SATURDAY’s Dawn carries an announcement of H.N. Akhtar’s death a week after he died. The announcement does not mention the address nor the rituals that normally follow death. He must have so willed.

Akhtar and I were at Government High School, Sargodha, around independence, he two or three years ahead and so he was in public service.

He was a brilliant student but such are the vagaries of our selection system that he did not make it to the top grade civil and foreign services and was assigned to audit and accounts.

That did not prevent him from getting posts which were generally occupied by CSP officers. He became secretary to the federal government and the chairman of Pakistan Steel Mills.

Defying his wish for anonymity, I thought the people must know a little more about him than what the announcement said.

Kunwar Idris

Karachi

Published in Dawn, July 24th, 2019