By the middle of the sixties, the torch had passed to a new generation, in the borrowed but ennobling phrase of John F. Kennedy’s speech-writer. The Cold War raged. Kennedy himself had been assassinated by supposedly a lone gunman, Harvey Lee Oswald who in turn had been murdered by an insignificant mobster, Jack Ruby, while Oswald was in custody of the marshals. The curtain had come down on Camelot. Americans had been shaken by the assassination but not enough to probe it further.
I had gone to New York soon after and in a conversation with a friend, he had told me that they (the American) preferred not to talk about it, as if in a kind of denial. The Vietnam War was gathering speed.
Britain was swinging and there was Carnaby Street and King’s Road in London, and mini-skirts and the Beatles and marijuana and flower-people and Hari Khrishna, the young in festive revolt against tradition and the stiff upper-lip. The world was changing, getting younger, more foolish.
Despite some noisy protestations, a scripted taking to the streets (rent-a-mob) whose heroics had included the burning of a few buses, the stoning of some cars, a little vandalism here and a little hooliganism there, those were bonfires, not conflagrations, Pakistan had been spared the upheaval and convulsion that had become a standard feature of newly-independent countries. Not for us the strident, rebel cries, the dying upon the barricades...
We had been a silent generation, cautious and passive, not particularly distinguished nor even inventive. Up and down medium-pacers bowling to defensive fields with no daring of even a forward short-leg. Time, unnoticed, passed by.
This was not altogether a bad thing. There had been far too many inspired adventurers in the Third World and too many crowds that had followed them blindly. To be sure there had been riots and general lawlessness in East Pakistan in 1952, 1954, 1956 and 1958. There had been disturbances in Lahore in 1952 and demonstrations in Karachi in 1953 and 1957. They were not uprisings and presented no danger to the status quo. There was a tendency to comment on (berate) the apathy of the people, for their passivity.
Given the fact that there had been two coupe, the first by Ghulam Mohammad when he had sent the Constituent Assembly packing and the other by Ayub Khan, democracy had been all but been stillborn. Politics just did not have an impact on the lives of the ordinary people, they were in the out stream. The country was being ruled or governed by the elite. During the British Raj, there used to be a cantonment and an old city. That was the way the Pakistan society had been divided.
The people did not identify with the rulers. I remember when Ayub Khan had been touring (it was probably the interior of Sind) an old man approached him and presented him with a petition. It had been addressed to Queen Victoria. l was once at Karachi Airport, in those days there was no palatial terminal building, just the Rotunda and there was a small restaurant called ‘The Skyroom’ and where my friends and I spent many an evening.
There seemed to be some ‘spontaneous’ or ‘rousing’ welcome being assembled. People were arriving in trucks and buses, some banners and placards were in evidence. A sort of rehearsal was going on and a cheerleader with a megaphone was taking the people through the drill. One of us went to find out who was coming and he was told that it was Liaquat All Khan. When told that Liaquat had been assassinated in 1951, the man said irritably; “I don’t know who’s coming. All I know is that Kassoo Seth has sent us.” It turned out that Iskandar Mirza was returning from East Pakistan.
In late 1964, television came to Pakistan. It was considered an outrageous luxury and immediately became a status symbol and a plaything of the affluent. But television had already begun to change lives in other parts of the world. It was replacing the soap-box in politics. I first saw television sometimes in 1948 when I was in the United States as a student. There were very few private sets and none among the circle of my friends owned a set. We had, somewhat snobbishly, considered it a fad. Television then had nothing to offer but wrestling. Many bars had television sets and people went to the bars, as much to imbibe as to watch the wrestling.
The superstar of wrestling had been Gorgeous George who came into the ring preceded by his valet wearing a tailcoat. The sports writer Hannibal Coons wrote: “Knotted loosely at his throat is a scarf of salmon-pink silk. His hair, a mass of golden ringlets, looks as though he has just spent four hours in a beauty parlour. George makes an entrance, sneering at the peons. Slowly and calmly he removes his Georgi pins — gold plated and sequined bobby pins — and casts them to the crowd. And shakes his hair like a lordly spaniel.”
Television was not meant to be taken seriously but if Gorgeous George could become a star so could politicians. The possibilities of television were immense. I saw my first cricket match on television in Hastings in Sussex in 1953, watching Lindsay Hassett’s Australian surrendering the Ashes. I preferred to listen to John Arlott on the radio, but I knew that sooner or later I would get myself involved in television. It would not be long before we would start televising cricket. I was not at all sure whether I wanted to do cricket commentary on television. One picture was worth a thousand words. What would there be to say? Aslam Azhar had taken over as Karachi Television’s General Manager. He was not only a gifted broadcaster but also a thorough professional. He set high standards. He was both a good friend and someone I respected. He rang me up one day and told me that the time had come to take the plunge and he was going to take a crack at telecasting cricket.
There was a Quaid-i-Azam trophy match that was being played at the National Stadium. Neither he nor I knew the names of players of the teams that were involved but PTV would telecast it and I was to make myself available. If American TV could survive Gorgeous George, we too would survive. When I got to the National Stadium, I discovered that there was no commentary-box and I sat on the pavilion steps, a clear blue sky above me and the sun beating down. The scoreboard was not in operation and I had no scorer. There was no monitor for most of the telecast. The cameramen had probably never seen a cricket match. My instructions to them were to follow the ball and I would presume that they were doing so. I could not recognize any of the players and even if I knew their names, I had no idea whether they were batsmen or bowlers.
The National Stadium had on its payroll a donkey that was used to lug the roller. When I say the donkey, I mean just that, of the asinine, four-legged kind. Halfway through the telecast, it started to bray, as if giving vent to some divine despair, or, perhaps, it was his feeding time. Donkeys have their own reasons for braying. The braying was coming through the telecast. After a sustained spell of braying, I was forced to inform the viewers that the voice that they were hearing was not that of the commentator.
Somehow, we managed and Aslam Azhar declared the experiment a success. Of course, Pakistan Television moved quickly and professionally and the next time was a Test match and the telecast went like clockwork.
Nur Khan’s time in PIA was drawing to a close. He was ear-marked to take over from Asghar Khan as the PAP chief. Asghar Khan would take over PIA.
Nur Khan had done an outstanding job, turning the airline around and making it one of the best in the world. He had been brought in by Ayub Khan to put the organization on its feet. He had done much more than that. He had stamped his management style on the airline. Nur Khan had very little time for bureaucracy. He understood very quickly that PIA was a commercial organization and the progress of commercial organizations cannot be checked or slowed by the tortuous process of “proper channels.” There was an organization chart, a sort of batting order which operates on Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
Nur Khan believed in results. He gave orders and we were expected to carry them out. The paper-work could follow. That was not his business. He had once met J.R.D Tata, the legendary founder of Air India and much else. J.R.D. Tata had praised PlA’s advertising. Nur Khan had sent for me and told me that we should intensify our International advertising. I had told him that my budget did not allow it.
“What bloody budget,” he had exploded. He had sent for the Finance Director: “Give him more money,” he had ordered him. When the Finance Director had protested, he was told to find the money.
Nur Khan had employed me. I had not known him, had not even met him until my job interview. I had been a newspaper man and knew only deadlines. Nur Khan recognized that “pilgrim soul” in me. I got on very well with him. But then so too did the others who were close to him. Inadvertently or not, he made us into a team and we may not have liked each other too much on a personal level, but we functioned as a team.
There were innumerable farewell functions and at every level, the airline employees expressed their affection for him. He had sent for me for a one-on-one farewell and he told me to keep in touch with him.
About his successor, Asghar Khan, little was known except that he had done an outstanding job as the Air Force chief and it was rumoured that he was tough on discipline. I had known him. He had once told me that he knew nothing about cricket, conveying the impression almost that he disapproved of the game. It remained to be seen how I would get on with him or more, arrogantly, how he would get on with me.
