Long before the celebrated Hollywood director Steven Spielberg thought of making a film on the life (or extinction, was it?) of dinosaurs, one million years old fossil of one such species was found in Pakistan. Hard to believe? Not so?

Check out this news item published in Dawn, and some other newspapers, on April 29, 1965. According to it, a million-year-old fossil of a 50ft long dinosaur was found three miles west of Talagang in Chambelipur district. Who discovered it? It was a mechanic who was prospecting (read: drilling for) oil in the region. As soon as the news was broken, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Karachi, Dr I H Quraishi asked Chairman of the University’s Geology Department, Dr Bilal Husain, to immediately go to Chambelipur to examine the fossil. It was also suggested that if the discovery was true, Dr Husain might fly out to North America for further investigation. Come to think of it, it’s not unlikely that a civilisation as the old as the Indus, and we’re all part of it, once was the habitat of such species. It’s just that we have stopped researching to know more about our past, therefore society is never sure about its future.

Those were the days, the 60s that is, when the University of Karachi had a very proactive role in research-related activities, not just in the field of science but also in the discipline of art. A day before the report about the dinosaur remains took newspaper readers by surprise (April 28), the Governor of West Pakistan, Malik Amir Mohammad Khan, who was also chancellor of the university, accorded approval to the statute pertaining to the degree of Doctor of Letters (D-Lit) and Doctor of Science (D Sc). Now the question is: how many doctors of letters and science have we produced ever since?

On the other hand, there has never been a dearth of journalists in the country (the quality-quantity debate is still relevant though) nor of media outlets. On April 26 one of Pakistan’s leading newspapers saw the light of day. And the paper was none other than Business Recorder, edited by M A Zuberi. Inaugurating the English daily, the then Central Minister for Finance, Muhammad Shoaib, called for the development of economic journalism as a means for educating the people on the economic policies of the government. He, for sure, was spot on.

By the way, despite the fact that the newspaper industry was in full swing, every now and then crises, usually not alarming, would spring up. On April 30, the convener of the Pakistan Newspaper Association, Amin Tareen, made an appeal to the government to look into the issue of newsprint shortage. And the shortage was taken care of.

These days we often crib about the fact that the country does not have a top-notch piano player. This is true to some extent. Half a century back, this was not the case. There was a gentleman by the name of Ferose Buchome. He was a class act. His concert at Hotel Metropole on April 30 was one of the most well received events of the week. According to a critic, Buchome was in great form while presenting Bach’s toccata and fugue in D-minor. One of the other memorable features of the performance was a Mozart piece in which a talented young woman Farrukh Amir accompanied him at a second piano. It would be nice to know a bit more about the two artists. Let’s keep that for some other time.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play