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Ghulam Ali: an obituary By Naseer Ahmad Ghulam Ali Khoja, known to journalists young and old as Kaka, is no more. After a long-fought battle, he surrendered to his multiple ailments on Tuesday night. An honest reporter, an unusually humble and generous person, he was both loved and respected. My association with him at Dawn spanned more than a decade. Crime reporting being his beat, he would sit with half a dozen sub editors in the newspaper's city room till pack-up time. Occasionally, he would shuffle to the subbing desk to exchange pleasantries or to recount a freshly coined joke, to shatter a descending pall of silence and boredom. He would daily distribute candies to his reporter and sub editor friends till a city editor coaxed him into giving up this practice. Almost daily he would say loudly: "Friends, if you don't mind it, I wish to order tea for you." But a far more generous gesture was the giving away of books to whoever Ghulam Ali thought loved to read. Urdu Bazar, Khori Garden and wherever he could find good books, he would buy for his friends. The couple did not have any children, and adopted a girl. When she grew up, they married her off to a person living in the United States. Later Ghulam Ali adopted a relative's son, who is now a fine young man studying in college. He came to be identified as 'kaka' because he called everyone else by that name. Once a senior journalist inquired why he called him 'kaka', Ghulam Ali said: "In Punjab, 'kaka' is a child, in the NWFP he is an 'uncle'. You may assume for yourself whichever title you prefer." He had a great sense of humour. Most of the jokes, both risqué and clean, he told to amuse his colleagues and friends were his own creation. A dedicated reporter, his daily beat would begin at home, when he would ring up police stations and Edhi's to collect data on crimes committed that day across the city. On his arrival in the office, he would begin hammering out the reports. When a man recklessly running on the footpath hit and toppled him, Ghulam Ali fractured a leg. Though a diabetic, he recovered soon but developed a slight limp. In later years he was afflicted by Parkinson's disease. "Today the doctor declared that there is no disease left that I do not suffer from," he announced one day, smiling as if this were a piece of good news. Ghulam Ali had a special knack for languages. Asked why he had learned French as the language seemed to have no use for him, he said he wanted to study Voltaire in the original. A Sindhi speaker from Badin district and brought up in Karachi, Ghulam Ali was fluent in English, Persian, Balochi and Punjabi. What, however, impressed me most was his Pushto. He spoke the difficult-to-learn language in its original accent. Orphaned at a very young age, he "did not go to school even for a single day", as he would recall. Probably haunted by this sense of deprivation, he never parted company with books. Even when his health was rapidly abandoning him, he was often seen reading, with the book held close to his eyes. Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)
