The passing of a mentor

Illustration: TBS

He was not a member of the clan. He was a friend of my uncle. And yet his links with us, since those early days of our making his acquaintance with him in Quetta in 1962, grew stronger over the weeks and months and years. He was K.M. Shahidullah, our Shahidullah Mama. In that term of endearment come all the memories associated with him.

He has now said farewell to life. As I write, he is a new inhabitant in a Dhaka cemetery. Cancer was a battle he bravely fought but in the end was defeated by. 

Shahidullah Mama now belongs with the stars. And yet his presence in our lives --- in the lives of our parents and us siblings --- was starlight. He it was, who introduced me, in my school days, to Reader's Digest and Time magazine. He bought them regularly, read through them at great speed and then gave them to me. 

In a very big way, Shahidullah Mama's influence on the development of my reading habit was enormous. Through those journals he opened a window for me to the world of global affairs.

And there too was his colleague, our Farid Mama, who passed away in silence, in unobtrusive manner, a few years ago, without anyone of us knowing of the tragedy. Farid Mama was always the man with the cheerful smile. He and Shahidullah Mama and our Hiron Mama (Hiron Mama is my mother's first cousin) were all employed in the geological survey in Quetta as drilling engineers. 

It was a task which took them to various parts of Balochistan (and this was before 1971) and to other regions of (West) Pakistan before all three of them were transferred to erstwhile East Pakistan prior to the elections of December 1970.

Farid Mama too played a role in the development of my reading habits. He bought all those Perry Mason books for me and I devoured them with a passion that is hard to describe. From him, I had as well my weekly supply of Newsweek magazine. You could say that the habit of reading which was to become a part of me had a huge lot to do with Shahidullah Mama's Time and Reader's Digest and Farid Mama's Newsweek and Perry Mason. Both of them are now gone to a world, if there is such a world, from where they will never return. The dead do not return. It is the memories we associate with them that keep them in the innermost recesses of the soul in us. 

These three uncles of mine took me to see some of the new movies screened at the Quetta cinema halls. I remember when as a student of class five they took me to see the Sean Connery starrer From Russia With Love. My father was rather upset that at such a young age I had been to a movie whose theme was love, until it was explained to him that the word 'love' related to Russia and not to any man-woman romance. 

When the Urdu movie Chand Aur Chandni, with Nadeem and Shabana in the lead roles, was released, they took me to see it. I loved the Ahmed Rushdi songs there and secretly saw the movie twice more because of one particular song, jaane tamanna khat hae tumhara/pyaar bhara afsana.

In later times, Shahidullah Mama --- and this was until a few years ago --- would turn up at our Dhaka home for conversation and to borrow journals and books from me. He was an avid reader and every week, I would give him the newest copy of The Economist as also any book on politics or history, together with a biography he would be interested in. Sometimes he would bring a book for me which I would read with pleasure. And, yes, it was Shahidullah Mama who gave me my first shaving kit on my birthday.

Shahidullah Mama's respect for my parents was boundless. When my father passed away in 1992, it was he who took upon himself the responsibility of collecting my father's pension and handing it to my mother, who was of course entitled to it. He did this work diligently for the fourteen years in which my mother lived after my father's demise. We were grateful to him for the trouble he took to go all the way to the pension office in Old Dhaka and carry the amount back to our home in Tajmahal Road, Mohammadpur.

One of the enduring images I have of Shahidullah Mama relates to that rainy evening when our family arrived back in Dhaka after long years in Quetta. It was 5 July 1971, a dark era when Bangladesh was under enemy occupation. When we landed at the old Tejgaon airport, we found the place brimming with soldiers of the Pakistan army. Unbeknownst to us, on that PIA aircraft were military officers in civilian attire arriving in Dhaka to be part of the occupation. Once the plane landed, all those officers, in military uniforms, waiting on the tarmac saluted the men who had stepped out of the plane.

Ours was the only Bangali family on the aircraft. When we collected our luggage, we were saddened to discover that no one had come to the airport to receive us. It was getting dark and it was raining. As my father led us out of the terminal building, wondering how to reach the Kathal Bagan home of my mother's cousin, where we would stay, we saw Shahidullah Mama waving at us from outside the gate. We rushed to him, and asked him why he was not inside the building. 

I remember the shock I felt when I heard his response: 'The soldiers did not allow me to get inside the airport. They don't permit any Bangalis inside it.'

The nature of Bangladesh's occupation by the Pakistan army was never more clear to me than it was at that moment. Desolation was all around. It was getting dark and the rain came down in torrents as Shahidullah Mama took us, in his office jeep, to Kathal Bagan.

Born in the year when the Second World War broke out, K.M. Shahidullah lived to be witness to the changing contours of the world he inhabited. There was a full-blooded Bangali in him, an inveterate patriot. His was a secular soul forever ready to silence anyone who sought to question the ideals which led to the birth of Bangladesh. He had little time for nonsense and for ignorance. 

The day after Bangabandhu and his family were assassinated in August 1975, Shahidullah Mama visited us at our Rankin Street home. Grief-stricken as an entire nation was, he nevertheless made the prediction --- that the moment of ignominy would pass, that better times would dawn. In June 1996, he celebrated the return of those better days.

He was my mentor. It was an endless delight speaking to him of the country, of the world. Away from my country, I watch the skies outside my window. I journey back to all the good times personified by our Shahidullah Mama. Perhaps his soul is out there among the clouds? Perhaps the fireflies are already singing a dirge around his grave? 

Syed Badrul Ahsan. Sketch: TBS

Syed Badrul Ahsan writes on politics, history and literature