Fascinating History. Interesting Medieval Incidents from Indian and Middle Eastern past.

In depicting the struggles of my emigrant family in post independence Pakistan -in articles published in this weekly- I had traced my life till joining PAF Public School Sargodha in Sep 1965 in class VIII and our evacuation on the eve of breakout of Indo-Pak war. I now pick up the threads and carry forward the story from there. We were called back to school in late October, about a month after the ceasefire. We rejoined our allocated houses and settled down in our dormitories. Our batch consisting of sixty three boys was distributed over three sections. We were tested in -if I remember correctly- English, Urdu and Mathematics. While I was good in the latter two subjects, my proficiency in English was dismal. I was better than most in grammar and translation but was appalling in spoken English, being unable to speak even one straight sentence. In fact, I had never communicated in anything but Punjabi. I spoke Urdu too with a heavy Punjabi accent. Consequently I - and twenty other boys-...

How do I describe a pain that pricks my primordial existence? A loss that is deeply personal yet is universal in nature? The healing balm of time will blunt the most deadly pangs of this loss but the void, I know, will stay forever. Some voids never fill and this is one of them. My mother has died. This here is a story of a mother narrated by her son -I request the readers to allow me some emotions- but it is also a tale of trials and tribulations faced by the young migrants who were compelled to uproot from their ancestral abodes in the wake of partition of Punjab in August 1947. This is also a story of their struggle and triumph. My mother was born in 1935 to a family of tailors. My maternal grandfather had his prosperous tailoring shop on the ground floor of his house that he had recently built in Katra Karam Singh in Amritsar and was happily raising his seven children when Pakistan became independent. The people of Punjab, as those in other northern provinces of India, went berse...

In the 21st July 2017 issue of this magazine, I narrated my childhood memories of 1965 Indo-Pak war. I now recall my reminiscences of war of 1971. Throughout my service career in the Pakistan Air Force, one of the ribbons I wore on my routine uniforms and corresponding medal on ceremonial occasions was Tamgh-a-Jang 1971, for having been a member of armed forces during that war. I had qualified for the medal for having joined the Air Force only two months earlier. However, I was nowhere near any place where I could do any damage to the enemy, nor did I endure any personal physical risks, except perhaps for being out at night in the severe winter cold of Murree Hills. We cleared our ISSB selection tests in the first week of December 1970, during the fateful days of general elections. It was there in candidates' mess Kohat that we learnt about the election results. According to analysts, they spelled doom for the federation. In East Pakistan, Awami League had won 160 out of 161 seat...

In my memoirs titled 'My Life in post-partition Lahore', I had mentioned about my joining PAF Public School on the 5th of September 1965, a day before the commencement of hostilities between Pakistan and India. I now narrate my personal tale of that war. Having deposited in the kind care of the housemaster Mr. Qadeer Baig, my father left for Lahore taking one of the buses stopping at Chungi# 6. I went up to my dormitory. We each had a cupboard in the changing room for clothes and a sideboard next to our beds for daily use items. I unpacked my clothes and other stuff. I was carrying a cardboard box of mixed sweets. I ate a piece or two and stowed away the rest in the sideboard. I settled for the term which was to last till the end of December. However, as it frequently does, Fate had other plans. While we were into an uncertain asleep in the early morning of 6th of September, India had launched attack across the international border at Lahore. The war had broken out and was t...

The Most Important Interview of my Life In "My Life in post-partition lahore - part III", I wrote about my selection to PAF Public School Sargodha. Here I narrate the story of the interview -that was a part of the selection process- to pay homage to two of my most cherished and respected teachers in life. I was selected for PAF Public School Sargodha in 1965 at the age of twelve and a half years. Having completed my primary education from Urdu medium schools, I got admitted to Muslim Model High School, Lower mall, Lahore and was studying in class eight. As a part of selection process the applicants had to appear in written tests followed by an interview and a medical examination. The interview before a panel of school teachers was to be mainly conducted in English. My command over spoken English was very poor -almost nil- because I had never had the occasion to communicate in the language. I could converse with confidence only in Punjabi and spoke Urdu with a heavy Lahori a...

Miracle of Education For those who are mired in poverty, the one sure way out is through pursuit of good education. Though it is a long and difficult route, education is the only enduring and respectable solution to rise from penury to affluence. Socially, it is a great leveller. In a classroom, everyone is a class fellow regardless of wealth or lineage and the only thing that counts therein is academic excellence. I said that the route is long and difficult. Long, because a complete modern education through a university takes about twenty years to complete. Even a vocational training leading to a diploma course through a technical institution needs over a dozen years, in addition to internships that consume anywhere between one and two years. Difficult, because it is competitive. Student vacancies in good educational institutions are scarce and have to be won through performance in long drawn out admission tests. Studying is often a boring task, especially when the subjects are not t...

Lahore that I lived in I got admitted in Muslim Model in class VI in 1962 and stayed there till passing class eight. To go to school, I used to go to Rang Mahal Chowk, board a double decked bus, get down at Urdu Bazaar and walk its length to my school. Later, I developed good friendship with a boy named Muhammad Nawaz Qureshi from Indroon -Interior- Suter Mandi and a started walking to school with him. His father owned a butcher shop in the area. I would walk past Gumti and take the left turn to Suter Mandi Bazaar to his house, from where we would go through Lohari Gate, cross the Circular Road, enter Urdu Bazaar (which is opposite Mori Gate) and reach school. It was a walk of a little over one kilometre. Nawaz remained a good friend throughout my stay in this school. I visited his house a few times after leaving the area but haven’t seen him in a long time. To rephrase US Gen. MacArthur, old friendships, like old soldiers, don't die; they just fade away. I would leave my home at...

In earlier two articles in this blog ("A tale fo two cities" and "An obituary for an ordinary life") I wrote an account of my family’s background and its migration from Amritsar to Lahore in August 1947 at the time of partition of India. These narratives appeared in the issues dated 1st July and 26th August 2016, and were titled ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and ‘Requiem for an Ordinary Life’ respectively. I now describe how we confronted the difficult task of making this alien but friendly land our home. My father was serving as a draftsman in the Railways Workshop Amritsar when the partition of Punjab forced him and his family to migrate to Pakistan. After settling in, he started looking for a job but couldn’t find any. He commuted between Rawalpindi and Lahore looking for a suitable vacancy. The private sector was completely uprooted due to mass migrations and riots. The hastily set up national government was barely functioning and was deploying all its energies and re...

Waheed said good bye to this world on Monday, the 25th April 2016. Decades of heavy smoking, unhealthy food and complete lack of physical exercise had led to a weakened heart that he failed to protect through an indifferent attitude to medical advice. His fragile and limited sources of income compounded his difficulties. The regressive middle class values, that have hindered the progress of millions of Pakistanis, coupled with incomplete education and inadequate vocational skills, served to keep him weighted down on the lower rungs of social and economic ladder. His ailing heart had been diagnosed a decade earlier as too weak to undergo an angioplasty to open up his clogged arteries. Over the previous two months, his condition, and circumstances, had become very precarious due to a triple fracture of his hip bone that he sustained due to a fall outside his home on a patch of street that usually remained slippery due to poor cleanliness. He never walked or got up from his bed again. H...