The hour of our death is not known to us and, therefore, one cannot say that Farooq Mazhar was too young to have gone to sleep forever. But even for someone who was as close as I was to him, it was a bolt from the blue. He was not given to reading poetry but had come across Robert Frost and the lines that “I have miles to go....” had stuck with him suggesting that many more years of tilting at windmills lay ahead of him. By instinct, Farooq was a rebel and he espoused many causes, almost always lost causes. His timing was disastrous. He invariably found himself on the right side at the wrong time, which meant that he was no opportunist.
I first met him on Pakistan’s tour of India in 1960-61, probably at Kanpur, a young, earnest reporter for The Pakistan Times and I best remember his portable typewriter which was red in colour and which he had to hock as his funds dried up. I was covering only the Test matches and stayed in the commentary-box during the matches and didn’t have the chance to mix it up with him and the very few Pakistani reporters that were travelling with the team. I am not able to identify the moment when our paths crossed and which would turn a nodding acquaintance into a close friendship but towards his end and during his end, he had become like a brother and I mourned his passing away as if a member of my family had died.
Hockey was his first love and he became the game’s foremost writer and broadcaster and he seemed to relish playing the role of king-maker and half-jokingly I would tell him that if he expended a fraction of his energy on something worthwhile he wouldn’t be living on the wrong side of his dreams. Farooq loved life and since it is given to us to live just once, he had to play with the cards that were dealt to him. Had he chosen to have an ace concealed up his sleeve, as so many have, the world was his for the taking. He was not without ambition but he had paper-ambitions and he would tell me of his grand plans but he was a stubborn man and his grand plans collided with his principles. He was the weed that did not bend.
He had moved from his beloved Lahore to Islamabad and whenever I went to Islamabad, he would pick me up from the airport and it was a standing arrangement that I would have dinner at his home every evening. And there would be his wife Khalida, she was also his best friend and his son Jamal and his daughter Tehmina, Tolstoy’s happy family that resembled one another and he would invite a few friends, an eclectic mix of Islamabad’s finest and its lost souls.
One such lost soul was Capt. H.K. Burki who had been the captain of Pakistan’s hockey team and more importantly had been the diplomatic editor of The Pakistan Times and been its correspondent at the United Nations. He had been fired by The Pakistan Times in the purge to flush out those who had been seen to harbour some affection for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto or alternatively did not pledge unquestioning allegiance to Zia-ul-Haq. There was no question that he had fallen on hard times and to add to his troubles was in poor health. He was a proud man and did not seek any pity. And he got none from Farooq Mazhar because he deemed what was most precious to Burki was his dignity. And he gave that to him, indeed gave him the floor for Burki was an articulate man and he would hold forth, a counter-argument for every argument.
There was Khalid Hasan who lives in Washington DC but would make flying visits to Islamabad but I rather suspect that his main purpose for his trips was to touch base with Farooq Mazhar. They had been colleagues together at The Pakistan Times. My friendship with Khalid Hasan had been separate to that of Farooq Mazhar. He had once written a story in The Pakistan Times, a light-hearted spoof of how PIA had left behind Saboor Khan, who was Ayub Khan’s Communications Minister, because he had arrived after check-in time. Saboor Khan had been furious, not at PIA, but at Khalid Hasan and had threatened to get him the sack. I had telephoned Khalid to tell him how much we in PIA had appreciated the story. It showed PIA as an airline that waited for neither time nor tide and not even cabinet ministers. Khalid Hasan is a brilliant columnist with a light touch that takes the air out of inflated egos. He is also someone who follows cricket and when things go poorly for the Pakistan team, he starts to fidget and looks unhappy.
Farooq Mazhar, Khalid Hasan and I teamed up in Australia and New Zealand for the World Cup 1992. And we had a ball. Both Farooq and Khalid had had a hard time getting visas and were simmering. They decided to write an open letter to the Australian Prime Minister and it was published in one of Australia’s leading newspapers. It brought an immediate response from the Prime Minister’s office. It apologized and promised to get some explanation from the Australian Embassy in Islamabad. There were problems with the media office and we felt that we were being treated shabbily. Our press passes would not be valid for the semi-finals and finals unless our team featured in them. We were outraged and made our views known until the media officer in New Zealand relented after we had given him a piece of our mind. When Pakistan got into the final, Farooq Mazhar and Khalid Hasan marched to the media office in Melbourne, demanded to see the seat-plan and had it changed so that best places were given to the Pakistani correspondents. I was doing the radio commentary so I wasn’t concerned and I gave my seat to John Woodcock of The Times, which infuriated Farooq Mazhar.
Farooq and Khalid had rented a flat in Melbourne, Farooq would do the cooking and Khalid the shopping and I would be the honoured guest though I did my share of the chores. On the eve of the Final, we had what seemed like our “last supper” and we were quiet and tense but in good heart. And a little sad that the tour was ending. It had been a lot of fun.
There is one moment that I have saved for the end. Farooq Mazhar had also been close to my brother, Sattoo and as soon as he heard that my brother had died, he dropped whatever he was doing and took the first flight to Karachi. He arrived just in time for the Namaz-e-Janaza, went to the graveyard for the burial and then took a flight back to Islamabad. He had hardly spoken to anyone. He had seen it as a personal loss and had not been obliged to share his sorrow with others. When he got to Islamabad, he telephoned me and asked me to come to Islamabad for a few days and the change would do me good.
I don’t remember him as an emotional man unless he was announcing over the radio that Pakistan had become the world’s hockey champions. He had many friends but a few who were special to him. I know that he worried about me but it was not a nagging, sloppy worry. He had his own way of showing concern, which was to show no concern at all. He did not want to change the world and he did not want the world to change him but he was a caring man. He would telephone me to tell me that the jacarandas were in bloom in Islamabad and the cherries were in season. It was his way of saying that a trip to Islamabad was overdue. He died without giving any notice. He was a very independent man.
The hour of our death is not known to us and, therefore, one cannot say that Farooq Mazhar was too young to have gone to sleep forever. But even for someone who was as close as I was to him, it was a bolt from the blue. He was not given to reading poetry but had come across Robert Frost and the lines that “I have miles to go....” had stuck with him suggesting that many more years of tilting at windmills lay ahead of him. By instinct, Farooq was a rebel and he espoused many causes, almost always lost causes. His timing was disastrous. He invariably found himself on the right side at the wrong time, which meant that he was no opportunist.
