The news of the passing away of Saeed Malik in Lahore on Dec 30, 2007 was given to me by a journalist friend. Ironically, for some reason, no newspaper carried any information about his demise. Some of us may ask: who was Saeed Malik?

Those who were in the habit of reading the good old Karachi eveninger STAR back in the 1980s — Zohra Yusuf-Saneeya-Kaleem Omar-VaiEll days — can well recall Mr Malik’s articles on music and musicians that appeared almost every week on the back page of its magazine section for years.

A number of writers in Pakistan have written on the subject of music in English, some with regularity and some occasionally, but none wrote with such consistency and continuity, and for so many different newspapers – Pakistan Times, The Muslim, Business Recorder, The Nation – as did the late Saeed Malik. Anwar Enayetullah, Hameed Zaman, Sarwat Ali, Khalid Hasan, Asif Noorani and others have also written on the subject with a degree of regularity — I have in my record even articles by Najma Sadiq, Ameneh Azam Ali, Rehana Hakim, Rizwan Wasti — and there must be many more but no one beat Mr Malik. At least in numbers!

It is a coincidence that though I had started to read Mr Malik’s articles in the early 1980s, I met him only once, and that too after more than two decades. It was at a Ghazal festival at the Karachi Arts Council that a tall, dignified-looking elderly gentleman left his chair and came up to me and introduced himself. I felt extremely embarrassed and apologized to him for not having recognized him.

To compensate for it, we decided to meet at his hotel the following day, but somehow the meeting never materialized. But we did exchange letters. His letters were full of sincere thoughts and good advice. He also wrote a number of reviews on my books which spoke of his consideration for someone who he had never met.

Once he strongly reprimanded me for having made the grave mistake of attributing a famous Noor Jehan song to the wrong music director in my book on the Melody Queen. I immediately sent apology notes both to Mr Malik and the music director. It is such a pity that one remained deprived of the company of such a learned, noble and sensitive soul.

Mr Malik lived in Lahore, did his Masters in Political Science and LLB from the Punjab University and served in the USIS Lahore for 30 years. He studied classical music with Ustad Sardar Khan of Delhi Gharana and enjoyed the good company of many stalwarts of classical music of his time. To quote Pakistan Times: “Saeed Malik made writing on music fashionable in Pakistani journalism … his grasp of gharana intricacies is enviable …”

To the best of my knowledge, Mr Malik wrote three books on music: “The Muslim Gharanas of Musicians”, “The Musical Heritage of Pakistan and Lahore: Its Melodic Culture” and “Lahore: A Musical Companion”. He also wrote a book titled “In Search of Justice” which he sent me in April 2005 with this note: “I hope that you will appreciate my 30-year-long struggle which I have penned in this book after braving harsh vicissitudes and ugly realities of life in a country where law does not prevail and where might is deemed as right.”

In one of his letters dated Dec 17, 1985 he wrote to me: “Because of my chronic heart problem not only had I to give up singing but have also slowed down considerably.

Only once a week I go out of my residence to renew my contacts with musicians and journalists….” We must thank God Almighty that he allowed Mr Malik to live 22 more years to enliven our life with his writings before he succumbed to his “chronic heart problem.”