AROUND two or three decades ago I desperately tried to locate a board in the first year classroom of the NED Engineering College old Campus behind D. J. College in Pakistan Chowk.

The board had two sections — the left side displayed the names of all principals to date and their period of service since the inception of the college. The right side displayed the names of all graduates with the year of their graduation.

On my recent visit I discovered that the entire college has moved to the new campus and the old campus houses the department of architecture. I went to the first year class room and found that the boards had disappeared. I visited the office of the head of architecture and he had no knowledge where the boards had gone.

Next, I went to the new campus and approached the vice chancellors, and all senior staff remembers to help me locate the board. I was highly disappointed at the casual attitude of the faculty who were at a loss to understand my deep concern in trying to locate the boards. One faculty member went to the extent of saying: “Maybe some chowkidar chopped it up and used it to prepare tea”.

Sadly, the board could not be traced.

Recently, an officer of the Bangladesh Foreign Service mentioned to me that his father was the additional deputy commissioner of revenue in Karachi around 1959/60. I thought it would be a good gesture on my part to send him a photograph of the board exhibiting his father name and the period he held that position in Karachi (a member of the then Civil Service of Pakistan).

For two days I searched the office of the Karachi commissioner as the additional deputy commissioner used to sit there but the board was not traceable. I would not be surprised if the board met the same fate as the one at the NED college.

Farhat Asrar
Karachi

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2019