Sunday Surkhi- Taseer and me

  Salman Taseer ,Governer of Panjab, (s/o Dr. M.D. Taseer   - Moahammad Din) addressing the gathering as chief guest of APPNA Dinner program on 28th Dec. 2010, in Lahore.
 It was in 1948 when I joined Islamia College, Lahore (Railway Road). I faced the Principal of the college in my interview none other than Dr. M. D. Taseer who smilingly gave his permission for admission.  Then after F.Sc. I had joined Government College Lahore. I was returning from Anarkali to my hostel when I saw Dr.  Taseer walking in search of  a Tonga. (He did not drive a car, I remember he came to College in Tonga). That must be the last day of November because I read news about his death the following day in the paper. he had had a heart attack.
 I took the above picture of his son knowing little that a week later he would be dead too, gunned down by an assasin, Mumtaz Qadri. (Coincidental? yes and no, but wait listen further.)
 I had landed in Islamabad/Rawalpindi on 26th Dec. 2007 and the following day an assasin killed Benazir Bhutto.
 I was visiting a friend that evening on 4th Jan 2011 just a few blocks away from the place where Salman Taseer was killed and I then apologized to my friend who I was supposed to visit that evening and stayed home with my friend as I felt unsafe going out that evening after Salman's death.
 1948 myclass was full of misbehaving boys and therefore one day the Principal himself came to teach us.  All I still remember him walking in my classroom back and forth obviously enjoying the explanation, the meanings of the verses of the famous poem
 "A red red rose" (by Robert Burns, pyblished first in 1794)
 "O my love's like a red red rose
   Thats newly sprung in June
   O my love's like the melodie
   Thats sweetly played in tune"
Not a single sound other than Dr. Taseer's was heard in the class while he was teaching as if all of us were stunned by the teacher's charisma and speech. He was reportedly the first Indian who received Ph.D. in English (Cambridge University). He was a poet himself and a litereary person who would create smiles and laughters in any gathering with his witty remarks and jovial nature. (I had mentioned about that in some other blog of mine before.)

Please visit my Urdu blog at http://saugoreebsc.blogspot.com/ and my Hindi blog at http://wahajuana.blogspot.com/