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January 19, 2006
Remembering a teacher
Unlike freezing, foggy Lahore, Karachi winters, with low temperatures and warm sunshine, spell happiness. But while the weather in the port city during the pre- and post- New Year days and around Eid ul Azha has been all one could ask for, it has also been accompanied by an epidemic of flu and other scary viral diseases, including dengue fever. It is also the time when dozens or, more accurately, hundreds of weddings are squeezed into one hectic fortnight.
Since every family has several loved ones living in the US and Europe, the wedding dates have to synchronize with their two to three weeks of Christmas holidays. Whether it was New Year’s or Christmas Eve, or the Eid ul Azha holidays, every festivity has had to take a backseat under the overwhelming pressure of weddings and their unending strings of dholkis, maiyoons and mehndis. When people complain about having to rush to several marriage functions every evening, they can take consolation from the fact that the situation was the same in neighbouring India and the other SAARC countries.
Another major event that took place nearly about the same time was Eid ul Azha. In both our major cities, the roads were cleaned up very fast after the disgusting fly-infested mess that Baqreid’s spate of animal sacrifices leaves them in. Despite Lahore’s tally of around six hundred thousand of animals, and Karachi’s far greater number of goats, sheep, cows, camels, and yaks too, about 20 per cent more than last year’s that were put to the knife, an army of cleaners in both cities had the situation well under control.
Now that the city governments of these places have proved their efficacy, ambitious people want them to provide alternatives to the pavements, streets and nearby open spaces where the public habitually cuts up the animals, creating pools of unsightly blood that soaks into the earth. These citizens have in mind properly-designed permanent structures in every neighbourhood, where the whole gory process can take place away from sensitive eyes. Seems like a tall order for a three-day event that comes once a year. Still, our Nazims and their advisors are people of action and imagination and can come up with a viable solution.
While people were celebrating the different events, a great teacher died. On an icy January day, I went to the cemetery on Shara e Faisal for the funeral of a dear friend and deeply admired former Head of the English Department, Karachi University: Professor Maya Jamil. The Karachi University English department was in its heyday during Jamil’s time, when she and the other equally famous teacher, the poet Maki Koreishi gave it exceptional lustre. At the funeral it was good to see the lady currently heading that department, Amberine Qazi, who herself had been a student of Maya’s. Qazi said that a memorial meeting was scheduled at the university for her.
Many who knew Maya Jamil as a student recalled her as the acknowledged belle of Lucknow University, a beautiful and radiant young woman widely admired by her fellow students. If I remember correctly, another Lucknow University luminary described Maya the student as forward-looking and unconventional. As evidence of these qualities she said that in those pre-partition days when such things for girls were unheard of, Maya could be seen coolly cycling to college. Well-read, witty, tolerant and open minded, she married an equally talented and cultured university personality.
I have known few people who worked as hard as Maya did all her life. In addition to her other responsibilities, in the evening she taught English at the PACC where young people flock to acquire knowledge of this language, so essential to their commercial and business activities. Having taught there myself, I can assure the reader that it is taxing and exhausting work and the payment does not match the effort required. While poetry, the classics and all the other bright lights of English literature were Maya’s forte, she was equally adept at imparting elementary spoken English and grammar to gauche youth.
Maya and her husband Jamil’s house in Karachi was a centre for people with intellectual leanings, and she was a generous hostess serving them among other things, her favourite sweet Dhaka yoghurt which she made in her oven. Qurat ul Ain Hyder, a great friend, would drop by as would many of the top writers and journalists including M.H. Askari and Zuhair Siddiqui. The Jamils two young daughters, Meena and Renu, would play around or sit with their noses in their books.
When Maya’s health deteriorated, her neighbours helped to care for her as did some of her former students, many of them in high places. When she had moved to Pakistan with her husband, this gentle soft-spoken woman left her own family and her entire clan behind in India. But Jamil’s relatives and Maya’s many fans and admirers saw to her needs during her last difficult days.
Granted that good English teachers are hard to find; but her scholarship and teaching talents weren’t all that made Maya Jamil a distinguished person. She displayed a high degree of commitment and integrity, qualities that today may sound outdated but which helped to make her special.
Hopefully, some of her dedication and devotion to her work has rubbed off on some of her students wherever they are. It is this legacy, the impact a good teacher has on her students, that ennobles the teaching profession.
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