October 17, 2004

The death of a true woman of substance has divested our society of yet another great personality

ALL those who have written about the eminent educationist Begum Amina Majeed Malik after her death on October 4 in Karachi have either ignored or haven’t done justice to the fact that the lady was a people’s person. Her cherished moments were not so much about the places she visited, but the ones that she spent in the company of people, most of whom were distinguished in different fields. All those who had had the privilege of knowing the lady closely got to meet some of them in person and some through ‘her eyes’, if I may say so. Baji, as she was endearingly called, talked about people she knew in her early youth — Allama Iqbal and Sarojini Naidu with nostalgia, as also some she met later, such as Professor Saleemuzzan Siddiqi and Shakir Ali.

Her home was always an open house to some luminaries, like Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Alys Faiz who stayed there when they were in Karachi, as indeed to all those who lived in the city. She asked everyone to stay for dinner, even if the visitors were unannounced. If nothing else she would insist on the guests having tea or coffee, and in recent years she loved to offer shikanjbeen (lime juice). While on Faiz, I am reminded of an anecdote she was fond of narrating. She and her family had moved to DHA Phase II sometime in the ‘70s, when Faiz stayed with them. Shortly before midnight Faiz realized that he had run out of cigarettes. “Why didn’t you tell me when the servants were awake? Do you know that the shops in the commercial area in Defence close at 10? The driver has also gone to his quarter, otherwise I would have sent him to Saddar. You’ll get your cigarettes first thing tomorrow morning,” she said. But Faiz couldn’t have waited until the next morning, so he tried to blackmail her. “In that case I’ll walk down to Saddar and get my cigarettes,” he said and succeeded, but not without being impressed by Baji’s resourcefulness. She called up the IB chap, whose job was to tail Faiz sahib and who was offered food and shelter by Baji. “Take this bike and take this money and go quickly to Saddar to get a packet of cigarettes for Faiz sahib,” she told him. “And what if Faiz sahib goes away. I’ll lose my job,” he pleaded. “Don’t worry, I’ll perform your duty. And I won’t let him go anywhere till such time that you are back,” Baji assured the mole. In less than an hour Faiz sahib had his packet of cigarettes.

When Sadequain had no place to stay, Baji arranged for a room at the PECHS College (before it was nationalized) and got canvas and oil paint for the great artist. Sadequain got his food and his quota of cigarettes.

Sadequain wasn’t too fond of taking a bath. I remember I was sitting with him when a school peon, holding a towel and starched kurta and pyjama in his hands came to him and announced, “Baji is saying that the water for your bath has been heated twice. If you don’t take your bath now, you’ll have to settle for cold water.” Sadequain found it difficult to tear himself away from his work, but he eventually gave in.

Sadequain painted the whole day. He was quite generous for he made sketches for students and gave them happily. He also made murals for the walls of the college. But after the college was nationalized those murals disappeared and no one has a clue to their whereabouts.

Baji donated the paintings that Sadequain presented her to the Mohatta Palace Museum a couple of years ago. They were worth hundreds of thousands.

Baji was a generous soul. She offered freeship in the school that she founded to children whose parents could not afford to pay even reasonable fees. When someone suggested that like some other schools the PECHS School should also start collecting fees on a quarterly basis, Baji rejected the idea. “Do the parents get three months’ salaries in advance? It would be mean of me to ask them to pay three months’ fees in one go, more so when I pay the school staff and the utility bills on a monthly basis.”

Baji was averse to publicity. Even when dignitaries visited the school or the college, she never invited the press, a policy her late daughter Nageen Malik pursued religiously. When Prince Philips, and earlier Prince Barnhard of the Netherlands, came to see the conservation projects, made by the PECHS school’s children, no invitations were sent to the media.

“Publicity is a double-edged sword,” Baji used to say. She refused to be interviewed. She was livid when someone, who claimed to have interviewed her, wrote a piece based on that ‘meeting’. Despite my being quite close to her, she refused to give me an interview, but a few years ago when her son Fareed Malik and granddaughter Seema insisted, she agreed to talk to me.

“Name the five people you were most impressed with,” was a question that she rejected initially. She said she was impressed by many more people and that it would be unfair to restrict her to just five people. When the three of us insisted that the number could not be increased because the interview had the limitation of space, she agreed. The only concession we gave her was that the five would be in addition to her learned husband, Colonel Majeed Malik.

Faiz was quite expectedly the first luminary to be mentioned by her and she spoke volumes about the man and the poet. Then she spoke of the two great educators and brothers Dr Zakir Husain and Dr Mahmood Husain at some length. On her insistence, we agreed to count them as one in the list of five. Then she pondered for a while and talked about the distinguished writer and professor, Rasheed Ahmad Siddiqi. Like Zakir Sahib, he too was a close friend of Baji’s father. She had nothing but praise for Siddiqi sahib. Patras Bokhari, whom she referred to as Bade Bukhari sahib, impressed her a great deal too.

“He was not just a highly accomplished person, he was also a scintillating conversationalist,” recalls Baji. The fifth slot went to her Saleem bhai — Prof Saleemuzzaman Siddiqi. “He was a great scientist, a talented painter, poet and singer, and above all very fine person,” she enthused and went on to recall a couple of anecdotes relating to the nonagenarian who led a very useful life until his death.

“Arey bhai ye tum ne panch ki kya qaid laga rakhi hai. Aur bhi kai buhat qabil aur azeem shakhsiyat ko maine qareeb se dekha hai, she said as she threw up her hands in exasperation. I thought I was being unreasonable, the generous soul that Baji was, this kind of limitation would make her feel uncomfortable.

She then went on to praise such people as Dr Rasheed Jahan and Dr Taseer. She also dwelt at length on her old friend Safia Akhtar and her brother Majaz Lucknavi. Such was Baji’s power of description and narration that when she talked of these celebrities of yesteryear, I began to feel that I knew those people personally.

The twin tragedy — the death of her two daughters, Billam and Nageen — devastated Baji. She began to feel lonely even though Fareed and Seema, and even her old faithful servants took good care of her. She would phone people and invite them over for tea or dinner. When three of her close friends — Dr Fatima Shah, Alys Faiz and Princess Abida Sultana — died one after the other, she was all the more despondent.

In the last three or four months of her life she had stopped talking. When people visited her — there were visitors day in and day out — she remained quiet. That was not the Baji we knew. She had captive audiences when she talked about her favourite subject — Aligarh or when she quoted the likes of Hafiz and Ghalib. But one thing Baji didn’t give up. She continued to read till the early hours of the morning. There was just one difference in her reading habit, she had confined herself to Urdu, even though she had also been at home in English and Persian. But, then, for Lahore-born Amina Majeed Malik, who also studied in her native town and much later in Bombay, the Aligarh Muslim University was the institution she took pride in and Urdu the language she loved immensely. It was a pleasure listening to her for she brought out the nuances of the language. The phrases and idioms that she used have sadly been forgotten by us.

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