August 10, 2003

ALAO means “to burn” and gherao means “to surround.” In the politics of the subcontinent, these words are commands, battle cries, and, in a way, a kind of thrashing out. They are tactics used by the weak, and are mindless acts, beating the naughty floor. But they can become portents of things to come.

The agitation against Ayub Khan was unique in a way. In West Pakistan, it was spearheaded by Bhutto and in East Pakistan, by Mujibur Rehman. Yet, there was no common ground between these two forces. If anything, there was mutual suspicion and on a personal level, a mutual loathing. The ‘trigger’ in West Pakistan was Tashkent which was seen as a sell-out. Though Bhutto was at Tashkent — he was foreign minister and thus a party to whatever was agreed through the principle of collective responsibility — he played the Tashkent card brilliantly, claiming that there were secret clauses and he would disclose these “at an appropriate time.”

Shaikh Mujibur Rehman was on familiar ground. His Six Points had become a manifesto. The East Pakistanis had been drifting apart and emotional bonds between the two peoples had all but snapped. There was no one who could speak for both wings. The turbulence of an impending storm was rattling the windows.

Bhutto had come out in the open and he had formed his Pakistan People’s Party with its message of roti, kapra, makan as its masthead. The main author of the PPP manifesto was J.A. Rahim, a retired civil servant who could be abrasive. He did not suffer fools gladly, but he was a learned man and one felt that he had missed his vocation. He should have been a professor teaching history at some university, perhaps at Oxford or Sorbonne or Heidelburg. One saw him as the intellectual guru of the party.

I used to go and see Bhutto at this Clifton residence and often in the company of Yunus Saeed, who was not a card-carrying party member. McCarthy would have condemned him as a fellow-traveller, though he was too much of a free spirit to have allowed himself to become a prisoner of a political doctrine. My visits were social and Bhutto knew me too well and knew that I was not a ‘political animal’. But I was able to meet his chief lieutenants, among them Abdul Hafiz Pirzada, Mustafa Jatoi, Khar and, of course, J.A. Rahim. There was a lot of political talk.

On one occasion, Ratna Devi, wife of the deposed Indonesian leader, Soekarno, was visiting Karachi and Bhutto had given a dinner in her honour and I had been invited. She was Japanese and Time magazine had described her as one of the most beautiful women in the world. Not having seen or met other beautiful women of the world, there may have been some exaggeration in the claim. But she was attractive, in the way Japanese women are attractive, in an eyes-lowered, dignified way without flaunting it in the manner of a hussy. She was a cheerful, lively lady and wore no jewellery of grief that she was no longer the First Lady of Indonesia.

I met Bhutto openly and often went in an official PIA car. I am sure that his house was being ‘watched’ by agencies and number-plates were being noted. But as far as I was concerned, Bhutto was a friend of mine, a friendship that went back to when we were schoolboys and I felt that I was not doing anything wrong. The agencies must have thought so too, for there were no visits from them nor any ‘midnight knocks’. Besides, while I have never been a leader, neither have I been a camp follower. I have ploughed my own, lonely furrow.

One afternoon, Asghar Khan sent for me and asked me if I could keep a secret. I told him that I was not a loudmouth. He said that he planned to enter politics. It wasn’t quite a bombshell, but I was surprised. I asked him whether he was planning to join one of the political parties. There was no doubt that politics needed persons of his integrity, but at the same time this very integrity could become a liability. I saw a DeGaulle type of role for him and not one at the hustling, working up the crowd. It was not for me to approve or disapprove, and I assumed that he knew what he was doing and had given the matter much thought. I kept my counsel to myself. The culture of our politics needed to be changed, but in racing parlance I saw him as a long shot though not an also-ran.

Asghar Khan’s time at PIA had come to an end. He had, in my estimation, done an excellent job. Nur Khan had been a hard act to follow, but the airline had maintained its momentum and had continued to expand. New routes had been added, the most important being the ones in the Gulf, and which in due course would become the airline’s bread and butter. He had taken some bold decisions, bold in the sense that they bucked social orthodoxy. As a society, we tended to be conservative, we wanted to keep step with the 20th century but without overstepping. It was a delicate balance and there was always the danger of tipping over on either side.

To have asked Pierre Cardin to design the uniform of the air hostesses had been a great leap forward, but the public had accepted it and with enthusiasm. Asghar Khan had started the PIA Arts Academy, imaginative as it was bold. But he had kept a vigilant eye on the operational standards with a heavy accent on flight safety. As in Nur Khan’s time, there was no compromise. Airlines will cut corners for commercial reasons, but not PIA. For a man with such a high public profile, Asghar Khan was a private person. This had been somewhat misunderstood for it gave the impression that he was aloof. He was certainly not one of those types who slaps you in the back, the hail-fellow well-met extrovert, and there was certainly a reserve and he was a quiet man. Though I had, sometimes, seen him get angry, there was softness to his anger which made it all the more effective.

I decided to bring out a special supplement of Top Flight, PIA’s in-house journal to wish him farewell, allowing my heart to rule my head. There were a lot of receptions for him, many of which I could not attend as I was down with a touch of malaria. Once malaria enters your bloodstream, it can always return. One evening, my servant informed me that I had visitors, “a saab and memsaab” as he had described them. It was the Air Marshal and his wife, a handsome, gracious lady who matched the Air Marshal for quiet, dignity. He told me that he had come to thank me for all that I had done for him and PIA. For me, it was a touching gesture and had I been a stronger man, I might have been overcome by my emotions. It is not the weak but the strong who bring out their emotions. I told him that I would miss him.

A.V.M. Akhtar took over from Asghar Khan. It had been a planned succession and he had been groomed for the job. He, too, believed in hands-on management and was no longer a stranger to PIA. Alas, he was not to last long and was removed by what can be only described as an ‘administrative coup’. He himself had no idea, and as they say, he was the last to learn of his removal. But in hindsight, it was easy workout. A successor, hand-picked by Asghar Khan, he had no chance given the political climate. When I walked into his office, he was packing some personal papers into his briefcase. He looked surprised to see me as he wasn’t expecting any visitors.

“Hello, Omar,” he said. I told him that if he was free for lunch, we go to Midway House. He thought for a while and finally said, “Why not.”

I had told Hurmat Beg that I was going to invite the A.V.M. to lunch and he told me to count him in, and the three of us went to Midway House. In a sense, it was the only farewell reception he got.

“What happened?” I asked him. It was a foolish question.

“I haven’t got the foggiest idea,” he said, truthfully.

None of us talked very much during the lunch and I don’t think the food was particularly good for we picked at it, going through the motions. Walls have ears. They also have eyes. Our presence at Midway House would not have gone unobserved. But it was the least that I could have done for a man who had been treated cruelly and who was a friend of mine and had been my well-wisher and done me no harm.

But there was no let-up in the gathering political storm. As a storm approaches, the skies get dark and there is an eerie silence. The silence was the preparations for the Decade of Development and it was going to be a very close call. Once again, the country was plunged into uncertainty. We should have gotten used to it by now. But no one had ruled Pakistan as long as Ayub Khan had done.

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