NOT a day passed when I did not think of chucking up my job with PIA. It was not that I was unhappy, as such. It was, I felt, that I was in a strait-jacket, and I really saw no future in it for me. But what was the alternative? I had no professional skills, I was not a doctor or lawyer or an engineer. And that too would have not helped. I had one brother, Humayun, who was a Chemical Engineer from the University of Wisconsin, an over-qualified man in an underdeveloped country, and he was ‘rotting’ away in the Pakistan Ordnance Factory in Wah, on a salary that put him just above the poverty-line. The country really had no need of qualified professionals. It was being run by wheeler-dealers. I was among the lucky ones. I had both a hat and a hat-stand.
The main attraction of the job seemed the opportunity it provided to travel. I had already been to Italy and another chance came. John Nelson, who was one of the Pan-Am advisers, told me that I could profit by spending sometime with Pan-Am in the United States. I could not disagree with that, but told him that he would have to ‘sell’ the idea to the PIA management. Had I been asked, I would have had to say that in all honesty, it smacked of a joy ride. John used his powers of persuasion and I found that I was headed for New York. I would also visit Chicago and on my insistence, Los Angeles. I would return via the Pacific, taking in Tokyo and Hong Kong, as stops that would allow me to stretch my legs. I was excited at the prospect of returning to the United States, particularly Los Angeles, and wondered whether my old cronies were still around and my old haunts as well.
I took Pan-Am and flew straight to New York, the airport was then called Idlewild and not JFK. While I had been studying in the United States, I had made a couple of short trips to New York and really did not know the city. I had no friends there. Someone from Pan-Am had received me, put me in a taxi and told me where I would be staying, not the Waldorf Astoria, and that I was having lunch with Admiral Miller, the Vice-President Public Relations of Pan-Am, the next day. I wasn’t expecting a red carpet treatment but neither was I expecting to be fobbed off in such peremptory fashion.
My hotel, whose name I cannot recall, was in downtown Manhattan. With nothing to do, I went for a walk, looking at shop windows. I seemed to be the only one who was not in a hurry, and even those who had nowhere to go were determined to get there quickly. New York had pace and I would visit it frequently in the years to come and learn to love it. There was a vibrancy about the city, a restlessness, the clocks seemed to move faster, as if time was running out. It seemed to me to be a city on the verge of a heart attack. It was America’s least insular city or, to put another way, its most outward-looking. Much as we would say that Lahore was Lahore, the New Yorker would say that New York was New York and that was all one needed to know.
I met Admiral Miller the following afternoon and he took me to the New York Yacht Club for lunch. He was a friendly man and we chewed the fat, and the closest we came to talking public relations was when he mentioned that he dreaded the day when one of jets flew into a mountain. He presented me with a New York Yacht Club tie and saw me off as I took a taxi back to my hotel. I decided that I would give Chicago a miss and proceed to Los Angeles.
OF my subcontinent friends, Madanjit Singh Malik, Mohammad Faraque, Lalit Thapar and ‘Gogi” Bedi, only Bedi remained. The others had all gone home. I had telephoned my friend Elizabeth (Lizzie). She was married now and her husband was one of those bright whiz-kid lawyers. Lizzie had passed the Bar examination and was practicing in the Family Courts. The last time I had met her was in London in 1952, and much water had flowed into the sea since then. I had been booked at The Hollywood-Roosevelt Hotel, which was close to Beverly Hills but a considerable distance from downtown Los Angeles where my Alma Mater was located.
‘GOGI’ met me at the airport, and told me that Lizzie would get in touch with me at the hotel as she was in court. I had been very fond of ‘Gogi’ but he seemed to be making a career of being a student and was working on his Ph.D. He had been back to India a couple of times and was very ‘Jai Hind’ about it. Though he had gone to India, left his heart in Southern California. He had moved to a flat, and had a girlfriend who played the cello and practiced in his flat. We talked of old times but they seemed like soda-water that had lost its effervescence. Finally, Lizzie telephoned. She said that she was picking me up and we would be having dinner at her home on Forrester Drive, in Beverly Hills, and that Larry (her father and the MGM ‘moghul’) would be dropping by. I met her husband, Hal, and Larry came and invited me to lunch at the MGM studios, He still felt that I should be a scrip-writer. Lizzie told me that she had taken the day off and would spend it with me.
“I suppose you want to go USC?” she asked me. But it was a Sunday and the University would be closed, so I said I wanted to go to Griffith Park, where I used to play cricket. At the Griffith Park, a cricket match was in progress and none of the old-timers were there and no one knew me or had heard about me. Lizzie didn’t seemed much interested in PIA or cricket commentary. All she wanted to know was whether I was happy. I told her that I wasn’t unhappy.
THE lunch at MGM turned out to be a very staid affair. I was hoping that I would get to meet some of stars, Natalie Wood among them. But it was a formal lunch in the Board Room, with dark-suited executives looking very serious and very much alike, shop-talking with each other, occasionally looking in my direction to acknowledging my existence and wondering, no doubt, what in the hell they were doing there. Larry suddenly had a brain-wave. He asked a question to no one particular, how MGM’s cinemas in Bombay and Calcutta were doing? Someone said that they had become a deadbeat investment as the Indian government was not allowing MGM to take their money out of India, and MGM should get rid of them.
“Why don’t we give them to Omar?” he said. It was a fabulous offer. Unfortunately, I told Larry, that those cinemas were located in India, and I was a Pakistani and could not own property in India. This, and the fact that I hadn’t met Natalie Wood, added to my grief.
I HAD looked forward to a sort of homecoming to Los Angeles but no fires, as such, had been kindled. No memories stirred. I felt no special thrill at being back in a city where I had spent such wonderful and riotous years. I think Omar Khyaam was right: “A flower once blown, forever dies.”
Lizzie said that she would take me to the airport and ‘Gogi’ tagged along. It was a sombre farewell as none of us had anything to say, and over the public address system Pan-Am announced that its flight to Tokyo was ready for departure. It was a long flight and we stopped in Honolulu, and then on to Tokyo. I did not know anyone in Tokyo and it seemed pointless wasting anytime there and I took the first available flight to Hong Kong. I had planned to stay a few days in Hong Kong, visit my old friend Melwani, the tailor.
On my arrival in Hong Kong, Pan-Am handed me a message it had received from its Karachi office. The message simply said that I was to return to Karachi immediately. I was alarmed, for it could only mean bad news. I telephoned my brother, Sattoo, who hadn’t the vaguest idea what it was about. At least, I was comforted that there was no crisis in the family. I could ignore the message but it would play on my mind, and I decided to return.
PAN-Am was then the only airline that was flying a pure jet into Karachi, a Boeing 707, and landed at the PAF base at Mauripur, instead of Karachi airport. Waiting for me at Mauripur, in the early hours of the morning, were John Nelson and Salahuddin Siddiqui, who was my Press-Officer. They informed me that Nur Khan wanted to see me the first thing in the morning in the office. They had no idea what it was all about.
I went to the office, informed Nur Khan’s P.A, that I had got back, and was in my office and to let Nur Khan know. Everything seemed normal, there was not a trace of panic. I did not see Nur Khan till after lunch and when I met him, all he said was: “What’s happening?”
I told him that nothing was happening, as far as I was concerned, but the message I had been given was that he (Nur Khan) wanted to see me pronto. He shook his head. All he had wanted to know was when I was getting back. The eager-beavers had interpreted this to mean that he wanted me to come back and down the line, it was reinterpreted to mean that he wanted me to be back immediately, like yesterday. They also serve who only stand and wait. But they also panic.
