KARACHI: Friends and colleagues came together to pay tributes to veteran journalist Shaikh Aziz on his first death anniversary at the Karachi Press Club (KPC) on Monday.

Former bureaucrat and politician Mehtab Akbar Rashdi said that Shaikh sahib’s professionalism set him apart. “I hear he was obsessed with work. Although I never got to work with him I was impressed by the way he spoke and the articulate way in which he would present his debates. He was also not one to hold back when teaching others and churned out several respected journalists like himself. He taught them the tricks of the trade, and they carry his trademark of professionalism.”

She added: “Losing him is something we cannot get over easily. His loss is like a bruise that we carry with us and which keeps hurting.”

Senior journalist Mujahid Barelvi said that Shaikh Aziz was also a very good writer of obituaries among other things. “No one could pen an obituary like he did. He would paint a complete picture of the person he would be writing about and leave the reader in tears in the end.”

Writer Madad Ali Sindhi said that he looked up to Shaikh sahib like an elder brother since he was actually his older brother’s friend.

“His journalism was quite modern and the trends started by Sindh News under his supervision were later followed by other papers,” he said. “And he wasn’t just restricted to journalism. He was also an authority on music and international relations.”

Journalist and former senator Yousuf Shaheen said that he felt lucky to have spent a major portion of his life in the company of literary giants Shaikh Ayaz and Shaikh Aziz.

“Somehow the latter always said that he was out of time though he laid the foundations of Sindhi journalism,” he said. “I would have thought he didn’t even have time to die, but I was so wrong. Shaikh Aziz left us very suddenly.”

Dr Zulfiqar Ali Quraishi spoke about Shaikh sahib’s interest in musicology. “He was a musicologist and my teachers were his students, making me his grand-student,” he said.

Prof Mohammad Saleem Memon said that his association with Shaikh sahib goes back 50 years though he was much older. “I would often go to the office of the Ibrat newspaper when we lived in Hyderabad and he used to work there. I was a child and went there to help with the bringing out of the children’s pages. And I learnt subbing and editing from Shaikh sahib,” he said.

“You no longer find such professional journalists anymore. He would be engrossed in his work and chewing away on a paan as he worked,” he added.

Shaikh Aziz’s son Tariq Aziz Shaikh said that the KPC was like his father’s second home. “Whenever he was unhappy or mad over anything at home, we would find him here,” he said.

“At home we were made to follow strict schedule while studying, playing, eating, etc, and growing up we all felt like his junior staffers in a newspaper office,” he added laughingly.

“My father was a workaholic, always working on some project or the other even after retiring. He wrote many books and was working on several more as well, many of which we didn’t even know about. I wish his unfinished projects see completion some day,” he said, adding that the University of Punjab has also started offering PhD on his father’s life.

KPC’s president Imtiaz Faran said that he himself as a journalist got to learn how to express himself when writing about beauty from Shaikh Aziz. “He also taught how to write daringly during media curbs. A great lover of books, he would often ask me what book I was currently reading and quite frankly I took up reading out of the fear of being asked that question by him,” he laughed.

Dawn Editor Zaffar Abbas also spoke on the occasion.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2019