G o back 65 years. It began with the declaration of independence. Pakistan. Americans learnt for the first time the name of the newborn. To capture its birth was ‘LIFE’. It was happenstance that I suddenly hit upon this extinct edition at our local old-book store. There were stacks of these unforgettables carelessly thrown to one side. The look on their covers was unmistakable with the letters ‘LIFE’ printed in white on a solid block of red.

The black and white life-sized portraits, turned sepia with time, on each cover stared at me as though to say ‘Hello! Why don’t you ruffle through my pages and look for what you’re searching?’ I took up the challenge, squared my shoulders and slid on my reading glasses while dumping my handbag on the rusty old hardwood floor. Issue after issue I worked through, almost giving up the search when behold, I got what my eyes so desperately sought. On one of the copies I read “September 8, 1947, 15 cents.”

On page 38, I read “The birth of two nations. Independence comes to dominions of Moslem Pakistan, Hindu India.” A two page spread had photos presumably by the famous woman photographer Margaret Bourke. Some of us may remember that she’s the lady who famously got Jinnah to sit in an upright chair and photograph him. It became a signature portrait of the father of the nation and will forever remain. The write-up in the LIFE Magazine begins with: “The pictures on these pages record the birth of two nations, Pakistan and India.” It ends with the lines “But as Independence Day receded into the past and great crowds gathered to watch their new flag go up, the predicted civil war between the religious communities seemed about to burst forth. At last week’s end the Sikhs and Moslems were already fighting a war of extermination in the Punjab.”

And the woman who captured the communal riots on camera was none other than Margaret Bourke. She was also “one of the most effective chroniclers” of the violence that erupted at independence, writes New York Times reporter Somini Sengupta. She calls the work “gut-wrenching… the photographer's undaunted desire to stare down horror.”

I bought LIFE for a penny (well almost) and proudly brought it back home as my prized trophy! But since that day in October last, LIFE has been a pariah. It had an awful dank smell that spread in the room. I banished it to the balcony, hoping sun and fresh air would cure it of its malady. Days passed but the smell stayed. “It’s fungus” said a helpful voice when I told him that the magazine could not enter my home because of its time-scarred weevily unbearable smell.

“Put it in a microwave and the fungus will die,” he said. When the family was out, I shoved the magazine in my small microwave oven and fired it up until I noticed the magazine starting a little fire inside the oven. I quickly got it out and dashed to the sink to douse the dangerously inflamed pages in water, shaking all the while that the house could have caught fire given the way homes are built in America with combustible cardboard and wood.

Despite a 3rd degree burn, LIFE survived. And so did the darn fungus. And so did the wormy smell. And this leads me to my final decision: throw LIFE out, if I have to make my life and those around bearable. Therefore, after I do this column and take the photos, I have no other choice but to toss my prized possession in the dumpster.

Postscript: LIFE is defunct now, though it does show up from time to time. Its life ended at the turn of this century having been around since 1883. I remember as a kid when the magazine turned up at our home in Lahore every week to keep us abreast of politics, culture and trends in America. It was the photographs that enticed young minds to want to know more and more of what went on in another continent. Long before the black and white television invaded our homes in mid-sixties, LIFE presented a helicopter view of affairs around the world via its black and white images.

The most memorable issue in my mind is the one that carried unpublished photos of the funeral of the American President John F. Kennedy. Jackie and her two little children featured in the haunting photos. The motto of the first issue of ‘LIFE’ was, “While there’s ‘LIFE’, there's hope.” The new magazine set forth its principles and policies to its readers: “We wish to have some fun in this paper... We shall try to domesticate as much as possible of the casual cheerfulness that is drifting about in an unfriendly world… We shall have something to say about religion, about politics, fashion, society, literature, the stage, the stock exchange, and the police station, and we will speak out what is in our mind as fairly, as truthfully, and as decently as we know how.”

LIFE is dead, long live life.

anjumniaz@rocketmail.com