopes for building a new country of their own. The newly set up offices had to make do with the barest of furniture or stationery supplies but work started in earnest and slowly picked up speed.

The Independence Day celebrations were not even finished when Pakistan was confronted with the problem of Kashmir, the ‘K’ in Pakistan, which is unfortunately present even today with devastating consequences for both Pakistan and India. The underlying facts of the issue were simple: the Mountbatten Plan announced by viceroy Mountbatten on 2 June 1947 for transfer of power to India and Pakistan and granting them dominion status required all the princely states to accede to either of the two countries before 15 August 1947. Most of them had done so. Some rajas or nawabs, however, had found it difficult to jump this way or the other. Kashmir, Hyderabad and Junagadh were the three most problematic ones. The State of Jammu and Kashmir was ruled by a Hindu Maharaja, Hari Singh Dogra, but majority of its population was Muslim. The reverse was the case in the other two states where the rulers, Nizam of Hyderabad and Nawab of Junagarh were Muslim but Hindus were in majority there.

All logic dictated that Kashmir would be part of Pakistan as its population was not only overwhelmingly Muslim, it was contiguous to Pakistan. Its history and culture was closely aligned with that of Punjab. The two major rivers of Pakistan, Jhelum and Chenab originated in Kashmir. Still, Hari Singh procrastinated till the end. Troubles started when citizens of Poonch revolted against the Dogra rule. Exasperated by this delay, thousands of tribesmen belonging to Gilgit (which was part of Kashmir State) and tribal areas started to march towards Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir state, on 23 October. They moved up to Muzaffarabad (now capital of Azad Kashmir) but halted there and then started burning and looting the area. India started to airlift its regular armed troops to Kashmir valley on 27 October to confront the tribals though the Raja was still undecided and the action was illegal.

Now the real drama started. Quaid e Azam, alarmed at this aggression by India, had moved to Lahore and ordered his ‘acting’ British commander-in-chief General Gracey (as the C-in-C General Messervy was on leave) to move two brigades of Pakistan army immediately to Kashmir. This timely action was certain to hold the Indian troops pouring into Kashmir and secure Kashmir for Pakistan. General Gracey, amazingly, refused to obey these direct orders from his governor-general. His excuse was that this would “lead to armed conflict between the two dominions and the withdrawal of British officers.” Jinnah insisted on the orders being issued at once. In the meantime India, now in control of Srinagar, had managed to force Hari Singh to sign the instrument of accession in its favour, ‘by fraud and violence’ as described by the Quaid later.

Kashmir’s fate was sealed the next day, 28^th October 1947. Supreme Commander of British forces, Field Marshal Auchinleck, flew to Lahore and, accompanied by General Gracey had a marathon day-long meeting with the Quaid. They used every trick in the book, every shell in the armory, to dissuade Pakistan from countering Indian forces in Kashmir. Some of the reasons cited were, India’s “legal” right to Kashmir after its accession, military weakness of Pakistan army, its virtual “uselessness” without British officers, etc., none of which reflected the true state of affairs, and even if true, could not be cited as an excuse for an army commander to refuse to accept orders issued by his direct superior. At the end of the meeting, Quaid was virtually forced to withdraw his orders to move the Pakistani troops to Kashmir. The icing on the cake was the visit by Mountbatten, now the governor-general of India, to Lahore to meet the Quaid two days later in which he naively tried his best to justify Auchinlech’s actions. Predictably, he failed to move Jinnah. Mountbatten’s nerve and audacity to confront Jinnah as a purportedly impartial conciliator was remarkable because it was he who had, according to Wolpert, “assembled over a hundred transport planes, civil as well as military, at Delhi airport with less than a day’s notice, and packed India’s best Sikh regiment inside those planes, fuelled up and kept ready to take off before dawn on October 27” to fly to Srinagar and occupy Kashmir.

A critical part of the diabolical plan to gift the State of Jammu and Kashmir to India, nurtured by Mountbatten with help from British military commanders, was the Radcliffe award. The award was ready and handed over to Mountbatten by Radcliffe on 13 August. It was however revealed to the political leaders only on 16 August and made public on 17 August, two days after India and Pakistan had celebrated their independence! Why was it delayed and what happened during these three days?

According to the Radcliffe award, districts in Punjab were to be allocated on the basis of contiguous Muslim-majority, meaning that districts should have both Muslim majority and be contiguous (sharing a common border).  However, there was one major exception, and that exception was the Mountbatten’s gift to India. This was the Muslim majority district of Gurdaspur. Only one tehsil of Shakargarh was given to Pakistan, while three tehsils of Gurdaspur were given to India which included the Pathankot tehsil; the crucially important fact was that the road going from India to Kashmir passed through this Pathankot tehsil. Put another way, without Pathankot, there was no access to Kashmir from India’s side.

Alistair Lamb, the famous British writer, in his book ‘Kashmir’ sums it up, “the mechanics of Partition as applied to the Punjab, more than any other single factor, created the immediate background to the Kashmir dispute. The theory was that all Muslim-majority districts contiguous to the Muslim core of the Punjab would go to Pakistan. In the event, with the awarding of three out of four tehsils (sub-districts) of Gurdaspur District to [Indian] Punjab, the accession to India of the State of Jammu and Kashmir became a practical, as opposed to theoretical, possibility. Because two of these tehsils, Batala and Gurdaspur, were areas with significant Muslim majorities (only Pathankot tehsil had a small Hindu majority), this award seemed to go against the basic spirit of Partition”. In other words, had the Gurdaspur district not been awarded to India, Hari Singh would have been left with no choice but to allow the accession of his state to Pakistan on the grounds of its being, a) a Muslim-majority state and, b) contiguous only to Pakistan.

Fighting continued in Kashmir as more and stronger Indian forces kept flying in to push back the tribals and later regular Pakistani troops who however managed to hold a line east of Muzaffarabad. This later became the western half of the Kashmir ceasefire line after an agreement brokered by the United Nations putting an end to the hostilities on 1 January 1949. In the meanwhile, people of Gilgit and Baltistan had rebelled against the Dogra rule and declared for Pakistan on 3 November 1947, and this became the eastern portion of the Kashmir ceasefire line. According to Lamb, “the line between the Indian and Pakistani control in the territories of the State of Jammu and Kashmir now virtually cut the State into two portions of [roughly] comparable area. Pakistan held the Gilgit region, Baltistan and a narrow strip of Kashmir. India held Ladakh and the bulk of Kashmir.”

India’s claim of invading Kashmir simply because of the Maharaja acceding his State to India was shown in its true colors when it invaded and forcibly occupied the state of Junagarh in November 1947 even though the Muslim Nawab of Junagarh had acceded to Pakistan. Subsequently, Indian army invaded and occupied the state of Hyderabad on 13 September 1948, just two days after the death of Quaid e Azam, despite the Nizam of Hyderabad persistently refusing to accede to India.

(2)

Kashmir was always supposed to be an integral part of Pakistan, its letter ’K’. Its loss, coming soon after the massacre in Punjab, had a profound effect on Quaid e Azam. According to Wolpert, “a mood of lonely resignation and fatalism shrouded Jinnah through the rest of that last bitter year of his life. His hopes of breathing the cool, fresh air of Srinagar faded with each passing day”. He confided to an old parsi friend visiting from Bombay, “ I am so tired, Jamshed, so tired’. He was seventy-two, had won most of his battles, and now wanted to rest.

His spirits were not lifted when India started to find frivolous excuses for not paying Pakistan its share of the net assets of Reserve Bank of India, amounting to Rs 55 crores (Rs 550 million), which had been agreed between the two countries after lengthy deliberations. This was part of India’s plan to try to stifle Pakistan financially. At the last moment however, Nizam of Hyderabad came to Pakistan’s rescue and advanced a loan of Rs 20 crores. Because of that loan, and an advance from Habib Bank, Pakistan remained solvent and its first annual budget was presented by its finance Minister, Ghulam Mohammad, on 28 February. Defence expenditure was projected to be £ 28 million out of the total estimated expenditure of £ 40 million (70%), and a net deficit of £ 25 million. The disproportionate share of defence expenditure started in the first budget was to continue, it seems, throughout the country’s life.

As his health started to deteriorate in the last days of his life, Quaid e Azam became increasingly frustrated with the performance of his cabinet ministers and government officials. He could not tolerate the inefficiency and incompetence he saw all around him and grew impatient with the usual excuses for not getting anything done. He was extremely unhappy with the way the resettlement of refugees was being neglected in Punjab and wanted to replace Nawab of Mamdot, the chief minister of Punjab saying that “he was useless as chief minister”.

In June, he and Fatima Jinnah flew to Quetta and then to Ziarat, a hill station forty miles away from Quetta, for rest in its cool and reinvigorating environment. “Within a few days of our arrival  . . . he was able to sleep and eat well, the coughing subsided and his temperature came down to normal. For the first time in many years he seemed relaxed,” Miss Jinnah recalled. Despite his illness he went to Karachi to speak at the opening ceremony of the State Bank of Pakistan on 1 July, returning on 4 July and started running a fever again. Quaid was however quite sanguine about his health telling his doctor Lieutenant Colonel Ihahi Bakhsh, who had flown specially from Lahore to treat him, “I don’t think there is anything organically wrong with me . . . if my stomach can be put right I will recover soon.” The doctor examined him noting how thin he was and could not make out, “how he had managed to survive and work in such an advanced stage of emaciation”. After extensive tests, he was told the news which was to prove a disaster for the young newly born nation, “tuberculosis had turned into lung cancer that had almost totally consumed both the lungs.”

He grew weaker every day and became irritable complaining about everybody being unpunctual. Miss Jinnah explained that “ her brother attached a great deal of importance to punctuality, and had all his life been most punctual himself.” His doctor was shocked to find that he now weighed only eighty pounds and, to make the matters worse, he practically stopped eating after 28 August. When the doctor urged him to take some food, he replied “Doctor, you are overfeeding me. I have never taken so much food before, even when I was quite well.” From then on he lived on a few cups of tea and coffee, and some plain water to swallow his pills. He lay in bed quietly all day, listless, apathetic, and said to Miss Jinnah “Fatti, I am no longer interested in living. The sooner I go the better.”  As Dr Bakhsh said, “I had always felt that he had been kept going despite his low vitality by an indomitable will.” But now the great Quaid, “the man of iron will, had given up the fight.”

By September, Quaid had developed pneumonia as well as TB and cancer. Oxygen was required to help him breath. Even in this condition, he kept thinking of Kashmir somewhat like a missing child. He was heard muttering aloud as he tossed about uncomfortably in bed according to Dr Ilahi Bakhsh, “The Kashmir Commission have an appointment with me today, why haven’t they turned up?”

It was now the fateful day of 11 September and it was decided to move him to Karachi. A bed had been made in the front cabin of his plane and they landed at the Karachi airport after two hours of flying. Miss Jinnah recalled, “here he had landed just a year ago, full of hope and confidence that he would help build Pakistan into a great nation. Then thousands had thronged to welcome him. But today, as instructed . . . there was no one at the airport.” Quaid was carried on a stretcher to the ambulance for drive to his residence. After about four miles, the ambulance coughed and came to a sudden halt. It transpired that it had broken down due to some engine trouble and another ambulance would have to be called. The Quaid was left stranded lying on a stretcher in the ambulance parked in hot sun by the side of the road. Miss Jinnah reported the ghastly scene, “ there was no breeze, and the humid heat was oppressive. To add to his discomfort, scores of flies buzzed around his face, and he did not have the strength to brush them away . . . Sister Dunham and I fanned him in turns, waiting for another ambulance to arrive . . . . Every minute was an eternity of agony. He could not be shifted to the car as it was not big enough for the stretcher.”  In the meantime his pulse was getting weaker and irregular. He was given some hot tea to drink.

This was truly a macabre scene. “Nearby stood hundreds of huts belonging to the refugees,” thought Miss Jinnah, “who went about their business, not knowing that their
Quaid, who had given them a homeland, was in their midst, lying helpless. Cars honked their way past, buses and trucks rumbled by, and we stood their immobilized in an ambulance that refused to move an inch . . . . We waited for over one hour, and no hour in my life has been so long and full of anguish.”

Finally, the other ambulance arrived and they reached the house at 6:10 p.m.  “He slept for over two hours,” Miss Jinnah reported, “then he opened his eyes and . . . whispered, ‘Fatti’ . . . .  his head dropped slightly to the right, his eyes closed.” The doctors arrived, gave him some injections, stood around, and sometime later covered his body, head to foot, with a sheet. Quaid e Azam breathed his last at 10:20 p.m. on 11 September 1948.

(3)

The entire nation was thunderstruck at hearing the news of the great Quaid’s death. They were aware of his falling health generally and that he was recuperating in Ziarat, but had no idea it was this bad, and were not prepared for his death.  My parents remembered the day like it was yesterday. They felt numb with grief. Not just like losing somebody close in the family they loved dearly but more so having been left shelter-less. It was like losing somebody who could help them make sense of the chaos all around and somebody who was feared by the country’s enemies just by the force of his personality. No wonder, India invaded and annexed the state of Hyderabad just two days after the Quaid’s death despite the Nizam having declared his intention to remain independent.

People were crying openly in the streets. The nation went into a long period of mourning. People were already reeling from the aftereffects of the partition and the loss of Kashmir valley and Quaid’s passing away on top of all this hit at the heart of nation’s psyche. There are few instances in history where circumstances combine to make the loss of one person felt so deeply by so many.

Why was this so? Why was he loved by his people so much? Of course, since the Quaid was the main architect of Pakistan, this was the main reason for his popularity.  However, it is not so well understood that Jinnah was a well-known and respected leader even as far back as 1914 when he was selected to visit Britain as head of the Indian National Congress delegation. Back home much of his effort was directed at promoting Congress-League understanding. The famous Lucknow Pact of 1916 between Congress and Muslim League was the handiwork of Jinnah. Calling for a joint struggle against British rule, the agreement achieved major legislative safeguards for Muslims in the central and provincial governments. The Pact established Jinnah’s leadership qualities and made him a household name among Muslims of India.

A more fitting tribute to Jinnah of those days cannot be found other than what Raja of Mahmudabad, Ali Mohammad Khan, who was elected President of All India Muslim League in 1916, had written in August 1916. According to him, “Among the people who have dedicated themselves to the cause of serving the nation, I cannot see anybody more commendable than Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Despite his youth, the way he has displayed his decision making powers, political acumen and perseverance, and furthermore, the objectivity and sincerity with which he has served the Muslim League in the previous years, make it incumbent that he should be elected the president of the current year’s Muslim League annual session.”

My maternal uncle Sajid Hasan, about the same age as my father, always remembered with pride the day he was presented to meet Quaid e Azam when he was a young boy. Jinnah was visiting Lucknow and as usual stayed at the Mahmudabad Palace. Sajid Hasan’s uncle, Ali Hasan, was a senior official at the Mahmudabad State being responsible for protocol and had promised to take him there. Jinnah was sitting on a sofa among other dignitaries. My uncle went there, presented his compliments and was allowed to sit with him for a few moments. These moments became an unforgettable part of uncle’s memory and cherished by him all his life.

This was the way the people had always respected him and loved him all over India.

(4)

It is the way of the world that when a king or a great leader passes away, there is a tussle for the throne. Sometimes it is between the natural heirs of the leader and his close advisors while at other times, the heirs fight it out between themselves. When the great Mughal kings died, for example, there were bloody battles between the heirs. King Jahangir’s four sons Khusrau, Parviz, Khurram and Shahryar were each contenders for the crown. Khurram, who later took the title Shah Jehan when he ascended the throne, had both Khusrau and Parviz conveniently eliminated during the last years of his father’s reign. Shahryar, being the son in law of the all-powerful Queen Noor Jehan, then became the favorite but Khurram had him killed too by his father in law Asif Jah (who happened to be Noor Jehan’s brother!). Shah Jehan, in turn, was not even allowed to die before the wars of succession broke out between his heirs: Dara Shikoh, Shuja, Aurangzeb and Murad. Dara Shikoh was killed after a battle with Aurangzeb who then had his other two other brothers executed as well.  After confining his father Shah Jehan in his palace at Agra for life, Aurangzeb taunted him by asking him, “how do you still regard the memory of Khusrau and Parviz, whom you did to death before your accession and who had threatened no injury to you?”

Fortunately, there were no such battles for the throne after the death of Quaid e Azam. There could be no doubt in anybody’s mind about his successor, Liaquat Ali Khan who, being the prime minister, and commanding immense respect among people as a trusted lieutenant of Quaid e Azam during the Pakistan movement, automatically assumed the top leadership role.  Liaquat Ali Khan belonged to a Nawab family of United Provinces (later Uttar Pradesh) owning lands at Muzaffarnagar and studied at Oxford University followed by bar-at-law at Inner Temple of London in 1922. Coming back to India he joined Muslim League in 1923 and was later elected to the UP legislative council. His most important contribution during this period was to persuade Jinnah, who had moved to England in 1930, to move back to India. “You must come back,” Liaquat urged. “The people need you. You alone can put new life into the League and save it.” Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, who regarded him as a hero, appealed to him also with her customary charm and enthusiasm. The heartfelt passionate appeals worked and Jinnah moved back to Bombay in 1934.

At the annual session of the League in 1936, Jinnah moved a resolution proposing Liaquat as the Honorary General Secretary and he held the office till the establishment of Pakistan in 1947. In 1940, Liaquat became the deputy leader of the Muslim League Parliamentary party. He represented the Muslim League in the interim government formed with Congress in 1946 and held the portfolio of finance, presenting the famous ‘poor man’s budget’ taxing the rich which rattled the Congress leaders and the Hindu industrialists so much that they began to think of Pakistan as a better option after all.

Liaquat took over a Pakistan in the grip of a multitude of problems, most critical being the war in Kashmir, which finally ended with a ceasefire agreement concluded with India with the promise of a plebiscite to ascertain the will of the people. His rule covered a period of only four years but, remarkably, the decisions taken by him as the head of state during this time were to set the course for the country for years to come, the effects of which are visible even today.

Under his premiership, Pakistan took the first steps in constitution making. Liaquat presented the Objectives Resolution in the Legislative Assembly which was passed on 12 March 1949. It defined the objectives upon which the future constitution of the country was to be based. In time this document proved to be the foundation stone for the ideology of the country because it attempted to combine the basic principles of Islamic philosophy with those of western democracy. It thus departed from the secular system of governance, where the state purports to be officially neutral in matters of religion and treats all its citizens equal regardless of religion. The growing influence of religion in the coming years on the country’s political, economic and social structure as well as jurisprudence can be said to take its root from this time. The Objectives Resolution served as a preamble for the 1956, 1962 and 1973 constitutions and, under the influence of President Ziaul Haq, became part of the Constitution in 1985.

Liaquat also laid down the foundations of the country’s foreign policy. The cold war between the two super powers, United States and Soviet Union was only just beginning after the conclusion of the 2^nd world war. Pakistan was not formally part of any block but its policies began to tilt towards the US after Liaquat went for a state visit there in May 1950 and met President Harry S. Truman. No reciprocal visit was paid to Russia despite reportedly an invitation from the premier, Joseph Stalin. The course was set for Pakistan and it soon became part of two military pacts SEATO in 1954 and Baghdad Pact (later called CENTO) in 1955, designed to protect member states from communism. Soviet Union which had up to that time maintained a neutral stand on Kashmir now started to put its weight behind India. This was in marked contrast to India where prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, being of a socialist frame of mind, started to develop warm ties with Soviet Union immediately after independence and was cool towards US in those days.

Liaquat’s third major policy decision with long term implications was when he appointed General Ayub Khan as the first native commander-in-chief of the Pakistan army in January 1951 after the retirement of General Gracey. Ayub Khan at that time was the junior-most Major General in the army and bypassed three senior Major Generals, including the senior-most Major General Akbar Khan recommended by the General Headquarters. In fact, Ayub Khan was not even included in the nomination list! A crucial role in his appointment was played by the then Defence Secretary, Iskander Mirza, who lobbied strongly for his appointment with the prime minister.

Liaquat Ali Khan was keen to start industrialization in this country and formed Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation which began to set up a series of large scale industrial units all over the country. He has to his credit also the planting of the first seeds for the education of science and technology in the country. He invited the famous chemist Salimuzzaman Siddiqui from abroad appointing him as his first government science adviser in 1951. He also called world renowned physicist and mathematician Raziuddin Siddiqui to come and start teaching in Pakistan and the latter was instrumental in setting up the Atomic Energy Commission of Pakistan.

Perhaps Liaquat’s greatest contributions in those difficult days was, firstly, to pull the country out of despondency after Quaid’s death and, secondly, the way he stood up boldly and valiantly against India’s threatening postures. The Congress leaders had grudgingly accepted the creation of Pakistan in the belief that, faced with the immense political and economic problems that would inevitably crop up, it would not be able to survive more than a few months anyway. They observed with disbelief and dismay the way the nation began to resolve the multitudes of challenges faced by it one by one, and showed no signs of bowing to the might of its powerful neighbour. India lost no opportunity to test Pakistan’s patience and in 1951 threateningly mobilised its forces on the border. It was at this time that Liaquat Ali Khan showed his resolve and waved his famous fist in a public speech at Karachi’s Jahangir Park on 14 August to warn India that if it dared attack Pakistan, it would get a matching response.

The waving of fist would long be remembered by people in those days whenever the word India was mentioned. My father used to mention “Liaquat’s mukka” proudly even a long time after the event happened and in my childhood the words Liaquat Ali Khan and the fist were somehow bound together in my mind.

He did not have long to live after that. He was addressing a large public meeting at Company Bagh In Rawalpindi on 16 October 1951 when shots rang in the air and it was discovered that he had been shot twice in the chest. The police immediately shot the presumed murderer who was later identified as Said Akbar, an Afghan national of the Pashtun Zadran tribe. Liaquat was rushed to a hospital and given a blood transfusion, but succumbed to his injuries. His last words were “Khuda Pakistan ki hifazat karay”. The exact motive behind the assassination has never been found.

Upon his death, Liaquat Ali Khan was given the title of “Shaheed-e-Millat“, or “Martyr of the Nation”. Company Bagh was renamed Liaquat Bagh. It is the same location where Benazir Bhutto, the future prime minister, was assassinated in 2007.

————

Fifty years passed. A news item appeared in a Karachi newspaper in August 2021 reporting that a woman had pleaded with the government for some financial assistance to be provided for her husband’s medical treatment as he was seriously ill and had to go for a dialysis three times a week. The Sindh government, the report continued, had graciously agreed to bear these expenses besides sanctioning a small monthly allowance. However, the husband died next year.

The woman was the wife of Akbar Liaquat Ali Khan, younger son of the first prime minister of Pakistan Liaquat Ali Khan and his wife Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan. Akbar’s father was a Nawab with a vast landholding left in India when he migrated to Pakistan. He had donated his residence in Delhi, Gul-i-Ra’ana, to the new state of Pakistan which is now the official residence of Pakistan’s high commissioner in India. He left that house fully furnished with expensive and exquisite items, and left it with just one suitcase having clothes for daily use.

(5)

And we now turn to my life as it unfolded then. The first few years were rather lonely. I was the first born and my kid sister came into this world much later. We did not have any close relatives living in Lahore in those days and so the army of aunts, uncles and cousins which is usually part of one’s day to day existence was missing from my life. I always played with myself in those days.

My life very nearly came to an end when I was about two years old. I began to have low fever of about 99º which all children experience off and on. However, after the treatment started, rather than subsiding it gradually started to rise, until after a week’s time it had gone up to the persistent level of 102º. By this time, I had become so weak I was barely breathing. There were no blood tests in those day, or any medical tests for that matter. My father decided to consult the top most children’s doctor in Lahore, Dr Wasti, who had his clinic within his bungalow at Nabha Road near GPO and took me there. Having listened to my father describe my condition, the doctor examined me calmly, turned towards my father and then suddenly blurted out in anger saying, “Why have you brought him to me now? You have already managed to nearly kill him. Take him away.” My father, stunned by this sudden outburst, asked him meekly what he meant and what could now be done about it.

As his temper subsided, he explained to my father that I was suffering from typhoid, but the immediate cause of concern was not the fever but the extreme weakness, and this had to be taken care of urgently. He then told my father to stop all medications forthwith and begin a diet. The diet that he prescribed however, left my father worried. It consisted of only two things: egg yolk and finely ground shami kebabs. My father protested saying how could a little child of two years and being so weak, be able to digest this kind of food. These remarks had the doctor fly into a rage once again. “Now tell me’, he thundered, “who is the doctor, you or me? Either do what I say or you can get out”. My father picked me up, came back and narrated the whole incident to my mother, who was even more horrified. They had no choice, however, and started me on the diet as recommended. Miraculously, I began to get better, and in less than a month was completely cured.

I had the occasion to see my saviour once again when my father took me to visit him about ten years later. He had been the foremost child specialist of Lahore for decades by this time but had such a modest personality that it left a mark on me. He happened to be a tall, somewhat heavyset man with a mop of greying hair on his head, wearing baggy trousers which came only to his ankle’s length. The picture was completed when you looked down at his feet; he was wearing old worn out black shoes without laces and without socks! Such is the lifestyle of truly great men and we ordinary mortals can only sneer at their eccentricities.

———-

We were then living in Chamra Mandi (leather market) situated on GT Road at the back of the Lahore railway station. It was accessed from the city side by Do-Moria Pul, which was a two-way underpass built under the railway lines. Anywhere we wanted to go from our home, we had to go through this Do-Moria Pul. To my young mind, this was a kind of door to all kind of good and attractive things existing on the other side of the railway lines, things like markets, gardens and cinemas, rather anything other than home which coming back always seemed drab and boring to the extreme.

The very first memories I have of a home is a flat consisting of two rather dark small rooms situated on the ground floor of an old building. The building faced a narrow street leading down from the GT Road towards Misri Shah, and started almost exactly opposite the pedestrian bridge straddling the huge expanse of railway station. But we soon moved to another flat, this one situated on the first floor of a building housing a raw leather godown facing GT Road, where my father had his business. This flat was a marked contrast to the earlier one, bright and airy and, to my extreme delight, giving an excellent view of the hustle and bustle always there on the busy GT Road below.

My father had by this time decided to move away from his job at Bata shoe company and start his own raw leather business under the name Bufco Traders, the word being a combo of buffalo and cow. He must have had good relations with the bosses there because Bata agreed to become the firm’s sole customer. Going into business was not an easy decision for my father, as any person with a comfortable job at a multinational company would know. Other than job security, there was also the question of finances, the working capital required to commence a new venture. For a long time before that, my father and mother started to save every penny they could to build up reserves. They even stopped subscribing to the daily English newspaper (which must have been hard for my mother) or having paans. The saving would not have amounted to much; it was more like a psychological prop to boost their resolve. Still, my father could not make up his mind and kept procrastinating.

On his daily walk in the morning one day, he saw a fakir like figure coming from the opposite direction. The fakir was probably high as he was walking unsteadily lurching this way and the other. My father seeing this tried to avoid him, but the fakir kept coming and then suddenly punched him in the chest. Without stopping, the fakir then continued on his way, saying something in the air like, “ What are you afraid of? Don’t you have belief in God?’’ My father, momentarily numb with the shock of this unexpected blow, regained his senses and continued the walk. Neither my father nor my mother believed in heavenly signs but this strange incident could have helped him to make up his mind sooner than he would otherwise have done.

I found a new hobby as well – playing with the mini-hides stored in father’s godown. I used to watch father and his assistants conduct the categorization and valuation of raw hides of buffaloes and cows by inspection. This was done by a set of two workers picking up one hide at a time from a ‘lot’, turning it and then putting it back to another ‘lot’. The inspector standing at one end glanced at each hide during this quick picking and turning, announced the value of the hide as judged by him and this was noted down by a clerk. All this was done in a matter of seconds and thousands of hides were valued and classified in this fashion every day. The small sized hides of goats and small cows were kept in a separate lot, and I used to spend hours picking and turning these in my free time. The workers at the godown used to enjoy this, remarking, “Chota Saab seems very busy in his work.”

A raw leather godown is extremely smelly and one can start noticing the foul smell from a long distance away. But people living and working there become immune to this stench and they don’t feel it. Living there was a bonus for me because I developed a life-long immunity not only to the smell of raw leather, but to all kinds of foul smell. For example, I am immune to the stench of manure used as fertilizer for plants. I take my morning walk in one of the many beautiful parks spread around in the Karachi Defence area. Just before the onset of spring every year, the gardeners unload tons of manure in the park and spread it all over the lawns and in the flower beds. The stench coming out of there is unbearable for most people, many of whom stop coming to the park altogether. I don’t feel anything. To be fair, I do feel the smell for a few seconds but then it just seems to disappear, like my brain’s parietal lobe controlling smell telling my brain’s cerebrum storing memories to freshen up its memory bank.

This particular ‘qualification’, being oblivious to smelly things, stood me in good stead once during my brief stint at the well-known firm of Chartered Accountants, Fergusons in Lahore. I had done my B.Com which required completing a four-months internship which I was then doing at Fergusons. After the completion of internship, I had planned to apply to the same firm for articles of apprenticeship, a requirement for qualifying as a chartered accountant. I therefore had to prove my worth to them in the face of stiff competition from other applicants. As chance would have it, I was assigned to go for audit to a factory called Crushing Ltd which was in the business of manufacturing gelatine and this it did by crushing old bones of animals. When our audit team landed in the factory, consisting of myself and the senior in charge of the job, we were hit by an overpowering stench. Old bones of animals, in their tens of thousands and piled mountain high, are obviously not expected to give out sweet smell like saffron but even for old bones, the smell was as foul as it could ever be. My senior in charge cursed his luck for having been assigned this job, used some expletives for the manager who had done this, and then got busy in his work. I, predictably, sensed the foul smell for a few seconds and then . . . nothing. A week there went like a breeze.

A few weeks later I found myself in the company of that manager. He was discussing the assignment with me and commented on the ‘smelly’ nature of the job. With as much sincerity as I could muster, I told him that though the smell was something which was definitely there, I found the assignment quite interesting and rewarding and that I would very much like to be sent there again whenever required. For me, I told him, the duty took precedence over any other consideration. The manager looked down at his papers, raised his head and there were tears in his eyes. “Son,” he said to me, “I have handled hundreds of jobs before but this is the first time I have seen such loyalty and dedication. I so wish there were more people like you. This,” he declared, “is simply commendable.” Though it was with some difficulty, I managed to keep a straight face.

Spending one’s childhood in the old stinking raw leather godown in Chamra Mandi did have some blessings after all.

(6)

Around this time, my mother started to explore the possible schools for my education. She took me to the nearest school which looked quite nice but we were told that it was reserved for the children of railway employees. As there were no good schools nearby, it was decided to get me admitted to a school called Madrasa-tul-banat (school for girls) which was located on Lake Road (near Chauburji) which was about 7 km (4 miles) from my home. As the name indicates, it was a girl’s school but was open to boys in lower classes.

The decision to send me to school hit me like a bomb. I was the first born so I did not have any elder brother or sister going to school. We did not have any relatives living in Lahore so I had never seen anybody else going to school either. I could not understand just why I had been so selected to go to a place called school when nobody else was doing so. To complicate matters further, my father’s office was also located in the godown just below our flat, so he too was practically home all day. I was the only one, I thought, forced to go away from my mother for a whole day and I didn’t like it.

To go to school in the morning we, I and my father, had to walk about half a mile to a bus stop where I would board a school bus which would take me to the school. After a couple of days of following this routine, and after reaching the bus stop, I refused to board the bus. My father tried his best to coax me into getting onto the bus but I dug my heals. So we started our journey back home. I was running and jumping with joy on getting a holiday. However, tragedy awaited me as soon as we entered the flat and I was given a mild thrashing by my father. This was rather unexpected because I had not seen him in this kind of mood before. I never refused to go to school after this day.

A set daily routine established itself now. For some reason, the bus would reach the school every day after the morning assembly had started. I was therefore expected to go directly to the classroom. I would go the empty classroom, place my bag on the seat, put my hands around my head on the desk and start crying. This would go on for about five minutes, I would then raise my head, wipe the tears off my face, try to appear normal, and be ready for the children when they rushed into the classroom a few minutes later. Then the teacher would come in and the school work started.

This routine went on for many weeks. Imagine a little boy sitting all alone in an empty classroom with his head buried in his hands on the desk, weeping silently and crying his heart out. That was me. I am not sure why I did this. Perhaps I had realized the futility of protest with either my father or mother and as there was nobody else to turn to, I got resigned to the status quo. Or maybe, it was my natural loneliness which did not allow me to share my feelings with other children. While I was crying, the only thoughts in my mind would be that of home and mother, and this was enough to start the tears rolling out.

Strangely enough, this unusual trait, that of being able to cry on demand, came to my rescue many years later when I went to England for studies. I was about twenty years old then. I did not have any relative or friend living in London, or the whole of England for that matter. Immediately after arriving there, I found a place in a students’ hostel managed by the Pakistan High Commission, sharing a room with another new arrival, Habib Khan. Habib sahib was at least ten years older than me, heavily built and ponderous. He was a government officer serving as a district education officer in Punjab and had come to England for training. He felt as lonely and homesick as I did. We found a way to let out this grief.  Every day, at two in the afternoon, we would close the door of our room, sit on our beds and start crying. This collective teary session would go on for a few minutes, after which we would go to the bathroom, splash water on our faces and comeback fully refreshed ready to face another day.

———–

Sadness has always been a part of my life. Sometimes a fleeting moment of grief, at other times, a deep, gnawing sadness, so much that it hurts. But it is always there. Like a shadow, like a constant companion, like a melancholy oboe. It comes and goes in waves, but it is there in the background. It hits one more when one is listening to music, maybe because “music has that power to revive memories, sometimes so intensely that they hurt”. It doesn’t have to be sad music, any music with bass chords or a chant, or a slow rhythm produces the same effect, that empty feeling in the chest. Sometimes I wish, like the Japanese writer Murakami that, “there was a machine that could accurately measure sadness, and display it in numbers that you could record.” Like the pulse rate or the oxygen level. And then you could show your loved one your chart of sadness . . . . maybe it would mellow the heart.

Sadness is different from depression. I have never felt depressed, in fact I am remarkably optimistic. Even on some bad days, when nothing seems to be working and problems somewhat overwhelm you, I tend to remain cheerful. And positive. Unlike depression, sadness does not take over your life, it accompanies you. As a psychologist will tell you, sadness “surfaces sometimes, bringing sighs or tears, but it is not the dark obstacle to fully functioning life that depression can be.”

May be because I am so used to it, I can recognise sadness in other people, usually through their eyes, because as they say, “eyes never lie”. Usually, it reflects intense grief after the loss of a loved one like a child or the tragic end of a love affair. But it could be the result of any event in life, or be just part of one’s biological makeup. People associated with creative arts, like poets, story writers or actors often happen to be intensely sad. It is not unusual to find poets being heavy drinkers or famous actors being chain smokers, and it could be their intrinsic sadness which makes them do so. But the odd fact is that comedians are often the people who are the most sad; similarly the actors who play the part of jokers in circus. This looks like a paradox but there may be some psychological connection. Look at the great Robin Williams, leaving us when he was at the prime of his career. One just had to look at his eyes to see his inner feelings, when outwardly he was making us laugh with his funny imitations.

I can see it in the early life of our great prophet (PBUH). His father had died just before he was born. The Arab culture puts great store in ancestry and young men used to boast about the achievements of their fathers with relish. How deeply he would have felt the loss of his father in this highly masculine society. And then he lost his mother too when he was just six years old. His foster-mother Halima recalls that as a child whenever he had a chance to visit his mother’s grave near Medina, he would not just sit by the side of the grave, he would lie down on the grave face down, stretching his little arms and legs fully, like he was embracing his mother.

(7)

Madrasa-tul-banat was a big school with over five hundred girls. I was admitted into their junior most class called KG 1 and our class teacher was Miss Rosalind. She was an extremely sweet woman with a smiling face and treated all children with much care and kindness.

One of the students in the tenth class, which was the senior most class, happened to be a niece of my mother, Farhana, though I had never met her before. My mother had introduced her to me, telling me to go to her if I needed something. It was a timely advice because I did need something on the very first day in school. I wanted to go to the washroom but when I got there, I could not untie my belt. I was too shy to ask the teacher and then found the courage to go to Farhana Baji in her class. She was much too amused but helped me and I finally found relief. She remembered this incident for a long time and teased me about it whenever we met again.

I still remember the school’s arrangement for keeping our food that we brought from our homes warm till the lunch time. In the morning, we used to place our tiffin boxes in an oven which was the size of a big fridge. The temperature was kept just right so that by  lunch time, the food was warm but not very hot. I have never seen anything like that at any of the schools that I have known since.

After a month or so, we came to know that three other boys from our area went to the same school by tonga and arrangement was made for me to join them. They were all much older than me but good company. My morning crying sessions came to an end.

Lahore in those days was unlike what we see around us now. There were very few cars plying on the road. The only motorcycles one saw were the big ones, over 500 cc at least, vrooming around the town, often with sidecars attached, which is something one doesn’t see at all now. My father had one too, but he preferred his bicycle for daily use which he kept in a pristine condition, polished and shining. It had a front light which worked with a dynamo attached to the back wheel of the bicycle. He could never imagine going out at night without the front light on, as people were often issued a challan (ticket) by police if found riding a bicycle without the front light on. Before starting his journey, he would tie a clip round the bottoms of his trousers to prevent them getting tangled in the chain, and in the summer wear a solar hat. The usual traffic on the roads consisted of a few trucks and cars but more of the tongas, rehras (horse carts), gaddas (ox carts), cycles and, occasionally, a horse rider. There were hardly any donkey carts around. It was still quite noisy and boisterous on the GT Road. Gadda walas were always cursing their charges loudly with little effect as they continued to walk slowly at their own pace, mindless of the shouting. One of their curses for the oxen was ‘mar jaaen’ (drop dead). I could never understand the logic of this, because surely, a dead pair of oxen would be of little use to the owner. Obviously the gadda walas were not trained in logic and went about their business as usual. I could see sometimes from my window below during night time a gadda wala dozing off on his gadda while it was moving. The oxen would continue to walk slowly in a straight line towards their destination through the night, like an auto pilot on a plane.

There was nothing much to do in the evening, except to talk, read or listen to the radio. My father and mother were in the habit of walking long distances on foot in those days; I had to trudge along with them protesting that I was tired almost as soon as we started,  chanting continuously, zee-tuck . . . . zee tuck, meaning, Saeed thuk (tired). We used to go to bed early and got up early. I remember once packing my school bag at night, suddenly finding that I did not have the English writing copybook with me as the previous one had been used up. It used to be a special four line copybook designed to write English alphabets; top and bottom lines red in colour and the middle two lines, blue. I panicked. It was now too late to go to the stationery shop. My father went downstairs to his office, found a blank page copybook and came back upstairs armed with a red and a blue pencil and a foot rule. He sat down before me and started to draw red and blue lines on the blank copybook with the ruler. The work took about an hour but I took a sigh of relief when it was finished.

On Sunday mornings we, my father and I, would go to Akbari Mandi on his bicycle for the weekly grocery shopping. It was a huge market, mainly wholesale, and one could get good bargains there. It was part of the old city of Lahore with incredibly narrow lanes but kept very clean and had mostly pedestrian traffic. It was quite close to our home, about ten minutes distance on bicycle and I thoroughly enjoyed the ride, feeling very important. Going down the GT Road, one turned left on Circular Road, past Yakki Gate and then Delhi Gate to get to Akbari Mandi. It all seems like a dream now, part of another world, never to come back.

We sometimes visited my mother’s cousin Sarwar Jehan (daughter of her maternal uncle, Murtaza Hussain) whose family had recently arrived in Lahore. He husband, Naqvi Uncle, had a job as a senior foreman at the Pakistan Railways factory, called loco workshop, and had been allotted a house in Mughalpura Railway Colony. This was a hugely impressive house. Situated at the junction of Sabir Road and Mughalpura Road, there was a vast garden attached to the bungalow, located at the tip of the V formed by the two roads. The house itself was more than a thousand square yards in area with five servant quarters at the back. Down the road was the Griffin Club complex with large playing grounds for the exclusive use of railway staff. The colony had lots of trees on the road sides and was very green all around. During season we could have as many shahtoots (mulberry fruit) and jamuns (Indian blackberry) as we liked from the big trees grown in the garden They had many boys and the eldest, Izhar Haider, was a couple of years older than me and we played for many hours together. He later became a doctor, joined the army and found himself in Dacca during the 1971 war, spending time in a prison in India.

The Mughalpura railway colony, along with another one for senior employees at Mayo Gardens, must have been typical of the housing estates the British had built for their railway employees all over India and showed why a job in railways commanded much respect in those days. These jobs held a special attraction for the Anglo-Indian community of India who were associated with it almost from the days the first broad-gauge train chugged from Bori Bunder to Thane in 1863. All railway key jobs such as engine drivers, guards, lines men, foremen and station masters were often held by Anglo-Indians. Their women worked as matrons, nurses, teachers and secretaries in the railway hospitals and schools. The main characters of John Master’s famous novel, Bhowani Junction, which is woven around the lives of Indian railway staff, were Anglo-Indian. Most of them opted to remain in India after partition.

Around this time, my mother’s another cousin (daughter of her paternal uncle, Ali Hasan), who we called Khala Amma, had also arrived and settled in Lahore with her husband Ghulam Abbas (who the family called Doolha Bhai, a fond name for elder brother in law) and other members of her family. The family had left large tracts of properties in India upon migration and had been allotted the house 1 Queens Road, next to the junction of Waris Road and Queens Road. It was a large mansion type house with a big garden in front and dozens of rooms. Her son, Agha Hasan (called Munna Bhai) was at that time a senior officer in Habib Bank in Karachi and later became well known, first, as head of the United Bank and then as the founder/president of BCCI. My school saviour Farhana Baji mentioned earlier was also one of her daughters and lived there.

———-

Let us pause here. The ‘present’ sometimes seems too drab and boring. A trip down the past to the exotic times of nawabs and maharanis may add some spice to the proceedings. We go back in time to the period when the nineteenth century is just about to give way to the twentieth century.

The year is 1899 and a woman, living in a village in the state of Mahmudabad, about 50 km from Lucknow, has recently been widowed. She is only thirty three years old and has a seven years old son to look after. Her husband, a state official, was a tower of strength for her and his sudden loss has left her wondering how she would now be able to cope with this world all on her own. She belongs to a respectable family and has no desire to spend the rest of her life being dependent upon others. When the period of mourning comes to an end, she starts thinking. She is astute and resourceful; she thinks of a plan.

The Raja of Mahmudabad, Ali Mohammad Khan, would be passing through her village on the way to Lucknow soon. Among her many skills, she possessed a talent for cooking the highest quality gourmet food; her husband loved to eat well and she had always managed to oblige him. She checked the exact details of Maharaja Sahib’s itinerary and arranged to have some food served to him as a courtesy during his brief stay. She then prepared seven dishes of the most delectable quality which were presented to the Maharaja Sahib with the usual pomp and ceremony associated with durbars. Maharaja Sahib loved the food and summoned the chef to commend and reward him. When he came to know of her circumstances, Maharaja Sahib immediately ordered for her to be appointed as a member of his palace staff.

The Maharani Sahiba, a formidable lady herself, now took her under her wing. She undertook to bear all the expenses for her son’s education. He was a precocious child and completed his education with honours. He then joined the palace staff and rising swiftly through the ranks, was eventually appointed Munsarim, one of the highest administrative positions of the State.

The boy’s name was Ghulam Abbas, Doolha Bhai of my mother, and father of Agha Hasan Abidi.

(8)

While we were living in Lahore, most of my mother’s close family had migrated from India and settled in Karachi. The Muslim government officials in India had been given an option at the time of partition whether they wanted to go to Pakistan or remain in India. My mother’s eldest brother Hamid Hasan, a government servant, had opted for Pakistan and arrived in Karachi along with his family consisting of his wife, two sons and a daughter, and also his mother (my nanna), a brother and a sister. Life was tough in the early days of Pakistan. All they could find was a two room flat situated on the fourth story of an old building in Ranchore Line, a  busy market area. Mamoon’s family occupied one room while the rest of the family started living in the other room. This was a far cry from their house in Lucknow but spirits were high and nobody complained. After sometime, the younger mamoon, Majid Hasan, was allotted a small two roomed house in Martin Road Quarters, a newly built colony at Jehangir Road, and moved there with nanna and khala. Other people fared even worse. Some of our relations who had also arrived in Karachi from UP lived for a time in hut type dwellings called kholi before moving to better accommodations.

People left back in India could have no idea about the living conditions in Karachi in those days and this often caused bitter misunderstandings. Mamoon received a letter from a friend in Lucknow indicating his intention to migrate here with his family and seeking his permission to stay with him for a while. Mamoon replied explaining to him politely that conditions here did not allow him to accommodate another family. Back came a letter from the friend, expressing his disappointment at mamoon’s attitude, suggesting that he would have been content to briefly park himself in his “diorrhi” (a small outer room or lobby common in houses in Lucknow) causing him no trouble. Little did he know that there was no such thing as a diorrhi in a Karachi flat!

As nanna was now in Karachi, my mother used to go and see her every year or two. We  used to travel there by train, always in inter-class. Nowadays there are two classes in the inter-city trains, Upper and Economy, but in those days there used to be four classes: First, Second, Inter and Third. Inter and Third had similar lay out, about the same as the present economy class, but Inter class had leather mattresses on the seats. Second class had thicker mattresses and cabins; while the First class had 6” thick mattresses of fine leather with smaller cabins and attached bath rooms. First class bathrooms were spacious and furnished with bath tubs. The only time I had the opportunity to go inside a First class compartment was when Khala Amma, was travelling to Karachi in this compartment and we had gone to see her off. This kind of luxury would sound unbelievable to some people for a train these days but such compartments were the relic of colonial days, and built for the use of senior British officers and their ladies. With passage of time, these compartments were allowed to be run down and then disappear all-together. Trains in those days were also kept immaculately clean and ran on time.

There used to be special, women only, compartments in all the trains. However, my mother always preferred to travel in the general compartment as, according to her, the women only compartments were much too stuffy and scruffy. Most men would be travelling with their families and so the environment was quite congenial. I have a somewhat hazy recollection of one of our first journeys to Karachi. I was about four and a half years old at that time and suffering from mild fever. In those days, I was never too keen to receive medications prescribed by the doctors. Patent factory produced medicines were not in use in those days and each doctor prescribed his own concoction, mixed by an assistant called compounder, in a small dispensary tucked in a corner of the doctor’s room. All such preparations, consisting of a liquid (called mixture) poured in a small clear bottle and half a dozen tiny packets containing some white powdery stuff, had one thing in common: they were extremely bitter and foul tasting, and something to be avoided at all costs. Same was the case with me; I used to resist every attempt to be given the medicines with full force. My mother, on the other hand, having by now becoming used to being my mother, and being a trained girl guide herself, had developed a special technique to counter this force, usually with successful results. And this technique she proceeded to employ on that particular journey to Karachi when it was time to give me my medication.

I was lying down on the berth when she calmly put her right knee softly on my chest and the left knee on my right hand. Holding me pinned to the berth, she poured the bottle’s contents in a spoon and bending down locked my left hand with her right elbow and putting her left hand firmly on my head, shoved the spoon down in my mouth. I was by now familiar with this hardy but painless manoeuvre and made only token attempts to protest. However, there were loud noises of protest coming from some other quarters that I could hear. Most onlookers of this scene, it seemed, were horrified. Women, especially, were unanimous in declaring that this was not the way to treat innocent children. My mother applied her usual technique in dealing with difficult people; she whole heartedly agreed with them!  The tempers cooled down and the innocent child soon went to sleep.

———

Karachi, on this trip and others later, was a whole new world for me. I had never seen such wide roads, busy with all kinds of traffic, and people rushing around in great hurry everywhere. So many things were new; cycle rickshaws with their drivers huffing and puffing with the strain of pulling the passengers, grand Victoria horse carriages with horses trotting down in all directions, trams hissing away slowly on their tracks, people standing calmly in long queues boarding buses to go to their offices in the morning, bus conductors loudly announcing their next stations to invite customers, smartly clad policemen with army style boots stopping traffic on busy roads to allow pedestrians to cross the road, everything was so fascinating and loveable and different! Lahore seemed a universe away.

I loved the life at Mamoon’s flat as well. It was the first time I had seen so many people living together. It was a two roomed flat and my mother and I started sharing the room which was in the use of my nanna, chote mamoon and khala.  In the other room were living my barre mamoon and his wife, with two sons and a daughter all much older than me, and a younger son then a few months old. Their youngest daughter, who would become my wife, was to arrive sometime later.

We were on the fourth floor and for a small boy like me looking down below the balcony at the busy Ranchore Line street was like watching a live movie. All along the road side there were shops of all kinds and hawkers with push carts plying their wares. At any time of day, one could see hundreds of people moving on the street below busy in going about their usual business. Looking towards the left, one could see a huge clock tower and, as I came to know later, nobody in the family had a watch, making do with the time shown on the clock tower. There was always a constant low humming sound in the building which, it turned out, was the sound of a water pump pushing up water to the overhead tanks. We had also discovered something totally new and wonderful in the flat, the flush system in the latrine.

I adored the daughter, who was five years older than me, watching her every movement with wonder and awe. She also treated me very kindly. She went to school every morning and returned in the afternoon. I used to park myself on the balcony every day much before that time, my hands resting on the railing, waiting anxiously for her to appear on the street below. The street made a T junction with a road about 200 meters away, and I  focused my eyes keenly at the street corner. The moment she turned the corner and I could see her, I would start jumping with joy. She didn’t disappoint me and brought a tiny packet of spicy powder especially for me from the school every day.

We returned to Lahore a couple of months later. We were now three people, my little sister accompanying us in our journey.

(9)

I had barely had time to settle in my life at school when another change hit me from nowhere. It seemed that adults would never let me have a peaceful existence free from sudden changes. This time, it was a change of home. The flat that we were living in at Chamra Mandi was rented from a man called Jattoo who had obtained it on lease from a third party. It seemed that the third party now wanted the flat vacated, and wanted it vacated immediately. And so we had to vacate it too . . . . and do it within a day. Fortunately, my father had already bought a house in a brand new locality called Samanabad. The colony had been planned under a government scheme to build low cost housing in the city suburbs and developed by an authority called Lahore Improvement Trust. There were one thousand quarters, numbered imaginatively one to thousand, being built under this scheme and a few of them were ready for occupation.  We moved to one of them, numbered 103 N. These were twelve marla (300 sq. yards), single story houses each with three rooms and verandas at front and back. I am not sure what N stood for because there were no houses with any other alphabet in Samanabad. May be N stood for New because Samanabad was definitely a new locality.

So new in fact that there was neither electricity nor water connection provided in these houses. In Chamra Mandi we were enjoying all the fruits of civilization and electric power or water in the tap was taken for granted. We suddenly found ourselves transported back to the stone age. We had to buy oil lamps and lanterns for light and install a hand pump to get water. There was of course no gas connection in those days; the town of Sui in Baluchistan did not even appear on the map then. It was truly a weird existence.

Power lines were being installed in the locality but for some strange reason, which only the government officials would know, the lines were prioritized for the areas where the houses were only half built or even where there were no houses at all!  My father and I used to go round the colony in the evening, watch the snail like progress of electricity poles coming up and wait patiently for the power lines to reach the street where we were living.

Samanabad it seemed was now becoming popular with men of letters. Ibadat Barelvi, a well-known Urdu critic and researcher, lived five house down the road from us. Waqar Azeem, another Urdu critic and writer had his residence in Lal Quarters, half a mile away. My mother felt very happy when the family of Muhammad Hasan Askari, the renowned Urdu scholar, moved to live in the house exactly opposite ours. He was already well known as a literary critic, writer and linguist of modern Urdu language. It was a family of four brothers, he being the eldest, followed by Hasan Mussanna, Hasan Salis, and Hasan Rabey, all unmarried. I can still remember him, wearing thick reading glasses, reclining on a chair in the veranda of their home, always reading or writing something. My teenaged female cousins and their friends visiting us used to track the younger brothers’ movements from our house, giggling all the time.

Three houses down the road from Hasan brothers, lived three sisters, Miss Akhter, Miss Gulzar and Miss Gulnar. They ran a small higher secondary girls school, called Samanzar School, located at the back of Samanabad main market. One of my cousins, a few years older than me whose father had a job outside Lahore and had come to live with us, was studying at this school and regarded them with much reverence and affection especially Miss Akhter who had a commanding personality. Some other cousins living close by also began to study at the same school, one of them even started teaching there, and it became a kind of family institution still remembered for its intimate and homely atmosphere.

Soon the vacant houses around us began to come to life with their occupants. The house next door was rented by a distant relative, Sajid Bhai, who was an architectural draftsman at the Lahore Improvement Trust and was an extremely affable and delightful character. He made a small opening (called mokha) in the adjoining wall of the back courtyard of the house and the two ladies of the house started to exchange notes on everything happening under the sun. Sajid bhai was a man of slightly less than medium height but strong and stoutly built, and spoke with a resonant voice. He possessed boundless energy which he used tirelessly to perform chores for other people. Anybody needing anything got done turned to him and he would do it, as naturally as if this was part of his job.

At the marriage functions of friends or close relatives, he would be responsible for taking care of the endless chores relating to the wedding. He would also offer to supervise the arrangements for cooking of food items for baraat or walima at the wedding site, which was the norm in those days as there were no marriage halls. He would be seen moving around the cooking stoves, wearing shorts and cotton vest, drenched in sweat in the intense heat, and shouting orders at the cooks and workers to hurry them on.

He used to smoke beerri which was a kind of thin cigarette wrapped in dark tobacco leaves instead of paper, and much cheaper than a cigarette. He once decided to take the matriculation exam – probably a requirement for his promotion – and threw himself into the job with his usual zeal. My mother agreed to guide him as best as possible for the required studies. He told us later that he had insisted on smoking his beerri in the exam hall, which was obviously against the rules, but was allowed to do so by the amused invigilators in deference to his age and personality.

A few years later, my father decided to get his own house built on a plot of land situated on Poonch Road which was at the other end of Samanabad. Sajid Bhai as usual offered his services for drawing up plans for the house and, being an expert draftsman, did a good job. Our family house where all of us spent the best part of our lives bore a testimony to his imagination and expertise.

In the busy everybody-for-himself-life these days, a selfless person like him was like a breath of fresh air. His early and sudden death some years later as a result of a car accident came as a heavy blow to me.  As so often happens, it was only then that I realized how dear he was to me, and by then it was too late. At that time I was in the middle of a particularly sad phase of my life and his death tipped the scales and I went under. I wanted to be somehow close to him. I started to go and sit by the side of his grave at night. This was very soothing for me; sitting alone quietly with him resting there, in total darkness under starlight with not a sole around. I would sit there for an hour or so and then come back. After a couple of nights, I felt better and stopped going there.

———-

I continued my studies at Madrasa tul Banat for another two years. There were no buses in those days coming down to Samanabad; the nearest bus stop being at Nawankot mor which was quite a distance away from our home. A cousin of mine, Shakir Bhai, who had come to live with us was given the task of taking me to school on his bicycle every day. He was in his early twenties, lean to the point of looking emaciated, but strong and athletic. I remember coming back from the school with him on foot sometimes. It was a distance of about 3.5 km (2 miles) from Lake Road and he used to pick me up on his shoulders when I grew tired.

On one occasion, Shakir bhai did not turn up for some reason and I had no idea what to do, as there were no telephones in those days. I started to look around and found a senior student in her early teens who was also going the same way to Samanabad with her younger sister. She lived in the quarters facing Doongi Ground and the two of them used to walk to their home every day. She was kind enough to take me along with her, drop her bags at her home and then walk a further half kilometre with me to get me safely to my home. I never saw the sisters again but remember their kindness to this day. Somehow, I have always been blessed with people who have come to my help when I needed them most.

Soon, a government school opened in Samanabad, which was hardly five minutes’ walk from our home, facing the other side of Doongi Ground. This was the Government Junior Model School and, after a test, I was admitted into their Class 3. My teacher was a sweet Miss Agarwal. Moving into Class 4 a year later, we encountered a Miss Qureshi, an extremely competent but rather strict teacher, who continued for the next class as well. In the coming years all my sisters and brother followed me into the same school.

There was hardly any crime in those days but one fine day we found our radio set stolen from our home. It was a 40’s model oldish looking radio set, quite heavy about 2’x1’ in size, and placed on a table in the living room which faced the front veranda. As was the custom in those days, doors were kept unlocked during the day. It was noon time, my mother was busy in the kitchen while the radio was as usual belting out songs. After a while, she sensed that the radio had gone silent but did not give it further thought. When she came back to the living room, she found the radio missing. It seemed that somebody had simply walked into the room, picked up the radio and hurried out as there was nothing else missing. A report was lodged with the police, the station house officer who was wearing a smart uniform and talked mainly in English, visited our house. He carried out the usual investigation including questioning the servant and left. We had little hope of finding the radio ever again.

Less than six months later however, a policeman came to our house announcing that the radio had been found and my father should come to the police station and pick it up. Apparently, the thief whoever he was, had sold it to a person dealing in stolen goods, and it was that person who had been caught. The police faithfully recorded all the goods recovered from him and returned them to their owners. We got our cherished radio back. The police had indeed acted with remarkable efficiency and consideration.

(10)

Sometime later, Shakir Bhai started working at Shahnoor Film Studios as a scenery painter for painting the giant screens serving as background for the scenes in the films. These were painted in meticulous detail as there were no special effects in those days. He took me once to visit the studio which really was an out-of-this-world experience for me. The studio belonged to the days much before partition when it was called Shorey Studios. After independence, the famous producer and director Shaukat Hussain Rizvi who had produced many blockbuster movies in India, took over the vandalized remains of this studio and renamed it Shahnoor Studios, taking the word ‘Shah’ from Rizvi’s name and the word ‘Noor’ from his wife and famous actress Noor Jehan’s name. Next door there was another studio called Evernew Studio which had just come up.

Shahnoor was situated about 4 km from Samanabad as the crow flies. Starting our excursion in the evening, we went through mile after mile of lush green agricultural fields on foot to reach the studios. Once we got there, I saw intense activity going on everywhere in both the studios and well-made up actors and actresses could be seen preparing for their performances. There were beautiful gardens and fountains which were used as background for the films being shot there. Later on, we went to see a dance being filmed, or rather being endlessly rehearsed, in a big hall with the famous actress Nighat Sultana as the lead actor. It was a village scene showing about a dozen girls pounding wheat strewn on the floor, singing a song in unison. On two sides of the wall, village scenes were hung on huge canvass screens, some painted by Shakir bhai, to create the illusion of a thriving village. After every few minutes, the director would say ‘cut’, give instructions to the dancers and the pounding would start again. The girls seemed to have immense stamina to go on like this hour after hour. After a while, Shakir bhai nodded towards me to signal that it was time for us to move. We came back home close to midnight walking and stumbling through the fields in pitch darkness.

Pakistan film industry was thriving in those days, producing several block busters every year –  classics like Intezar and Gumnaam or public favourites like Naukar and Chanwey. Actors like Noor Jehan, Santosh and Sabiha Khanum were in great demand and pop idols. Likewise, Indian films were also very popular with likes of Aan, Andaaz, Deedar, Mahal and Mela being hot favourites. There were more than thirty cinema halls in Lahore spread all over town doing good business with more coming up. The Lahore downtown area of McLeod Road and Abbot Road alone had more than a dozen cinema halls which ran packed to capacity showing both Urdu and English films.

All cinemas were double storey in those days. There were three classes of tickets for the seats on the ground floor: front seats were the cheapest at 12 annas (0.75 rupees), in the middle was the one and a half rupee class while the back seats were two and quarter rupee, called ‘stall’. On the upper storey, most of the space was occupied by ‘gallery’ with three and a half rupee seats, and there were boxes at the back of six seats each. These rates continued unchanged through fifties and most of the sixties until inflation overtook them. 12 anna class had in fact became an idiom to describe common folks, but if fact this was the class of people who seemed to enjoy films most and was the back bone of film industry.

My parents used to take me along to see the films with them ever since I was a toddler. As I grew up, I began to notice the things around me. We always sat in the ‘gallery’ as most of the families used to sit either in gallery or the stalls. There were always three shows in the cinemas: 03:30 (called the matinee show), 06:30 and 09:30. We usually went to see the 06:30 show and sometime the matinee show on a Sunday. My parents had a strict rule of watching one film every six months. I didn’t like this rule at all, feeling  unhappy at the end of the film when everybody stood to hear the national anthem and the flag began to flutter in the air, that it would now be another six months before I would watch another picture. (It was only much later that the national anthem began to be played at the beginning of the picture).

Sitting in the gallery demanded strict decorum, no shouting or name calling. Hawkers used to arrive inside the hall during the interval quietly to sell eatables which were limited to items such as confectionary, potato chips (crisps) and cold drinks. I loved to eat naan-kebabs in those days but the vendors of naan-kebabs could sell these only in the stalls; they were not allowed to come in the gallery. All I could do was to look at them wistfully from the gallery upstairs, making do with the potato chips on offer there.

Almost all the Urdu films in those days ended in a tragedy. It seemed that the people and especially the women loved tragedy. The concept of the hero or heroine overcoming all the odds to always win in the end, sometimes miraculously, came much later. This was not surprising. After the partition, the entire sub-continent was wallowing in pathos. It was not just the mayhem in Punjab that was responsible for the prolonged grief, it was the parting of families; millions of people, Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs, being uprooted and having to settle in strange lands; and the unexpected animosity developing between India and Pakistan making travel between the two countries impossible, which left most people bewildered. Almost everybody had thought, on both sides of the divide, that partition notwithstanding, the two brand new countries would live with friendly relations, with a border more like that of United States and Canada. The reality hit them hard.

Urdu literature of those times reflected this mood. Novelists and short storywriters, whether from India or Pakistan, wrote stories soaked in grief and tears. Novelists wrote novels like, Aag ka Darya (River of Fire) by Quratulain Hyder, Udas Naslain (Sad Generations) by Abdullah Hussain, and Aangan (Court Yard) by Khadija Mastoor. Short stories like Saadat Hasan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh, Krishan Chandar’s Peshawar Express, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi’s Perimishar Singh, Rajendra Singh Bedi’s Lajwanti and Ashfaq Ahmad’s Gudarya (Shepherd) are unforgettable and worth reading to get a glimpse of the mood prevailing in those days.

Films followed the same pattern. Women cried through almost half the duration of the film. My parents once went to see the film Mela and Khala accompanied them. The film ended but Khala remained glued to her seat weeping uncontrollably; it was with some difficulty that my father was able to coax her to get up and leave the cinema hall.

(11)

Our family continued to grow in the meantime bringing us much joy and happiness. My sister Sameen Nishat arrived in 1953 followed by Nageen Hayat and Ambareen Sifat, joining the eldest Tazeen Sabat. In keeping with the literary bent of my mother and father, each component of their daughters’ double names had to rhyme with the other names, while the name had to have a literary meaning as well. Much effort went into finding and discarding various combinations and then fine-tuned by scholarly discussions with other family members (somebody had suggested hazireen salawat!). Words in the hands of my mother were like clay; she could mould them into any shape she liked.

Each of the children had his or her birthday celebrated every year according to the dates of Islamic calendar. There were usually no invited guests unless one happened to be present that day. The proceedings followed a fixed routine: my father would pick up a garland of thick flowers on the way home for the birthday child, all of us would sit together on the floor on a carpet; my father would recite some Quranic verses praying for the wellbeing and happiness of the family; he would tie a knot on a special thick thread (called narra) touching the head of the birthday child and we would then take a bite of some sweets, mostly barfi, to celebrate the occasion. The birthday would often be followed by a photograph of the garlanded child, either taken at home or sometimes at the studio of the local photographer. The narra, separate for each child, would then be stored for use next year. We still have our photographs of those early years, garlanded and showing changes year after year, thanks to the meticulous care and regard of our parents for their children.

We all used to sleep together in those days, in a room full of charpoys. My sisters, would be very happy seeing everybody together and keep shouting and jumping on the beds until exhaustion overtook them and put them to sleep. During one of those nights, I noticed some movement near Sameen’s bed who was then picked up by my mother and taken out of the room. In the morning, I found out that her condition had suddenly deteriorated around two in the morning and she had been taken to a hospital. I then went to my school; I was in class 5 then. Sameen died later the same afternoon suffering from pleurisy.

Everything was so sudden and overwhelming that I have very little recollection of that day. I however do remember two things: my mother wailing and crying bitterly, which came as a shock to me because she would hardly ever make a public display of her emotions; and then my father telling a friend that, “mera tu dil toot gaya hai” (my heart is really broken) which surprised me coming from a person like him. I was very fond of Sameen, who had her fourth birthday only a few days earlier, and who was the most vivacious and lively among all her sisters. However, the fact that my feelings didn’t match my parents’ intense reactions made me feel unreal. I could not even begin to understand then the boundless love that the parents have for their child and the feeling of utter despair a parent would feel at its loss tearing a hole in the chest.

I sometime go to visit the Miani Sahib graveyard in Lahore to offer fateha for my mother and father. The caretaker there who knows me, always reminds me asking, “wouldn’t you go to that little thing there?”. I reply that I shall. And then I go there and sit by the side of that little thing there, a tiny grave.  And I can hear in the distance far away the faint sound of a little girl shouting and jumping on a bed, and laughing with joy.

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After Liaquat Ali Khan’s death in 1951, Pakistan entered one of the most turbulent phases of its life. During Quaid e Azam’s last days and the short period of Liaquat Ali Khan’s rule, the country had two leaders who commanded immense love and respect among the masses due to their long and selfless contribution to the Pakistan movement. It was our misfortune that no other leader, with the possible exception of H.S. Suhrawardy, could claim to enjoy even a fraction of the same stature as the Quaid or Liaquat. Rather, most of them were regarded by the people even in those early days with nothing but contempt and derision. This critical lack of competent and dedicated successors to rule Pakistan during its formative years would play a decisive part in its history, the aftereffects of which we are seeing and experiencing today.

None of the people who enjoyed the limelight during this period had the stature or the tenacity to stay long in power. As many as six prime ministers served during the next seven years after which democratic rule ended with the imposition of the first Martial Law. In India, on the other hand, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister, continued to serve his country for seventeen years until his death in 1964 giving his country a long period of stability and consolidation. As a result, he was able to plant firm roots of democracy there.

Khwaja Nazimuddin, who had become the governor-general after the death of Quaid e Azam, stepped down to become its second prime minister (1951-53). He was a respected Bengali politician but, according to author M.R. Kazimi, “temperamentally unsuited to combat the intrigues of the new governor-general, Ghulam Mohammad, who had given himself overriding powers”. The latter, a civil servant by profession, was a particularly disreputable and unscrupulous character, responsible for irreparably contaminating Pakistani politics by arbitrary dismissal of successive democratic governments. Ghulam Mohammad can be said to be the prime architect of laying the seeds of misuse of power, favouritism and autocracy in Pakistan.

Nazimuddin’s rule was marked by two powerful agitations which ultimately led to his downfall. Firstly, the Bengali language movement in East Pakistan striving for declaring Bengali as a national language, and then the anti-Ahmadi riots in Punjab.

A group of religious parties had started to put pressure on the government for declaring Ahmadis, a sect calling themselves Muslims, to be declared as non-Muslims and for Ahmadis to be banned from holding political office. The chief minister of Punjab in 1953 was Mumtaz Daultana, who, according to author M.J. Akbar,  “set in motion a cynical manoeuvre to bring down the central government and become prime minister in the ensuing vacuum.”  Despite the central government rejecting the demands, he instigated the religious parties through his secret service to launch a violent agitation against Ahmadis. However, when the violence became out of control, the central government called in the army and imposed martial law in Lahore on 6 March, administered by General Azam Khan, known for his ruthless efficiency and determination. The army was able to quickly restore order but only after bloody suppression of crowds agitating on the streets. Daultana had to resign soon after. As a little boy, I was a personal witness to the curfew imposed by the martial law authorities on this day and the event has been described in the prologue.

Though Nazimuddin had retained the confidence of people as well as the national assembly, Ghulam Mohammad still dismissed him as prime minister on 17 April 1953. The success of this dishonourable manoeuvre was a curtain raiser for the repeated attacks on the democracy in Pakistan in the coming years.

Mohammad Ali Bogra, another Bengali politician, was Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States when he was summoned to be made prime minister (1953-1955). However, this did not pacify the Bengalis and Muslim League lost the 1954 provincial election in Bengal by a coalition of parties, called United Front. Ghulam Mohammad, having gained confidence with Nazimuddin’s removal, now dissolved the constituent  assembly on 24 October 1954, which was challenged by the speaker Tamizuddin Khan. A Federal Court headed by Justice Mohammad Munir, in a majority vote, decided against the speaker and in favour of the governor-general. This was the first judicial verdict to uphold the improper dissolution of an assembly, introducing the infamous ‘doctrine of necessity’, and was the harbinger of many such anti-democracy court decisions in future.

Governor general Ghulam Mohammad began to suffer from paralysis and was replaced by the interior minister Iskander Mirza on 7 August 1955. Three days later, Bogra was dismissed as prime minister. Iskander Mirza was born to an aristocratic family in Bengal and was a member of the Indian Army as well as the Indian Political Service. His ambition for power and unconstitutional interferences in political matters led to the dismissal of four prime ministers during a mere two years.

Next in line as prime minister was Chaudhary Mohammad Ali, our fourth prime minister (1955-1956). He was a distinguished bureaucrat and as Finance Secretary in 1946 had been responsible for putting together the famous ‘poor man’s budget’ presented by Liaquat Ali Khan for the Congress/Muslim League interim government. His tenure was known for two major events. Firstly, One Unit, meaning that the four provinces, states and tribal areas of the western wing were merged into One Unit, now called West Pakistan. This move, effective 5 October 1955, was engineered by the West Pakistani politicians to bring about parity with East Pakistan which had a population larger than all the four West Pakistani provinces combined and would have dwarfed the individual western provinces in any democratic parliamentary set up.

Lahore became the new capital of the province of West Pakistan. This meant that thousands of civil servants of the three provinces other than Punjab had to move hurriedly to Lahore and resettle with their families in totally new and strange environment. Their mothers, wives and children had no idea why their settled way of life had to be suddenly disrupted and uprooted to satisfy the selfish political aims of their leaders. These included my maternal uncle who arrived with his family from Karachi and found a place to live in Sant Nagar. In time, he moved to Wahdat Colony, a sprawling new and well planned housing scheme near Lahore canal consisting of thousands of quarters, which was built to accommodate civil servants especially those displaced by one unit. The word ‘Wahdat’ in fact means unity.

Chaudhary Mohammad Ali also gave the country its first constitution which was passed by the constituent assembly on 29 February 1956, designating Pakistan as an Islamic Republic. However, the newly created Republican Party, formed by civil and military bureaucracy and backed by Iskander Mirza to facilitate his power games, forced his resignation on 8 September 1956.

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Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (1956-57), the leader of the Awami League, succeeded Ch. Mohammad Ali as the fifth prime minister on 8 September 1956 forming a coalition government with Republican Party. He was a seasoned politician, the first one after Liaquat Ali Khan, and commanded much respect in both the provinces of Pakistan. He had been the chief minister of Bengal in 1946-47 and had joined hands with Gandhi in Calcutta during partition to maintain peace in the strife torn city. He regarded it his duty to remain in West Bengal after partition to keep communal harmony and for this reason had refused the offer of ministries and ambassadorship by Quaid e Azam. According to his biographer, Begum Shaista Ikramullah, “He arrived in Pakistan literally in the clothes he stood in. All his belongings, his priceless carpets, his valuable collection of records, his house with all its contents, had been left behind”.

Suhrawardy started to lose popularity quickly when, displaying a lack of judgement, he decided to support the British-French-Israeli invasion of Suez Canal in 1956 against the hugely popular Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt. It did not help matters when he called the Arabs ‘a collection of zeroes’.

I had the good fortune to see President Nasser personally and to hear him speak when he came to Pakistan for a six day visit in 1960 at the invitation of President Ayub Khan. He came to Lahore also and was the guest of honour at a function arranged at Islamia College, Railway Road. My father had taken me along to hear his speech. There were about 500 people there, listening to the proceedings quietly sitting on wooden chairs under a cloth canopy. Nasser addressed the people in Arabic in five minute segments, interspersed by its Urdu translation. I was too young to make much sense of what he was saying but was quite impressed by his tall and imposing personality. He was still extremely popular in the Arab and Muslim countries and was given an enthusiastic welcome wherever he went.

During the Suez war four years earlier, the people of Lahore had reacted to the invasion  with their usual fervour. A joke had made the rounds in those days and became very popular. There is a procession moving slowly on a road somewhere in Lahore with the usual banners and loud slogans when a passer-by, intrigued by the participants’ passion, happens to ask one of the leaders as to where exactly are they heading to.  “We are going to Egypt”, comes the bold reply. “In that case”, suggests the passer-by helpfully, “go through Beadon Road [a small street in downtown]. It’s a short cut”.

In line with Suhrawardy’s mercurial personality, his foreign policy was also marked with contradictions. His exchange of visits with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai made him popular but he continued to attack Soviet Union for its internal political policies forcing it to move further towards India. Suhrawardy was the pioneer of Pakistan’s foreign policy excessively supporting the United States, a policy that was pursued by the coming administrations. He accepted leasing out an air force base to the United States Air Force. The 1960 incident when the Russians downed an American intelligence gathering U-2 plane which was later discovered to have flown out of Peshawar airbase severely compromised the country’s relations with Soviet Union. Closer home, after the Republican Party withdrew its support, Suhrawardy was forced to tender his resignation on 18 October 1957.

The next prime minister, the sixth, was I.I. Chundrigar, who has the distinction of holding office for the shortest period of time – a mere two months. He was an ex-leader of Bombay Muslim League and was the member for commerce in the 1946 interim government. He resigned after losing a vote of no-confidence over the question of reform of Electoral College, which had ironically become a non-issue by that time.

Chundrigar was succeeded by the seventh prime minister, Sir Feroz Khan Noon, on 16 December 1957. Noon had an impressive background. He was the first Indian to be appointed as a military advisor for Indian Army affairs to the Churchill government during the war and was then appointed as member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, the top governing body.

His tenure is notable for negotiating the purchase of Gwadar port located strategically on the coast of Balochistan, which up to that time was owned by the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, for a price of US$ 3 million. The port then became a part of Pakistan on 8 September 1958. His English wife Begum Viqar-un-Nisa Noon also played an important role in the transaction. The Sultanate of Muscat and Oman was a British protectorate and she lobbied with the British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill and the British parliament for getting approval for the purchase from the House of Lords.

Even this achievement failed to help Noon retain power as dark clouds soon started to gather on the political front. On 20 September, Abdul Hakim, speaker of the East Pakistan’s assembly was physically expelled from the House after he was alleged to have become insane. On 23 September, the deputy speaker, Shahed Ali, who was then presiding over the assembly’s proceedings, was physically attacked in the House and died soon after. The situation was exacerbated by rumours that the state of Kalat in Baluchistan was making plans to secede from the Federation.

Using the volatile conditions as the pretext, President Iskander Mirza proclaimed martial law against his own party’s administration on 7 October 1958 and removed the prime minister. The Commander-in-Chief of the army General Ayub Khan was appointed the chief martial law administrator.

Mirza’s rule proved to be a remarkably short one as he was forced to quit by General Ayub Khan only twenty days later on 27 October, making himself the president. Iskander Mirza was exiled to go to London where he spent the rest of his days running a small Pakistani cuisine hotel until his death. According to his son Humayun Mirza who wrote a biography of his father, he once said to his Iranian wife at the London hospital where he died, “Nahid, we cannot afford medical treatment, so just let me die.” This was the end of the once mighty Governor General / president of the country who used to dismiss prime ministers almost as a hobby.

This brings us to the close of the second chapter, which covered our first ten formative years. I and my country were now about to enter one of the most exciting and eventful periods of our lives, which brought us both happiness and tragedy. We encountered experiences in this phase we never thought could ever be possible and emerged from it much more sober and mature.

Chapter-1 Birth

I was born on a spring day in 1947, just a few months before my country was born. As I grew up, I never had to remember my age as everybody knew the age of my country exactly, and that was my age too. But there the similarity ends. As a person, I am now in my mid-seventies, an old man often called a senior citizen by people who want to be kind and charitable. My country, on the other hand, is still youthful and bumbling around in the world like an angry young man.

That April of 1947 was a very fateful time in the history of the subcontinent of India.  Cataclysmic events were about to take place in the country very soon but nobody could foresee them at that time. With the benefit of hindsight, these events appear to have followed a logical pattern based on the actions taken by the leaders of that time, but even they had little idea of what their decisions would eventually lead to. The country and its people was hurtling towards its inescapable fate.

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Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had started his political career in Bombay as a staunch believer in Hindu-Muslim Unity. He joined Indian National Congress in 1906, which coincidentally was the same year as the birth of All India Muslim League in Dacca. Though initially opposed to the basic demand of Muslim League of separate electorates for Muslims, Jinnah joined Muslim League in 1913 supporting its demand. He achieved a major success in 1916 when he piloted the Lucknow Pact between Congress and Muslim League which granted major legislative safeguards to Muslim in the central and provincial governments, and Congress for the first time agreed to separate electorates for Muslims. The Pact was proof of Jinnah’s outstanding leadership qualities and a famous Congress leader Mrs. Sarojini Naidu called him the ‘ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity’.

However, Jinnah was eventually disenchanted with the Congress’s duplicity. The fateful year was 1928 and, in the words of Stanley Wolpert, “by year’s end the castle of Hindu-Muslim unity, built of shifting sand of communal mistrust, suspicion, and doubt would be washed away by tide of frustration and discontent”. He resigned from Congress at the end of this year. The catalyst for this ‘parting of ways’ as he put it was the Nehru Report, drafted by a committee chaired by Motilal Nehru, father of the Congress leader and the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, which had been given the task by the political parties in India to draft a constitution which the Indian people could use to govern their country. The Report rejected separate electorates for Muslims (and other minorities) without offering any compensatory benefits for the Muslim community except that minorities would be given reserved seats in parliament. This concept was the cornerstone of Lucknow Pact, so carefully and adroitly drafted by Jinnah and this hurt him deeply.

Jinnah still did not lose heart. He tried to save the Nehru report and make it acceptable to Muslims by proposing four points as a compromise which for the first time did away with the cherished Muslim separate electorates but suggested some alternate proposals to compensate for this loss. Congress rejected these proposals too. This was to have a major impact on the history of the sub-continent of India. Jinnah described this moment as ‘the parting of the ways’ and it was an important step towards the eventual partition of India. Jinnah would never try to reconcile Congress with the Muslim League again. Instead, it was time to make clear what was acceptable from Muslim point of view. In January 1929, Jinnah then presented his famous Fourteen Points which were to be the basis of Muslim demands from this time to the creation of Pakistan.

The rejection of his compromise formula for the Nehru report had convinced him that, behind the façade of nationalism, communal unity and religious tolerance, Congress’s sole aim was to achieve Hindu rule after independence. Sumit Sarkar, an Indian historian says, “Hindu communalism had significantly weakened the national anti-imperialist cause at a critical moment.” How correct and foresighted he was? Less than fifty years after independence, India came out in its true colors with the rule of Janata Party and now BJP making life difficult for Indian Muslims in every way possible.

From this time onwards, Jinnah gradually moved towards the idea of a separate and independent state for Muslims. This was going to be a long and arduous struggle, taking many turns and detours on the way, but eventually successful due to the relentless efforts and incredibly sharp political acumen of Jinnah. In this, he was no doubt helped by the transparently clear religious bias of the Congress leaders and a series of political blunders made by them in the next ten years. We shall encounter each of these blunders as we go along.

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It is arguable exactly when the campaign for a separate and independent homeland for Muslims really began. Each event in history is of course the stepping stone for the next one and, in a sense, it was the War of Independence of 1857 which laid the first foundation for the true freedom for Muslims. The way the British rulers singled out Muslims for retribution started to make them conscious of their separate identity. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-98) then propounded the idea of Muslims as a separate nation working tirelessly to make them conscious of the need to get modern education. Partition of Bengal by the Viceroy Lord Curzon in 1905 for administrative reasons but indirectly favoring Muslims, and its quick reversal six years later in 1911 when the British government buckled under the fierce agitation launched by Congress and other Hindus, convinced Muslims that they could survive only by having their voices heard through a robust political organization, the Muslim League.

The unfortunate end of Khilafat Movement (to protest moves by Britain and France to break up the Turkish empire after WW1) subsequent to the abolishment of caliphate by Turkey’s President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in October 1924 saw Hindu-Muslim riots breaking out all over India bringing to an end the brief period of ideal communal harmony generated during this movement. And finally, the uneventful conclusion of the three round-table conferences in London in the early thirties with Congress showing its true teeth and being demonstrably intransigent left Muslims with no choice but to start looking for a leader to lead them to the promised land as visualized by the poet/philosopher Iqbal. And this was none other than Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Allama Iqbal, in his presidential address at the Allahabad session of Muslim League in 1930, called for the Muslims of the sub-continent to work towards achieving an independent homeland. M.J. Akbar, the famous Indian journalist and writer says, “the geography of Pakistan today is exactly as envisaged in Iqbal’s ‘ Muslim India’, except that it is a separate nation.” Chaudhary Rahmat Ali wrote a four page pamphlet in 1933 called ‘Now or Never” proposing the name Pakistan.

And this brings us forward to 1937 which can be said to be the year when the march towards the country which was to be called Pakistan started in earnest. Ironically, the movement for Pakistan started off with the worst possible defeat for Muslim League in the all India elections held in early 1937, mandated by the Government of India Act of 1935. In the eyes of its arch enemy the Congress Party, Muslim League for all practical purposes was now a dead entity. It won the elections only in UP, capturing 29 out of 35 Muslim seats which it competed. Elsewhere though it’s tally was dismal: in Punjab 2 out of 7, in Assam 9 out of 34, in Bengal 39 out of 117, and none in Sind and NWFP. Overall, it won only 109 reserved Muslim seats out a total of 482. Congress, on the other hand, did remarkably well, winning throughout India in open constituencies and formed government in eight out of eleven provinces.

Jinnah had to live with the fact that Hindu majority provinces would now be ruled by Hindus, but Muslim league would not rule the largest provinces with Muslim majorities, Bengal and Punjab, as regional parties kept the League out of power in these provinces too. A lesser man would have been cowed down by this disaster, but not Jinnah. In fact, this proved to be the turning point in history for himself, the Muslim League, and the Muslims in India, as the events in the next ten years would testify.

The Congress party victory went to its leader Jawaharlal Nehru’s head, and he declared that “there are only two forces in the country, the Congress and [British] government”. Continuing in the same vain he said that “who are the Muslims? Apparently only those who follow Mr. Jinnah and the Muslim League ……… [which] represents a group of Muslims ………… for functioning in the higher regions of the upper middle classes and having no contacts with the Muslim masses and few even with the Muslim lower middle classes. May I suggest to Mr. Jinnah that I come into greater touch with the Muslim masses than most the members of the Muslim League.”

Still hopeful of possible cooperation between Congress and Muslim League, Jinnah made overtures to Congress for possible coalition governments in UP and Bombay. He appealed to Gandhi, and even suggested a nationwide Congress-League agreement. Gandhi however backed out replying, “I wish I could do something but I am utterly helpless”, and the opportunity was lost.

This was the first blunder made by the Congress party. As Wolpert mentions, “it would not be the last of Nehru’s political errors of judgment in his dealings with Jinnah, but it was one of most fatal mistakes he ever made in a moment of hubris. More than Iqbal, it was Nehru who charted a new mass strategy for the League, prodding and challenging Jinnah to leave the drawing rooms of politics to reach down to the hundred million Muslims who spent most of each day laboring in rural fields.”

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This phenomenon of ‘phoenix rising from the ashes’, of people overcoming catastrophe to becoming extremely successful in their next venture as the Muslim League did in 1937, is something which I have observed many times in my life. I have always been a keen observer of life and it fascinates me to see people, many of them my colleagues, brushing off a situation of extreme misfortune or humiliation, and turning this into a new successful career.

One of my friends, a colleague in ICI, was a successful corporate employee. Suave, outgoing and having a pleasant personality, he worked as production manager and then transferred to sales. His performance for some reason did not come up to the company’s expectations and he was asked to leave. This was a low point for him; he was in his late thirties and a job was everything for him. But he kept his cool and did not break fences with the company. He decided to start a business by manufacturing one of the packing materials for ICI and as his prices and product quality were satisfactory, he became a regular supplier. As it turned out, he was making many times the amount of money in this business than he would have earned as a company employee.

About the same happened with another colleague of mine, except that leaving the company was his own decision but forced by circumstances that he could not control. He became a partner in an engineering company which won many contracts and became one of the biggest manufacturing concerns in the area.

Corporate life, a job with a local or multinational company, is like a tranquilizer. It lulls its people into a sense of comfort which, after a few years, becomes impossible to get out of. A secure income credited to your bank account every month, paid medical expenses, subsidized transport, fringe benefits depending upon seniority. One becomes a slave to a routine. Though a business usually offers much more lucrative returns, it becomes impossible to detach oneself from this cocoon of comfort and security and move into the ‘real’ world. Except that is, when a disaster strikes. One is thrown into depths of despair. There is acute loss of self-esteem and a feeling of guilt takes over. One reaches a point of no return.

And then this disaster turns out to be a blessing in disguise.

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From 1937 onwards Jinnah threw himself into the job. Turning an elitist, feudalistic party into a mass movement became his passion. In the next three years, the Muslim League’s membership multiplied from a few thousand to over half a million. The party’s constitution was amended and modernized to make it possible for a man in the street to become not only a member but possibly an active worker. Nehru had thrown a challenge to Jinnah and he was never a person to run away from a challenge.

Congress then a made its second blunder, again the result of hubris, but this one much more damaging than Nehru’s fateful words. It boldly imposed its doctrine and policies in the eight provinces where it had formed governments, many of which were anathema for Muslims. Wardha Scheme, a brain child of Gandhi as a basic education program, was introduced into all Congress education ministries. Teaching was mainly to be in Hindi and spinning cotton cloth by hand on wheel was made part of the school curriculum. All students were expected to bow before a picture of Gandhi hung in their schools. Furthermore, Band-e-Matram, a nationalist Hindu song was required by law to be sung in the morning assemblies of all schools and at the start of the official business every day in provincial assemblies. Cases of violence against Muslims multiplied with police authorities sometimes remaining silent spectators. A special committee under Raja Syed Mohammad Mehdi of Pirpur tasked to investigate Muslim community’s complaints, listed scores of specific instances in its report issued in November 1938 of harm to Muslim properties and lives in Congress run provinces. Muslim League membership drive received a big boost by such Congress governments’ follies and alienated many Muslims who previously considered themselves nationalist and pro-Congress.

Many Indian writers contest this version of history and it is possible that Congress was sincere in its efforts to maintain a balance between the two communities. Hindus had been given power in India after a very long time, ruled first by the Muslims and then the British, starting from the Mameluke dynasty rule in year 1211. Their yearning to infuse some kind of Hindu symbolism in governance and education should not be grudged but in some cases the power was misused or hurt sensitivities. The hard fact of life is that in politics, people’s perceptions are more important than reality; and Congress lost the battle of perceptions, and thus the important Muslim votes during this period.

The Congress rule finally came to an end after Britain went to war with Germany in 1939 and announced that India, being a part of its empire, was also at war. Congress objected to the fact that it had not been consulted before this decision and all its provincial governments resigned. The Muslim League, happy to see the end of these governments, celebrated the end of Congress rule as the Day of Deliverance.

This was the background in which the Lahore Resolution was passed on 23 March 1940 demanding an independent sovereign state consisting of “areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority, as in the North-Western and Eastern zones of India”, though the name Pakistan was not mentioned in the document. As Wolpert said. “it lowered the final curtain on any prospects for a single united independent India …… There was no turning back. The ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity had totally transformed himself into Pakistan’s great leader.”

As the War progressed, so did the Congress’s opposition to it. The Allied Forces had reached a low point in the war by the loss of Far East to Japanese and the war in western Europe was also going badly for them. Congress seriously miscalculated this weakness and thought that the British army was about to abandon India, like they had abandoned Burma. The party passed “Quit India” resolution on 8 August 1942 starting a country-wide agitation. Gandhi announced to his followers, ”every one of you should from this moment onwards, consider yourself as free man or woman …… We shall either free India or die in the attempt.”. These were strong words coming from Gandhi and the British took them as open rebellion, which indeed it was. Gandhi and the entire Congress working committee were arrested next day before dawn. Soon almost the whole country was engulfed in violence, regular army troops were called and the agitators silenced with full force.

Muslim League, in a masterly move, immediately announced it opposition to the movement and declared that in its view the Quit India movement was an attempt to “force the Mussalmans to submit and surrender to Congress terms and dictation.”

In retrospect, Quit India movement was the third blunder made by Congress. It achieved practically nothing in their drive towards freedom, cost significant loss of lives and property, and at the same time created a belligerency in the British rulers’ minds towards them which was not there previously and did not help their cause. On the other hand, as an unintended consequence, it greatly enhanced Jinnah’s standing with the British and gave the demand for Pakistan a renewed impetus. The uprising had in fact remained confined to only some parts of India: parts of Bengal, Bihar, the UP, other Hindu-majority provinces and the NWFP.

My father had observed this fact also. He was travelling by train from Jaunpur to Lahore looking at terrible scenes of carnage, arson and destruction on the way. However, all this ceased suddenly as soon as the train entered Punjab where there was total calm and quiet all around. He also described the scenes in UP villages when the British forces arrived to quell the violence. Muslim households were told to place a hookah in front of their homes to identify them as such. Police or troops would then target the rest of the homes for their action, which in some cases could be extremely harsh and violent.

Gandhi’s reaction to this war when he saw “no difference between the Fascist or Nazi powers and the Allies [as] all are exploiters, all resort to ruthlessness to the extent required to compass their end” and opposed the war efforts, was curiously in marked contrast to his reaction during the First World War when he had fully supported the British war efforts. He was honored with the Kaiser-i-Hind medal on 3 June 1915 and later volunteered as a personal recruiting agent for soldiers travelling through his native Gujarat on foot. This was done in the belief that, in return for such cooperation, the grateful British would grant India dominion status once the war ended. He faced some criticism for this excessive show of support and was in for a rude shock when these gestures were rewarded by the British after the war by promulgation of Rowlatt Act in 1918, a punitive law giving wide powers to government to arrest Indians without the right of appeal. Gandhi was sorely disappointed and never forgot this ‘betrayal’.

It is possible then that Gandhi’s feelings during the 2^nd World War were the result of a “rebound’ of his experience during the previous war. Men’s actions are always an extension of their past experiences, good or bad, and skewed towards correcting the past ‘mistakes’. This may explain his final call to his people before arrest: “Satyagrahis [agitators] must go out to die and not to live. They must seek and face death. It is only when individuals go out to die that the nation will survive”, a strange call coming from a person who had preached non-violence all his life.

(4)

My paternal grandfather, Syed Zaki Hasan, belonged to a class of land owners, called zamindars, with not very large holdings but not small either. Their way of living was typical of the Muslim land owning classes of India. There were thousands of people living on their lands, mostly Hindus, who were treated benevolently and paternalistically but sometimes harshly. The lands were administered by my grandfather and then, after his death, by father’s elder brother, Syed Ali Jafar. My father remembered poor villagers being giving punishments for minor offenses, which was usually being beaten with a shoe standing in the hot sun. Jootey lagao salay ko, would be an order issued by an elder and obeyed instantly. The culprit would be tied to a tree trunk and given the punishment, severity of which depended upon the order giver’s mood. Nobody ever raised an objection because that was considered the normal way and my father accepted it though never quite comfortable with such practices.

They were settled in the city of Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh (UP) located 228 km southeast of the state capital Lucknow. The city was founded in the year 1359 by the Indian ruler Feroz Shah Tughlaq, who named it Jaunpur in memory of his cousin Muhammad bin Tughlaq, fondly known as Jauna Khan. The city is famous for its rich cultural and historical heritage. The family had in fact moved to Oudh (now UP) from Punjab some time ago. Its patriarch was Syed Jalaluddin Bukhari (1199-1291), a descendant of Imam Ali Naqi AS, who had migrated from the city of Bukhara (now in Uzbekistan) settling in southern Punjab. His grandson later moved to the city of Gujrat. My great-great grandfather was also settled in Punjab and his wife has her grave in the Miani Sahib graveyard in Lahore

The merger of these two families, one from Punjab and the other from Oudh, brought about an interesting mix of complexions. My great grandfather’s family side was probably very fair in complexion while the great grandmother’s side could have been slightly darker. This resulted in very mixed results in the coming generations. My uncle was dark while his wife, also belonging to the same family, was born very fair and their elder children were also extremely fair in complexion.

My grandmother was also a majestic woman, lording over the household. She was not overly burdened with the care of her children who were the responsibility of their ayas. My father remembered his ayah known as Pathani very fondly (calling her boo’a, which is a fond name for mother) because it was she who took care of him day and night, and he saw his mother only occasionally. Among her other chores, she used to rub oil on father’s hair every night. Once she mistook one of his cousins who was the same age as father and rubbed oil on his hair instead. When my father walked in, she realized her mistake but in her fury, instead of getting some more oil, she called the cousin back and started to vigorously ‘transfer’ the oil from the cousin’s hair to my father by the use of her fingers. It was only when the cousin’s loud protests were heard outside that she stopped in her efforts.

My grandmother used to hold court reclining on her bed or charpoy, either placed inside a room or outside in the courtyard. She had developed an obsession about cleanliness and her charpoy would be thoroughly washed with water every day to keep it ‘paak’ (clean in a religious sense). Nobody would be allowed to touch it, let alone dare to sit on it. This led sometimes to funny situations. One of our uncles who was older than her would come sometimes to visit her. Etiquette forbid her to keep reclining on the bed in his presence nor would she allow him to sit on her bed. A compromise was developed over time; both of them kept standing throughout their meeting!

Muslim landed gentry though immensely proud of their ancestry and valor, apparently did not put much store in education and few of them got beyond the school level. My father, by no means a brilliant student in his school and college days, was still the first graduate in Jaunpur in his extended family. Once while sitting in his class in Grade 6, he noticed one of his uncles arriving at the door who then barged inside the class without preamble and started talking with his teacher, apparently an acquaintance. While my father was trying to recover from this shock, the uncle spotted my father sitting there. Uncle’s chest puffed up with pride and he thundered at the teacher, “ye mera poot haey, is ko kuch hua tu teri khair naheen” (this is my boy, if anything happens to him, you will not be spared). My father became red with embarrassment but could do little about it.

———-

My grandfather died in the year 1918. The circumstances of his death are shrouded in mystery. Jaunpur in those days was basking in the heat of Indian summer. It was evening time in mohalla Balwaghat and, as usual, all family members including my grandparents were relaxing in the courtyard built in the center of the house, some half reclining on charpoys and others sprawled on chairs.  Water had been sprinkled on the baked earth spreading a cool, nice earth aroma all around. Like most houses in those days, there was a well dug up in a corner of the courtyard which catered to all the water needs of the household.

Suddenly somebody saw a little she-mouse (choohiya) lurking around the corners. It was chased away and in desperation, perhaps finding nowhere else to go, jumped in the well. My grandfather stooped down to peep into the well, to see how it could be fished out of the water. Something happened, he probably stooped too low, and then all of a sudden, he himself fell down into the well.

Everybody jumped. There were quite a few people around. They all rushed to the well and started to shout into the well calling his name. Ropes were dangled inside the well and a young man climbed down to the bottom. But strangely, though only a few minutes had passed, my grandfather was nowhere to be found. Evening slowly turned into night. Some more people climbed down and starting groping in the muddy earth around the well beneath the water level.

Grandfather was found many hours later, his body caught up in the mud somewhere deep inside the well. It’s a mystery how, being a grown up man and living all his life around wells, he could have fallen down. And even then, why did it take so many hours before his body could be found.

There was, of course, an explanation available, and believed by all present, that it was ……….. a ‘jinn’ who had done it! It was known within his close circle that he was trying to bring one particular jinn, who was living inside the well, under his control by means of a certain wazifaa (verses taken from the Quran). This was something which was not uncommon in those days and, in fact, believed by some people even today. Something had gone wrong with the wazifaa and the jinn was successful in pulling him down inside the well.

This fascination with the phenomenon known as the jinn was in fact deeply rooted in our family. Stories about various encounters with them over our many generations were as common as anecdotes about real people, narrated again and again by family elders to an eager audience of men, women and children sitting around a fire during the long nights of winter. One of these related to my great grandfather, Syed Faqeer Hussain.

This happened to be the month of Muharram. My great grandfather was employed a little distance away from home and on that day coming back to be with his family for the Ashura. He was riding his horse while his servant was walking alongside him. The night fell but they continued the journey through the vast countryside in pitch darkness. Some distance away, they could see some lights and, as they came nearer, they could see many people moving around. It turned out to be a well-attended gathering, in fact a majlis, brightly illuminated all around, and some people reciting soz-o-salaam on the stage. My great grandfather also sat down quietly in a corner, marveling their good luck on finding such a grand majlis in the middle of nowhere.

A few minutes later, somebody in the organizers spotted them and called for my great grandfather to please come up on the stage. When he got there, he was requested to recite some soz-o-salaam. He tried to excuse himself saying that he did not have his bayaaz (a personal diary containing selected verses) with him at this time. His host however, declared that this was not a problem and immediately presented his bayaaz to him. He did not have time to wonder how his personal bayaaz left at home managed to appear at this place and time so conveniently. Anyhow, he recited some verses of his, received due acclaim and asked permission to leave, at which point he was presented with some sweets as the traditional nazraana.

He and his servant started to move again on their way, but at that very moment a strange thing happened. Suddenly, all the lights disappeared as did the people. One moment they were standing in bright lights surrounded by dozens of people, next moment there was nothing. They found themselves standing alone in total darkness and not a soul around. Though terrified, they somehow found the courage to continue their journey and reached home early in the morning. But now he felt the effects of terror for the first time and developed a high fever. When he recovered his senses a few days later, he narrated his experience to others who found it difficult to believe what had happened. But still there was something which gave credence to this mysterious tale; the sweets he had received at the majlis were still there and, as everybody noticed, were out of this world in aroma and taste.

Whether true or not, this story has been told countless of times in our family, generation after generation, and it is up to us whether to believe it or not. According to the Muslim tradition, jinns are a reality as they have been mentioned specifically in the Quran (Surah Al-Jinn). They are however, a species apart and strictly forbidden to mingle with human beings. Despite this, humans cannot refrain from meddling in their affairs. But, as my father used to say in jest, for some reason all the jinns seem to have been left behind in India!

Nevertheless, fascination with jinns continues in our family, even in this generation. One of my distant cousins, called Nausha Bhai, was working as an assistant in my father’s office in Lahore. He was a very healthy, sturdy young man but one day suddenly became seriously ill, to the extent of spitting blood occasionally and became thin as a stick. It was said that he too was trying to get a jinn under his control but the process went horribly wrong (amal ulta parr gaya). Fortunately, he managed to recover after sometime and is now a happy grandfather living in Karachi.

What about myself? Though having a scientific mind and finding it difficult to believe this strange and unexplainable phenomenon, I can identify at least two occasions in my life when I seem to have encountered either jinns, or something very close, in circumstances which are difficult to explain otherwise. Both of these ‘experiences’ happened in Lahore; one, when I was about seventeen years old and the second, about fifteen years later. But more of this later, when we get to this stage of my life.

(5)

My father, Syed Ali Haider, was only two years old at the time of grandfather’s death and brought up by my taya who was many years his senior and held in great awe by everybody. We were privileged to see a glimpse of the grandeur of our family rule when my taya was compelled by circumstances to move to Pakistan with his family in the late fifties after the zamindari system was abolished by the Congress Party government in India in 1951 and the Muslim landlords became landless overnight. This was a clever move by the Hindu dominated Congress to break the stronghold of Muslims on the land based economy of UP and other north Indian states, and was engineered by Vallabhbhai Patel, the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister of India.

Taya was in his mid-sixties at that time but his imperial and awe inspiring personality was about the same as it probably would have been thirty years ago when he was lording over his lands in Jaunpur. He had a commanding voice and issued orders in a way which demanded obedience. He obviously mellowed over the years, compelled in part by circumstances which forced him to lead a life of seclusion. But he maintained his dignity and composure to the very end.

My father had received his schooling in Jaunpur and graduated from the Allahabad University. He was a keen sportsman, playing hockey and football regularly during his school and college days. While at school, he once had his two front teeth smashed by an opponent’s swinging hockey, one of which ended up in his stomach. He was bleeding but silently returned home, crept into his bed and ensconced himself in quilt. He was found out only after his boo’a saw drops of blood and raised an alarm. He carried a gold tooth fitted in his mouth for the rest of his life. After graduation, for some reason which is not clear, he found himself fascinated by leather and its products. He used to show us some delicately tooled leather products, such as, bags, purses and pouches personally crafted by him in early days. This predictably proved to be an anathema to his family who were rather incensed by this curious choice of profession. Undaunted, he then moved to raw leather and remained associated with it in its various forms throughout his life. There were three major centers of raw leather in the undivided India: Madras (now Chennai), Cawnpore in UP and Lahore. He spent time at the first two briefly and then arrived in Lahore in 1937 which was to become his permanent home.

His expertise lay in accurate evaluation and categorization of raw leather hides and skins for use in tanneries and finished leather products. This was critically important as each hide or skin varied widely in quality and price, and the valuations had a significant bearing on the bottom line. During the war days he worked for a firm called Cooper & Allen who had been assigned the sole purchasing franchise for raw leather by the British government. He then moved to the Bata Shoe factory at their Lahore plant situated at Jallo (which is now close to the Indian border) as their raw leather purchaser. In those days it was a multinational firm owned by the Bata family of Czechoslovakia and the managing director was always from that country. This job would serve to be a stepping stone not only for his own raw leather business started in early fifties, but also for building long lasting relationships with many major business magnates in the leather industry, with some of whom he worked closely in later years.

One of these was a business started by three young friends, Nazar Mohammad, Muhammad Hussain and Mohammad Saeed. These three finished their college together and decided to try their luck in footwear manufacture. Money was pooled by all three and the venture started. They used to come to Bata for some of their needs and thus developed an acquaintance with my father. Unfortunately, the business flopped leaving the friends destitute. They didn’t lose hope though and restarted the business with capital now provided by Mohammad Saeed’s father. This was then the start of a huge business empire called Service Industries. The three partners’ friendship was legendary and lasted not only their lifetime but their progenies as well. In early seventies, my father’s firm Millat Hides entered into a partnership with Service Industries, becoming its sole raw leather supplier. This arrangement continued for about twenty years till his retirement.

Many years later I had occasion to meet them in their Gulberg office when my father was visiting them and took me along. We went to the office of Nazar Mohammad sahib where Muhammad Hussain sahib was also present. I then witnessed a strange scene. Muhammad Hussain sahib was peeling an apple and cutting it into small pieces which he would then put in a plate placed before Nazar Muhammad sahib, who would take the slices slowly one by one. This went on for quite some time. Ch. Muhammad Hussain was at that time the CEO of Service Industries while Ch. Nazar Muhammad was the chairman. I would not have believed the scene had I not witnessed it myself.

My father has always been my role model, in a very general way. Whenever I am faced with a vexing problem or a moral issue I try to imagine, not exactly what my father would have done but rather how he would have reacted in such circumstances. It is difficult to explain specifically what this means; but he would usually remain calm and cool, he would not raise his voice even when angry though still sounding very clear and emphatic, he would not compromise over principles and he would always be modest and unassuming. Wearing neat, finely pressed but somewhat well-worn clothes, his years old wrist watch had only the hour hand which he said was good enough for him. During most of my life, I have moved in sophisticated government and corporate circles, observed people expensively dressed and oozing superiority in their talk; my mind immediately wandering off to my father thinking how different he was compared to such people. Though having an extrovert personality and with a keen sense of humor, when sitting in the company of his friends he would hardly ever try to dominate the conversation, his contribution mainly being to politely agree with whatever the other person was saying and to continue to say something supportive. No wonder he was a popular company among his friends!

Thanks to his business income we, though never extremely rich, were always comparatively well off.  In the fifties we had a motor car, a refrigerator, a dining table and a home telephone when most homes were not used to such ‘luxuries’. Despite this, our style of living remained very modest with none of the fancy furniture, high level dining or travel that families of similar means indulged in. Though it was kept very discreet, my parents used to subsidize many families in need of assistance and took the initiative in making sure that their needs were taken care of.

(6)

Unlike my father’s family, my mother, Saeeda Begum, born 1925, belonged to a well-educated family settled for a long time in Lucknow. My maternal great grandfather Shaikh Akbar Ali’s brother Shaikh Muhammad Jan (1805-1898) was a notable poet with the takhallus (poetic name) Shaad. His collection of poems, called divan, was preserved in the family and finally published by my maternal uncle (and father in law) Hamid Hasan.

My grandfather Mahmood Hasan was born in 1873 and, after getting Maulvi Fazil degree from Punjab University, did his graduation from Allahabad University in 1901. Muslim graduates were a rarity in those days and a mini celebrity. Unlike his elder brother Ali Hasan or younger brother Hadi Hasan, who were in the employment of Maharaja Sahib of Mahmudabad as local administrators and comfortably well off, he shunned what he called the durbar lifestyle and opted instead for the much more modest field of education. As Assistant Headmaster of Colvin Taluqdars’ College, Lucknow, he was a tutor to the children belonging to princely states of India. [ Note: headmaster always used to be British while Taluqdars means landlords]

Like my father who lost his father early, my maternal grandfather too passed away in 1931 when my mother was only six years old. He died suffering from tuberculosis and though he spent some time in a sanatorium at the hill resort of Nainital, could not recover. On his deathbed, he was somehow aware of the exact time of his passing away. On the last day, he asked my grandmother what time it was, murmured to himself something like, “it is still (so many) hours left”, and then waited patiently in his bed for that time to arrive.

Raja Sahib of Mahmudabad was a household name in our family as both brothers of my maternal grandfather were in employment at his estates as local administrators. Raja Sahib Amir Ahmed Khan (1914-73), who ascended the throne after the death of his father called the Maharaja in 1931, was one of Quaid e Azam’s trusted lieutenants. As the largest Muslim landlord of Lucknow, Raja sahib at that time had an income of around two million rupees annually and served as the treasurer of the Muslim League’s central board. Despite his income and status, he was one of the most simple and modest persons one could ever meet. Sometime after partition and merger of Indian states, Raja sahib decided to move to England and lived a simple life in a flat in London for the rest of his life. He visited Lahore once during the sixties and due to close family ties stayed at the home of one of my uncles. He made a memorable comment to my father when they were passing through Gulberg. He said, “yehan to logon ko daulat ki bad hazmi lagti hai.”  A more apt comment on the mentality of Pakistani elite is hardly possible.

———-

Maternal Grandfather’s educational background was a matter of great pride for our family and later on dutifully followed by my mother who chose to go to a regular school herself and get herself a decent education at a time when most girls were not allowed to venture out of their homes or get educated. The reason given for this ugly custom was simple, if educated they would start writing letters to their paramours! The controls didn’t stop at that as even educated girls were permitted only a restricted access to literature. My mother, for example, was discouraged from reading the famous Urdu novel Umrao Jaan Ada written by Mirza Hadi Ruswa, the story of a courtesan and poet, which was a popular reading in those days. She managed to read it many years later after her marriage.

For her schooling, she got more than full support from her mother, who had become a widow at an early age. Ladies of that era could not normally travel in horse carts or addha (bullock cart), the popular carriages of that time. Instead, a doli (small palki or palanquin) used to pick her up from her home, following an elaborate procedure to ensure that ladies’ modesty was not breeched.

The doli would arrive at her house, the doli bearers would make a loud call, aawain? meaning can we enter, and when granted permission would come inside to an external room of the house (called diorrhi), place the doli there and then walk out. Ladies would enter the diorrhi and sit in the doli, carefully drawing curtains all around. Doli bearers would reenter, lift the doli and walk out. Same procedure was followed at the school, which in her case was the Hussainabad School in Kashmiri Mohalla, a well-known school for girls in Lucknow.

My mother was a diligent student and read everything she could lay her hands on. She became a regular reader of English daily newspapers while she was still in school (The Pioneer in those days) and maintained this habit throughout her life. While still in her teens, she started maintaining a diary in which she recorded the important world events of the day and their follow ups. These were the days when the World War II was at its peak and the diary, later passed on to me, records these events faithfully as reported in the newspapers of those days.

She had a remarkable memory and could recite not just single poetic verses as most people do, but whole ghazels of famous poets from Matla to Maqta (first and last verse in a ghazal) casually sitting at home. Likewise famous poems, such as, Iqbal’s Shikwa and Jawab-e-Shikwa and Faiz’s ‘mujh se pehli si ….’, or tanhaii.  I, on the other hand, could hardly recite even a singly verse correctly and was the cause of lingering disappointment for her. My father too, like many people in those days, knew scores of poetic verses by heart, and our home was frequently ringing with verses being quoted to and fro between my mother and father, with me and my sisters and brother being mostly amused silent spectators. My father’s speciality was in fact remembering and reciting poetic verses for bait baazi, a kind of literary game in which one person recites a verse and the other person has to recite a verse which starts with the last letter of the first verse. To add spice to the competition, special ghazals had been developed for this purpose where the second line of every verse ended in a letter which was not very common and thus difficult to start the second verse with. For example, he knew a ghazal in which the last line of every verse ended with the word ‘kaaghaz’ (paper)!  One can only remember those days with nostalgia when such pastimes like bait baazi were common in every household, with both boys and girls participating with much passion and fervor and frequent disputes erupted whether any verse was genuine or just ‘invented’ by the player. In fact, not just bait baazi but that entire era, that culture and civilization, has now disappeared forever or rather ‘gone with the wind’’, as termed by the American author Margaret Mitchell in another context.

My mother had a quiet and remarkably unpretentious personality. She was socially very active in organizing ladies majalis in her local community and its prominent member. Still, when she would go to a very crowded majlis she would often sit on the floor outside with the beggar women and share the food served to them after the majlis without bothering to go inside and meet the hosts. Her technique for dealing with people passing sarcastic or mocking remarks at her was very simple; she would play dumb and agree with them, which would make the remarks fall flat.

She always seemed eager to share whatever she knew about a topic with others. Whenever asked a question, she had the habit of giving a very detailed and reasoned reply as if she was trying to pour out everything she knew for your benefit. God forbid, if you asked her a quick question in the middle of a TV play, her elaborate explanation would end only after somebody begged her to stop!

Maybe because I was the first born, I always felt close to my mother. Or maybe it was because she was unlike most women of her times, never much interested in domestic chores but always willing to discuss literature, politics or world affairs. When I was in college and my cousins and friends came over, she would join us in our conversations and talk freely about everything under the sun. She was a voracious reader and regularly subscribed to literary magazines such as Adab-e-Lateef, Naqoosh and Naqsh. Surprisingly, she was excellent in Mathematics also. For our matriculation exam, we had been given dozens of Geometry theorems and problems to solve and memorize as part of our syllabus and I remember taking help from her frequently to do this. Years later when working at my office, somebody asked me about the formula for calculating compound interest. I said to him, “hang on, let me telephone and ask my mother.” I can never forget the expression of stunned disbelief on his face. She didn’t disappoint us.

(7)

My father had moved to Allahabad after completing his school education. He did his intermediate there followed by bachelors from Allahabad University which had earned a name for itself in the quality of its education, especially in English and Urdu literature. He was also interested in learning music, attending classes at the University Music Association. He had a close circle of friends, one of which happened to be the son of city police chief who came in handy for availing minor perks including free admission to the city theaters and cinemas. Another friend of his there from Jaunpur days was Maulvi Jarrar who also happened to be a family friend.

Maulvi Jarrar had a kind and affectionate nature, a friend of friends. He also happened to be somewhat superstitious and followed certain rules in this respect. One of these was never to travel on a Wednesday, considered a bad omen for quasi-religious reasons. No matter how important the travel might be, this rule was sacrosanct, never to be broken. However, an emergency came up once , Maulvi Jarrar had to be in Jaunpur on a certain Wednesday, my father advised him to make an exception this time, and he agreed.

Everything went according to schedule and he boarded the train. As the departure time came nearer however, Maulvi Jarrar began to develop some doubts in his mind. He started to have visions of some unthinkable calamity if he continued with the travel. The train’s whistle sounded and he became even more uncertain. The train started moving and Maulvi Jarrar now decided he was not going to go after all. He picked up his small bag, went to the door and jumped. By this time, the train had picked up speed and had left the platform. He landed on the ground and broke his leg.

My father went to see him next day in the hospital. As soon as Maulvi Jarrar saw my father, he flew into a rage. “I had told you I didn’t want to travel,” he said, “you forced me into it and now look what has happened to me. Are you happy now?” My father’s explanations failed to make any impression on him. He needed no further proof of his beliefs and became even more firmly attached to his rule of never travelling on a Wednesday.

Maulvi Jarrar’s circle of friends included my maternal uncle, Hamid Hasan, who had settled in Allahabad with his family because of his job there. This friendship led in one way or another to the arrangement of marriage of my parents.

They were married on 31 August 1944 which happened to be the eleventh of Ramazan. It was a subdued affair, on both sides. My father had lost his first wife a few years ago during child birth after less than two years of marriage. He must have felt this deeply because he never talked about it. There was only an oblique mention of her when he told us that he had a full set of musical instruments like sitar and sarangi at his home once and used to practice classical ragas regularly, but then stopped it all on his wife’s request and discarded the musical instruments.

On my mother’s side too there was less than cheerful enthusiasm. And this was because of a tragic incident in the family less than four months before, the death of my mother’s elder sister, Hameeda Begum. She had her home in Bhadmara, which was a village about fifty miles from Lucknow, living with her husband and three children, the eldest a nine years old girl. It was a lovely summer evening in May, her brother’s family was visiting and she was in a festive mood. Then disaster struck.  She was carrying a charpoy in the courtyard of her house with her sister in law at the other end when out of nowhere an insect, probably a snake, bit her in the foot. She screamed, fell down and became unconscious. The husband was called and efforts began to revive her. Soon she took on a bluish hue and it was decided to take her to Lucknow where she could be treated in a hospital. The only transport available at that time was the bullock cart called ‘addha’ enclosed with sheets hung on all four sides, but it moved at its own slow pace. Somewhere along the way, she breathed her last.

The party reached their Lucknow home in Patanala early in the morning. A knock was made on the door, my grandmother got up and opened the door, wondering who could be there so early in the morning. She needed all the power of her strong nerves to sustain her for what she saw there.

———

The subdued mood of the bride and groom’s families did not stop my khala and her cousins however to play all kind of pranks on their brother in law on his first visit to the bride’s house, which was the norm at Lucknow weddings. Some of these were quite simple, like putting salt in his tea cup or chillies in the paan. Others were more elaborate, like the one which involved preparing shami kebabs made from khali ( Kh pronounced as in khilona). Khali is a fibrous material mainly used for washing hair. This was finely grounded, made into a paste and then fried as shami kebabs. It was really horrible stuff, almost impossible to swallow.

Faced with such kind of delicacies, my father’s modus operandi was simple; he would pretend as if everything was normal and he was thoroughly enjoying everything he was being served. While all this was going on and my father would be sitting for dinner in the strictly male company of grave looking elderly gentlemen from the family, there would be a slight movement in the curtains at the door, faint sound of suppressed giggles and excited voices whispering something inside the house. And my father would continue to maintain a poker face. The jury is undecided on exactly who was the winner in this battle of wits. My father, who could claim to have denied my khala the satisfaction of seeing him feel acute discomfort and/or showing annoyance; or my khala and her companions who did succeed after all in feeding him horribly distasteful stuff.

In the evening, my father would change and go out for an evening walk. On the first day when he came back and was asked where he had gone to, he replied that he had gone down to the Chowk. This was a bustling market area and a prime shopping and food hub which was situated at a walking distance from the home. The reply was however received with faint smiles. Same thing happened the next day, but the reply this time was received with laughter. This made him curious and he made some enquiries the next day. It turned out that the word Chowk was also a slang in those days for the place where courtesans and singers used to live. The highly refined and cultured society of Lucknow must be looking like a minefield to a simple folk visiting from Jaunpur.

After marriage, my mother made her home in Lahore, which must have seemed a far cry from her home in Lucknow. She could not a speak or understand a word of Punjabi while most people around her did not speak Urdu. She was used to living as part of a large family at her home in Lucknow with a bustling house full of cousins, aunts and uncles and events happening almost daily. Here, they did not have a single family member living in the same city. Life must have been tough for her but, strangely, I never heard a word of complaint about that life from her ever.

(8)

I was born on 26 April 1947 and named after my mother Saeeda Begum; the name had in fact  been decided much before my birth. My parents were then living in a small house situated on a narrow street branching out from the famous Grand Trunk Road, popularly known at GT Road, running parallel to the back boundary wall of Lahore Railway Station. The street started almost exactly opposite the huge pedestrian bridge linking GT Road with the front of railway station. A couple of years later, my mother suddenly found myself missing in the home and immediately called my father who had his office nearby in a raw leather godown. Some people told him that they had seen a young kid crawling up the stairs on the pedestrian bridge. My father rushed up the stairs and found a strange scene. I was walking, dragging my feet slowly on the bridge crying hopelessly, while a small crowd of young boys was trailing me trying to find out where I wanted to go. Seeing my father, I jumped into his lap and the drama thus ended happily. But the pedestrian bridge remained my favorite haunt for many years and to this day I am always fascinated by trains moving up and down the track looking down from a bridge.

Years later, when I was heading a British company J.P.Coats (Pakistan) Ltd, our regional director Joe Remedios, an Anglo-Indian, was visiting Karachi. During discussions he revealed that he was borne in a flat facing GT Road in Calcutta. I told him that I too was born in a house facing GT Road in Lahore and we marveled at this strange coincidence. We both owed our thanks to the great king Sher Shah Suri who ruled this part of the land 1537 to 1545 and during his short reign built the magnificent GT Road linking Calcutta with Peshawar, a road slightly over 2000 km long, which is still travelled by thousands of people every day in both Pakistan and India.

This day is noteworthy for another reason. It was on 26 April 1947 that Jinnah had written to the viceroy Mountbatten supporting H.S. Suhrawardi’s proposal for the establishment of an independent sovereign state of Bengal. Jinnah had said, “I shall be delighted ………they had much better remain united and independent. I am sure they would be on friendly terms with us.”. Congress had, of course, later vetoed this proposal.

Punjab was in turmoil in those days. Communal strife had been going off and on since late 1946 but intense violence suddenly erupted in February 1947 in all major cities including Lahore and Amritsar after which governor rule was imposed and Governor Jenkins took direct control of the Punjab Province. But this failed to quell the killings, arson and lootings. Previously confined to major cities, the savagery now spread to villages engulfing prosperous lush green countryside “like cancerous cells of fanatical hatred cut loose and growing at such alarming a rate that there seemed to be no control possible, no inhibiting force available to stop them.”

Hundreds of thousands of refugees now for the first time started to move from ravaged villages to the cities. In anticipation of partition of Punjab along communal lines, mass migration began of Hindus and Sikhs from western Punjab to eastern Punjab and Delhi, and of Muslims in the reverse direction, by train and by road. Miles-long lines of horse carts and bullock carts loaded with people and essential belongings began to move in all directions in the countryside presenting a pathetic scene of helplessness and misery.

Lahore during this time had become the center of looting and arson. One particular incident stands out though among all this mayhem which was personally witnessed by my father and left a deep impression on him. This was the burning of the Shah Alami Bazaar on the night of 20^th and 21^st June 1947.

Shah Alami Bazaar situated inside Shah Alami Gate was one of the richest hubs of the walled city and most of it was owned by the Hindus and Sikhs who were the business elite while the Muslims of the area were small traders, shop owners or workers. There were grand havelis and houses inside the gate depicting the richness of the residents. Lahore was loved by the Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs who could not bear to see it becoming part of Pakistan, and to this end they began to fortify the Shah Alami Gate with arms and ammunition and vowed to stay here and defend it for as long as they could. As the killings and arson spread across Lahore, many Hindus and Sikhs who had fled the strife torn areas also began to settle there and the Shah Alami Gate thus became one of the last holdouts for these communities.

The mob wanted to get at them for this very reason but were hampered due to heavy fortification. Finally, a plan was hatched by a group of people led by First Class Magistrate M.G. Cheema , popularly known as Cheema Magistrate to ‘conquer’ Shah Alami Gate. The only way to infiltrate the bazaar was if some volunteers could secretly crawl through a sewage drain then running from the Sheranwala Gate to Shah Alami Gate so that they could get inside the heart of the targeted area without being spotted. Popular legend has it that Cheema Magistrate was also there with them. The group managed to somehow get near the dump of explosives and set fire to the munitions.

There was instantly a huge fire as the dump exploded. The big cache of arms and ammunition assembled to protect the residents turned into its demon. The whole city reverberated with loud bangs. The fire went on for four or five days and the entire Shah Alami mohalla, the havelis, the grand houses and the majestic bazaar, were reduced to a rubble. About 80% of the shops burnt into ashes. The fire completely demoralized the Hindu and Sikh community and broke their will to hold on to Lahore. Tens of thousands began to move out and within a few months of partition, there was hardly any non-Muslim left living in Lahore.

And what became of Cheema Magistrate. Again according to popular legend, the nature took its course. He got inflicted with leprosy and in his final days was seen lying helplessly in the same sewage drains he had used to bring death and misery to mostly innocent people years ago.

(9)

Finally, 14^th August arrived, the day my parents along with millions of their compatriots had waited for all their lives, not knowing in fact whether they will be fortunate enough to ever see this day in their lifetime. Mountbatten had flown to Karachi from New Delhi a day earlier and presided over a ceremony held at the semicircular chamber of Sindh’s parliament to appoint Quaid e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah as the first Governor General. Pakistan was born, a feat considered impossible only a few months ago. The journey started by Jinnah less than ten years ago in 1937 when the Muslim League had been roundly defeated in elections and then humiliated by Congress in words and deeds, had reached its end.

Overshadowing all the euphoria of independence was the specter of unprecedented communal rioting all over northern India. As the day of partition came nearer, more and more people started to board trains or any other means of transport they could find and loaded with all their worldly belongings began to migrate to a safer place. Radcliffe’s boundary award was announced a day after the Independence Day, and in the words of Wolpert,” all celebrations ended; then the slaughter began. In and around Amritsar, bands of armed Sikhs killed every Muslim they could find, while in and around Lahore, Muslim gangs …… sharpened their knives and emptied their guns at Hindus and Sikhs.” As feared by Jinnah, the partition of Punjab was to unleash a wave of terror across the whole of province. The mayhem ultimately resulted in the death of at least one million people while around nine million people were uprooted and fled across the border on both sides.

My father had a ring side seat to observe all this at very close quarters. As noted earlier, the house my parents were living in at that time was at a stone’s throw from the Lahore railway station. He used to visit the station daily, on some days many times a day, to receive the refugees and provide whatever help he and the other volunteers could offer them. The scenes he saw and later described to us would be impossible to believe had they not been seen firsthand. Very few trains coming in from India  managed to reach Lahore unscathed. Most trains arrived with a large number of brutally slaughtered or injured people, regardless of whether they were men, women or children. There were some trains where the volunteers could not find even a single person left alive with the bogeys drenched in blood. There were scores of such train-loads of dead bodies arriving at the station where the only chore left for the volunteers was to arrange their burial.

Equally heart-rending was the fate of some of the survivors of such attacks. They usually arrived at the station having endured days on the train without food or water, and would jump off the train and head straight to the nearest water tap or pump suffering from unbearable thirst. My father and other volunteers would try to stop them from drinking water on an empty stomach before eating something solid, they would resist and fight with all their physical strength, take in large gulps of water and immediately faint or even drop down dead.

Lahore presented a haunted sight in those days. Hindus and Sikhs were leaving their homes in a hurry leaving most of their belongings behind. There were thousands of empty houses all around town. There was hardly any law and order and the meagre police resources were occupied in riot control and looking after the refugee population. Some locals used this opportunity to take over the properties left behind by the non-Muslims, many containing valuables like jewelry or gold coins. There were many such houses in the posh suburb of Model Town which was mostly populated by Hindus before partition. My maternal uncle, Sajid Hasan, who was an engineer associated with All-India Radio, now Radio Pakistan, was also posted in Lahore at that time. My father and uncle would take a round of the city on their bicycles in the evening seeing all this happening and make plans to take over such and such house the next day or the day after next. This day never arrived as, according to my father, they couldn’t find it in them to take over somebody else’s property finding it morally repulsive.

We did have an “illegally” acquired property though dating back to those fateful days. My father was walking on a street when a man passed him by in a hurry carrying an old looking pendulum clock, obviously nicked from some unoccupied home. He suddenly stopped, looked at my father and offered to sell it to him at a ridiculously low price. My father accepted finding it a good bargain. The clock stayed with us for a great many years hanging prominently on a wall in the main bedroom, with my father religiously winding it every week to keep it going. I can still hear its cranking sounding of time at the stroke of every hour in my ears.

(10)

The final act in the long and twisted saga of Indian Independence movement spread over nearly fifty years culminating in freedom of India, partition, or the birth of Pakistan; three different names for a single event expressing the point of view of whether you were Congress, British government, or Muslim League, had started two years ago. It was a saga played like a game of chess, with each party having to think not only the present move but four moves ahead. Stakes were critically high directly affecting lives of close to a billion people.  On one side of the game was the Congress party, with the wily Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as its nominal head, ably assisted by the intelligent but mercurial Jawaharlal Nehru and hard as nails Vallabhbhai Patel. In the middle was the full force of British government with all the civil and military resources at its command. On the third side was the lone figure of Muhammad Ali Jannah. He had some Muslim landlords and feudals on his side who could provide financial assistance but nothing in the way of developing strategy or leading mass movements. This he had to do on his own and, in the final analysis, he proved to be more than equal of the two other players in this game.

After the end of war in 1945, Labour Party had won the elections in Britain, formed the government and immediately announced plans to leave India as soon as possible. Elections were held in India in December that year. According to Wolpert, “The League won all thirty central assembly seats, a stunning victory that validated Jinnah’s prediction and appeared to prove the universal appeal of Pakistan among Muslims of the subcontinent.” Congress retained the majority but lost four seats. Provincial assemblies elections held two months later further cemented League’s dominance as it won more than 88% of the Muslim vote. Jinnah was now the undisputed ‘sole spokesman’ of Muslims all over India.

This was the background in which a three member commission of British cabinet ministers visited India in February 1946 to hammer out a final plan for freedom of India which would have the blessings of both Congress and the Muslim League. This was seemingly an impossible task in view of the hard lines taken by both parties in previous attempts for a compromise solution and the last chance to keep India undivided.  Cabinet Mission Plan was announced on 16 May 1946 through a fifteen minutes speech made by one of the commission members over All-India Radio. It recommended a scheme with the central government of Union of India retaining only foreign affairs, defence and communications, and all residual powers delegated to the Provinces. The key part of the plan was three provincial groupings:  Group A consisting of eight Hindu majority provinces, Group B included Muslim majority provinces of Punjab, NWFP and Sind, while Group C would include the Muslim majority provinces of Bengal and Assam. A constituent assembly elected by the provincial legislatures of the three group would draw up a constitution for independent India while an interim government was to be formed enjoying the support of the major parties.

After a hectic round of meetings between the British, Congress and the League during the next month with proposals and counter proposals flying in all directions, Muslim League accepted the Plan on 6 June with Jinnah declaring that, “acceptance of the Mission proposals was not the end of their struggle for Pakistan.” Congress accepted the Plan on 25 June (with the proviso that it would put its own interpretations of the Plan), but declined to participate in the interim government.

Congress now made the fourth blunder which was to prove fatal in its quest for securing a united India. At a press conference held at Bombay airport on 10 July 1946 Nehru, in his capacity as the party’s newly elected president, declared that Congress would enter the Constituent Assembly “completely unfettered by agreements and free to meet all situations as they arise”. The implication was that Congress was not bound by the terms of the Cabinet Mission Plan, which it had just accepted! According to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a senior Congress leader and its immediate past president, these remarks “wrecked the chances of Muslim League joining the interim government”.

The League declared this statement as breach of faith and on 30 July withdrew its acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan, calling for a ‘Direct Action Day’ on 16 August to press for the creation of Pakistan. According to M.J.Akbar, “in trying to protect India from a ‘virtual Pakistan’, Nehru had inadvertently provided the Muslim League with the opportunity to seek a real Pakistan.”

Lord Mountbatten was appointed as the nineteenth and the last British viceroy on 24 March 1947. He got to work immediately holding a series of meetings with Congress and League leaders. Pakistan was now almost a certainty, the only issue remaining to be decided being what size or shape it was to be. As late as mid-May, Jinnah was totally opposed to the partition of Punjab, Bengal or Assam regarding it as an anathema. He  wrote to Mountbatten, “ The Muslim League cannot agree to the partition of Bengal and the Punjab. It cannot be justified historically, economically, geographically, politically or morally. These provinces have built up their respective lives for nearly a century ….. and the only ground which is put forward for the partition is that the areas where the Hindus and Sikhs are in a majority and should be separated from the rest of the provinces ….. the results will be disastrous for the life of these two provinces and all the communities concerned.”  It would be difficult to state more clearly or strongly one’s total repulsiveness to the concept of partition of provinces.

In the meantime, the Chief Minister of Bengal, Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy (later prime minister of Pakistan) had started to advocate an independent state of united Bengal with Calcutta as its capital. Jinnah had welcomed this move as it would avoid partitioning Bengal while, having a Muslim majority population, Muslims would always have a predominant role in the government. Congress on the other hand rejected it fearing that a united Bengal led by a Muslim premier would form closer alliance to Pakistan than India.

However, things moved quickly between mid-May and 2 June when the viceroy, having returned back from London with his ‘Mountbatten Plan’ approved by the British Cabinet, presented it to Congress and Muslim League leaders as a kind of ‘take it or leave it’ offer. The Plan proposed partitioning of all three Muslim majority provinces, Punjab, Bengal and Assam, mainly on the basis of separating the Muslim majority areas from other areas. During the intense discussions between Mountbatten and the leaders of the three communities which had preceded the development of this Plan, Hindus, and more so the Sikhs, had flatly refused to accept living in undivided Punjab or Bengal dominated by a Muslim majority. There was now no option left for Jinnah and the Muslim League except to convey their agreement to the Plan, howsoever reluctantly. The alternative was to say good bye to Pakistan forever as so eloquently put by ex-prime minister Churchill in his communication to Jinnah, “this is a matter of life or death for Pakistan, if you do not accept this offer with both hands.”

The formal announcement of the plan for partition of India into two states, India and Pakistan, was made by Mountbatten on 3 June 1947 on All-India Radio at 7.00 p.m. followed by speeches by Nehru, Jinnah and Baldev Singh representing the Sikhs. Pakistan was now a reality. Two boundary commissions started work to draw up plans for partition, one each for Punjab and Bengal/Assam, comprising four high court judges each and headed by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a British barrister who had never visited India before. Radcliffe reached New Delhi on 8 July and thus had just five weeks to decide the boundaries for India and Pakistan and draw arbitrary pencil lines on a map across which, “approximately 10 million refugees would run terrified in opposite directions.”

Pakistan was thus ‘created’ by the iron will of one person within a short span of ten years – 1937 to 1947. During this period Quaid e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah faced fierce opposition, firstly, from the Indian National Congress; secondly, from other Hindu parties like Hindu Mahasabha; thirdly, from Muslim religious parties like Jamiat Ulema e Hind, Majlis e Ahrar and Jamat e Islami; fourthly, from Nationalist parties in Muslim majority provinces like Unionist Party in Punjab, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Khudai Khidmatgar in NWFP and Krishak Praja Party in Bengal; and finally, from the British government which was totally opposed to the concept of partition of India till the very end.  Mountbatten had written home as late as 1 May 1947, “the more I look at the problem in India the more I realise that all this partition business is sheer madness”, and yet he was forced to publicly announce the creation of Pakistan just one month later on 2 June.  During this ten year period, while Congress made many mistakes, first in failing to understand the Muslim community’s genuine apprehensions regarding its built in hegemony in a Hindu majority state and then underestimating Jinnah’s ability and determination to unite Muslims from all parts of India behind the demand for Pakistan; Jinnah on the other hand during all this period scarcely put a foot wrong. By 1946, he had become their ‘sole spokesman’.

(11)

So we come to the end of this chapter chronicling my birth as well as the birth of my dear country Pakistan. An interesting question: how do we see the emergence of Pakistan and by implication the two-nation theory, in hindsight? Has the two-nation theory withstood the test of time? There are some opinions voiced now, many from well-meaning intellectuals or the younger generation (Generation X onwards) having doubts on the rationale for the creation of Pakistan. These views have lately gained force as Pakistan manifestly seems to be straying far from the course envisioned by its founding fathers. It seems continually to be mired in multiple economic, political and social woes. So let us reexamine the case for Pakistan now, 75 years after its birth.

At the time of partition, close to 95 million Muslims lived in the subcontinent, about one in four (25%) of the total population. The ratio now may be a few percentage points higher now due to demographics but not much more. This means that though Muslims would be the largest single minority in undivided India, they would still be a relatively small minority of the total population. They would have a bigger voice than the current 15% Muslim population in India but not much more. In this scenario, it can be said with a fair degree of certainty that the life, as we know it, would have been totally different for us living in an undivided India.

There would be constant competition with Hindus for parliamentary seats, jobs, seats in schools and colleges, or housing and public welfare projects. Hindus, much more advanced in education and mobility, would command a much greater share of government resources and jobs than dictated by their population. Television programs like dramas and music will be almost totally geared to showing Hindu culture while Muslims will appear only as token characters (for example, all pathans shown as simple honest characters wearing turban, girls shown wearing burqa and men wearing achkan). There will be no special programs on Muslim holy days  such as Eid, Ramazan or Ashura. One just has to tune in to any Indian TV channel to see the content on normal days as well as on the Muslim or Hindu festival days to see how different these are from our channels in social content.

At the time of partition Muslims were 55% of the population in Punjab but controlled less than 25% wealth, as majority of agricultural land was owned by Sikhs and commerce by Hindus. Muslims were mainly small farmers or workers. In the prosperous Anarkali bazaar of Lahore, there was only one major shop owned by a Muslim, Inayatullah and Sons, while all others were owned by non-Muslims. In Bengal most Muslim farmers were heavily indebted to the Hindu money lenders and suddenly found themselves free of debt after partition. Partition thus proved a great boon for the Muslims living in Muslim-majority provinces.

Indira Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister, had crowed after the fall of Dacca in 1971, “we have drowned the two-nation theory in the Bay of Bengal.” In fact, the opposite was true. The two-nation theory had surmised that Muslims and Hindus were not just two separate religions but two separate nations with their own history, civilization and social orders who could not ever live together; hence the case for Pakistan. If this theory did not hold water, then logic dictated that once the East Pakistan Muslims had thrown away their “shackles of slavery”, they should have lost no time in warmly embracing their West Bengal Hindu “brothers”, either to become part of India or to form a separate state of United Bengal where Muslims and Hindus could live happily ever after. But nothing of that sort happened; Bengali Muslims chose to live in Bangladesh, separate from the Hindu Bengalis in the west, as they cherished their Muslim nationhood more than Bengali nationhood. This was a resounding validation of the Quaid e Azam’s two-nation theory.

Few people in Pakistan know that Shia azadari processions as well as Sunni processions in Lucknow were totally banned by the Indian government in 1977 following riots. Majalis were allowed only on private property, such as, homes and imambargahs. The ban continued for twenty years and was finally lifted in 1997 after four Shia youth committed suicide by self-immolation. This drastic action was possible only because there was a non-Muslim government holding power which could place a unilateral ban on Muslim religious rites with impunity. It was successful in foaming sectarian tensions and then to exploit these for its own political motives. This situation would be unthinkable in Pakistan. A rare sectarian riot, such as the one near Islamabad in 2013, was swiftly controlled and harmony was soon restored by the religious leaders.

Indian Muslims have never enjoyed the same religious freedoms which are taken for granted in this country. Their living conditions started to deteriorate further after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed power in India in 2014 and Narendra Modi was installed as prime minister. BJP, closely associated with RSS which is a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organization, openly preaches hatred against Muslims. Soon after coming to power, it started a Hindu religious conversion program. It banned slaughter of cows in most states including beef consumption, and passed a citizenship law in 2019 which granted Indian citizenship to persecuted minorities of all religions with the sole exception of Muslims. This law attracted global criticism and led to riots in Delhi in 2020 caused chiefly by Hindu mobs attacking Muslims, and out of 53 people killed, two-thirds were Muslim. Anyone daring to disagree with this narrative is told to ‘go to Pakistan’.

The same happened with Aamir Khan, the famous Bollywood actor. A day after he raised his voice against the ‘rising intolerance’ in India saying his wife wanted to move out of the country as she feared for the safety of her children in a climate of insecurity, he was told by the general secretary of Hindu Mahasabha to ‘go to Pakistan for the benefit of India’. Shahrukh Khan, being a Muslim in India, also faces Islamophobia. He has to constantly prove his patriotism for his country and in a TV show once said, “Sometimes I feel very sad, I even feel like crying, that I should be made to say that I belong to this country, I am a patriot. I am a patriot, rather we all are. We do not have to compete with others to say we are patriots.”

Supreme Court of India routinely delivers judgements infringing upon rights of Muslim community: it has consistently allowed total ban on cow slaughter; it allowed in 2019 building of a Hindu temple on the contested land in Ayodhya which was previously in use as a mosque for centuries, the famous Babri masjid; it declined to hear constitutional challenges to the Citizenship Amendment Act; and it summarily rejected a petition in 2022 against a schools authority directive banning the wearing of veil by Muslim female students. In the latter case, it referred to the petition as a ‘waste of its time’, the issue ‘a small matter’ and in a remarkably insensitive comment declared that ‘nobody would be committing a sin if one were to remove the headscarf for a few hours’.

Muslims of India have to bear this ignominy and humiliation because they no longer have any political leverage. They do not lack courage and continue to raise voices against state oriented oppression in the face of considerable risks to themselves. However, these voices are fragmented and do not carry sufficient force to effectively challenge Hindutva narrative. Perhaps Indian Muslims need a ‘sole spokesman’ like Mohammad Ali Jinnah to lead them to an environment where they can practice their religion with dignity and security. The ‘two-nation’ theory has finally been proved right by the actions of Muslims’ bitterest enemies, the RSS and BJP.

This brings us to the conclusion of the first chapter. My life and my country’s life was only just beginning. Who knew what lay in store for us in the days to come. We were trying to find our way in a world which provides a cocoon of comfort to the new born, at the same time exposing us to the travails of unknown. All said and done, there was no dearth of adventure in our lives, as the following pages will show.

Prologue

There was suddenly a pin drop silence on the street below our first floor flat. One moment there was all kind of city noises filling the air, the next moment it became all eerily quiet. We were living in a flat on the main GT Road in Lahore facing the back of the sprawling Lahore Railway station. On the left side of the road going towards Mughalpura, there was a long line of raw leather godowns, or warehouses, while the other side of the road was lined by a tall wall marking the boundary of the railway station. It was a very busy road from morning till evening with all kinds of traffic moving both ways, mainly tongas, rehras (horse carts) and gaddas (carts driven by oxen), but also some cars and trucks, full of noise and hustle and bustle.

The time was exactly five in the evening. The day was 6^th March 1953. I was barely six years old. My father had just come back from his godown office below and told my mother that “Martial Law had been declared and a curfew was going to be imposed at 05.00 in the evening”. The words Martial Law and Curfew were very new to me and I had no idea what they meant. But I felt, as all children instinctively feel from the body language of their parents, that there was something wrong and that this was something to be afraid of.

As was usual in those days, the window of our drawing/ living room facing the road was a big open thing without glass or even mosquito netting but it had a two feet tall wooden jafri (a partition of intricate designs) at the bottom. I could peer through the small holes in the jafri at the road below and in fact this was my favorite pastime when home from school. So when in a moment or two, the deadly silence penetrated my conscience, I rushed to my usual abode and looked at the street below. To my horror, it was totally bare, with not a sole or even a dog or cat moving around. I had never seen this kind of thing happening before and to this day I can never forget the feeling of terror that came over me at this moment. Within a minute or two my mother came rushing into the room, removed me from the window and took me to another room. She told me to sit with my younger sister Tazeen, then about a year old, who was as usual fast asleep. But more excitement was to come.

After about fifteen minutes or so, this total silence all around us was suddenly shattered by the very loud sound of a gun firing multiple shots somewhere not very far away. My sister woke up and started crying. After a couple of minutes, I could hear the sound of two jeeps rushing past on the road below at very high speed. I clung to my mother even more closely.

After remaining with us for an hour father went back to his office below. When he came back up later in the evening, he told my mother that the shots we had heard were fired by the military jeeps at some people who were still on the street in violation of the curfew. According to rumors fast going the round the area, two people were dead.

The next day, father brought more news. The martial law was very strict. Some people had tried to bring out a procession in defiance of martial law on Nicholson Road (which was not far from our home, on the other side of the railway station). The army had threatened to block them by tanks, the people continued to march shouting slogans, the army ran tanks over them and scores of them were killed. There was of course some exaggeration but not all of this was untrue as I found out later when I grew up. But on that fateful day I had watched history being made first hand and at very close quarters. It was the climax of an intricate and cynical political drama played in Punjab full of intrigue and conspiracy, but more of it later.

History has always been a fascinating subject for me. And  the history of my country, Pakistan, is very closely and intimately linked to my own as the following pages will show.

Introduction