A COUPLET by Mir Taqi Mir says:
Ik shakhs mujhi sa tha ke wo tujh pe tha aashiq
Wo us ki vafa peshgi, wo us ki javaani
Nasrullah Khan had borrowed the title of his interesting autobiography Ik Shakhs Mujhi Sa Tha from this couplet and it describes his life and career in journalism as well as his colleagues and their work style, as they were deeply in love with journalism and gave their lives to it, just like him.
Nasrullah Khan (1920-2002) was a journalist, columnist, humorist, broadcaster, playwright and sketch writer who was revered for his knowledge and journalistic acumen. He wrote some 12,000 columns over a period of 30 years. In Hurriyet, an Urdu daily published from Karachi, he would write a column every day and hardly ever missed it. Named ‘Aadaab Arz’, it was one of the longest-running innings in the history of Urdu column writing. Later on, he began writing for daily Jang and weekly Takbeer, as Hurriyet was no longer owned by the Dawn Media Group.
Khan Sahib also serialised his autobiography in Hurriyet and it was published, as mentioned by Aqeel Abbas Jafri, between September 26, 1986 and June 19, 1987.
At the end of this autobiography, it was decided that it must be published in book form, but it took quite a while. A few years later, when Nasrullah Khan began writing for Takbeer the autobiography’s composing began at Takbeer’s office. But due to some technical glitches the entire composing was erased and it was almost lost forever. But luckily Aqeel Abbas Jafri hunted from Karachi’s old book bazaar an old file that contained the clippings of Khan Sahib’s autobiography published in Hurriyet. Some unknown fan of Khan Sahib’s had collected all the pieces, except for a few, in that file. Some of the episodes were partially torn or damaged. Mahmood Aziz, a friend of Nasrullah Khan’s, had preserved a few early pages of the autobiography, including the page showing dedication and it was dedicated to Mushfiq Khwaja. He handed over these pages to Aqeel Abbas Jafri.
As Jafri is known for his knack for tracing old and missing works, he found the entire autobiography from the record maintained at Dawn’s library and the work came back to life. It was further adorned by annotations by Rashid Ashraf and the remaining notes were added by Jafri himself. Hence, a beautiful work, beautifully packaged by Karachi’s Varsa Publications, came out of the press and Nasrullah Khan’s autobiography was finally published in book form in 2020 — some 30 years after it was envisioned. And we must thank Aqeel Abbas Jafri for rediscovering and publishing it.
When the autobiography was published in episodes in Hurriyet, some objected that it described some famous personalities and some historical events in more details than the author’s own life. But this had made it an authentic account of some important social, cultural and political happenings. It describes the state of affairs in some cities and princely states in the British India. It also gives account of some interesting events involving some celebrities and a thumbnail summary of some portions of our political history. For instance, it offers glimpses of life in the former princely state of Jaora in central India. Some political movements and happenings such as Khilafat Movement, Simon Commission, Nehru Report, tragedy of Jalianwala Bagh, tragedy of Masjid Shaheed Ganj, Mahatma Gandhi’s son’s embracing Islam and some other occurrences are also briefly described.
As for social and cultural life some quarter of a century ago, it tells how loudspeaker was first introduced in the subcontinent and how the religious section of society abhorred it, though they gradually adopted it. How Aalam Aara, the first talkie made in the subcontinent, amazed people and how aeroplanes were seen when they first appeared on the horizon. The political personalities and journalist and writers we meet in the book include Zafar Ali Khan, Allama Iqbal, young Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Z.A. Bukhari, Abdul Majeed Salik, Bari Alig, Fakhr Matri, Inqilab Matri and many others.
Some historic events that the author was witness to are narrated in the episodes describing the early days of Radio Pakistan’s Karachi studios. It is in fact a chapter in the history of Radio Pakistan’s early days and it includes how and why a few sentences in Miss Fatima Jinnah’s speech were muted though the recorded version was complete and Miss Jinnah had listened to it before being broadcasted. It also tells what great spirits and zeal the artistes and officers at Radio Pakistan showed in those early days.
Aqeel Abbas Jafri would have done us another favour had he mentioned the date of publication of every episode of the autobiography at the end of each of them. But bringing this book back to life is such a nice work that even the numerous typos may also be ignored.
Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2020
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