Many moons ago as I descended my hotel lift in Wiesbaden in Germany, an impressive person was also going down. Being a journalist by inclination, what to speak of birth, I shot the question: “Sir, your face seems familiar”.

The gent smiled and replied: “You also look sort of familiar. Whose son are you?” he asked. My late father was Hamid Sheikh, a former BBC correspondent and an editor of a leading Lahore newspaper. He smiled, gave me a light hug and said: “I am Yehudi Menuhin the violinist, and during the war Hamid and I spent long hours discussing classical music. He was a genius and a great friend”.

If anyone has shocked me in a foreign land, he was the man. Then to confirm any lingering suspicion he added: “How is Pip?” My English mother was called Pip and she bravely held the family of nine together after my father’s death in 1971, especially after our relatives suddenly went missing and were of no use. On her funeral over 200 beggars gathered at our house gate to praise the ‘memsahib’ who always gave them half of what she had in her purse.

After a brief chat with Yehudi Menuhin, he pulled out two tickets to his classical music concert in Wiesbaden, one of which I gave to the German baron of a machinery manufacturing company that was refusing to work in Pakistan. The baron was impressed and said: “OK, I will come to Pakistan only for your sake, provided no bribes are paid, and seeing your face I trust you”.

I returned to Lahore and at Islamabad found top government officials delighted at the breakthrough. It was after all a major national project at stake. As I left a government office an official came running and said: “The big sahib has to be paid his share per cent”. I froze, returned to my Lahore office and immediately faxed the baron. “Herr Baron seems you were correct. I also cannot work with them.” I got an amazing response, which said: “I trusted you. If you ever want to work with us, just let me know”. One has been silent ever since.

But the legacy of my father grows larger as time passes. In 1939, he joined the All-India Radio of Lahore, only to be posted as a BBC war correspondent based with the massive Indian Army fighting in North Africa, in Italy, in France, and other places including at Dunkirk. For five years, he was at work till the war ended in 1945 and walked through the Auschwitz camp with his colleague Richard Dimbleby. His report is part of history now.

But my father always had a regret over the way Indian soldiers were treated, and afterwards remembered, for their services by the colonial power. Back in London, he was sent to track down Indian soldiers who had disappeared in France. One example was of a Punjabi who had married a French girl and lived in a village. As my father, who spoke fluent French, approached the man and said in chaste Punjabi: “Ke haal aye?” He replied immediately: “Theek aye” and then begged him to spare him as he had two children. My father raised his glass and said: “Daffa ho ja”. The stories are endless.

Among his many friends, including the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie then living in London in exile, was the Catalan cellist Pablo Casals. He spent many nights listening to him at his Prades village in France just next to the Spanish border. I remember him telling us that after each piece he would ask: “Hamid, tell me which piece was that?” Each time my father got it right. After all his PhD in classical music from the London School held him in good stead.

But his first love was Indian classical music, and he had been a pupil of Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan and knew each ‘raag’ well and could reel off who sang it best. I remember I once walked through Bhati Gate to the Taxali area where the Patiala family of classical musicians lived, namely Ustad Akhtar Hussain and his sons Amanat, Fateh and Hamid Ali. Sadly, the place is now part of a bizarre food street.

Ustad Akhtar often asked me to become his ‘shagird’. But my father insisted that only after he finishes his education. Since those days Hamid Ali has been a good friend. At the opening ceremony where their traditional house, as also of other musicians, was ‘forcibly’ converted into a food street, as a journalist I sat next to Hamid Ali. He looked sadly, in silence, at his old house with tears in his eyes. I sat in silence for his emotion one could understand.

Every evening we had an array of guests, from Roshan Ara Begum to Ustad Ghulam Hussain Shaggan, to poets well-known as well as writers, journalists, and thinkers of every ilk. Once the painter Sadequain came over and stayed for a week, filling our schoolbooks. Shakir Ali was a regular. Faiz Ahmed Faiz and others often came, and the list is endless. One friend was the finance secretary Badruz Zaman, who would spend two or three nights at Data Darbar disguised as a beggar. On this he would never comment.

But with this array of people coming meant that my elder brother and I were forced to cycle to Gowalmandi to buy fish, or kebabs. Sardar, the fish shop owner, always asked: “Who has come today?” I remember for Faiz Sahib he would stand up and get a good piece of fish and cook it in a special way.

When my father passed away at the age of 51 only, the rush was immense. But within a week everyone disappeared, except ‘Chacha’ FE Chaudhry the photographer, whose Quickly in our youth we loved to pinch and try. He always knew what we were up to. But my brave mother kept her huge clan of ten together and happy.

The condolences kept coming in. Two we will never forget. One was from his childhood friend the writer Rajinder Singh Bedi. It was a two-liner. “Yaar se sadha. Vada banda see. Dil wallah see”. But the letter from the great BBC cricket commentator, and his roommate for two years, John Arlott, was special. The letter said: “Dear Pip, they don’t make men like ‘em any more”. Both the great friends were brief, like all good friends should be.

Such is the legacy of my father. This column in a way is because of him, for every Sunday he would walk me through the old walled city, telling me who lived where. It was as if he knew every house. I am sure all our readers have their own special legacy. It makes sense to share it with their children. The history of every family makes up what our society is all about … each one worth cherishing. My apologies for being slightly sentimental.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2024