ADIEU, my most helpful, kind, supportive and true friend Ardeshir Sahib. Significantly, for your rendered, unflinching assistance to Shiites and minorities, you passed away on Nov 24, the day auguring the auspicious Ashura.

Already, I miss visiting your residence on Mary Road and being greeted by your lovely dogs. For two decades, I have been opening Dawn of Friday and Sunday, weekends, on your column. Breakfast table, Dawn’s weekly, my father, would ask me to read to him Cowasjee’s observations while making the wry comment in Gugarati: “Soun bole che, Ardeshir sahib.”

Hopefully, the coming more educated generation will pick up, come to terms with your ideals and the nation will emerge, as you envisaged, in Jinnah’s secular Pakistan. Populace will become peace-loving, corruption-free, tolerant and progressive, where all Pakistanis irrespective of their cast or creed will live in harmony and tranquillity.

For Ardeshir Sahib’s contribution and services to retaining the pleasant environment of Karachi, a resolution should be moved to give to Clifton the nomenclature of Ardeshir Cowasjee Avenue, just as Deepchand Ojha Road had been named Business Recorder Road, Drigh Road as Shah Faisal Road, and Father Jamanez Road renamed Mahomed Ali Habib, for the philanthropic Seth’s endowment upon the Shiite community, his prized Mehfil-i-Shah-i-Khurasan.

MOHAMMED AZIZ HAJI DOSSA Karachi