By Asif Noorani

Begum Amina Majeed Malik was a link with such eminent people of yesteryear as Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Abdur Rahman Chughtai, her own distinguished husband Col Majeed Malik, not to speak of Allama Iqbal, Sarojini Naidu, Dr Zakir Husain, Patras Bokhari, Prof. Rasheed Ahmed Siddiqi and Dr Taseer.

She was a leading educationist, founder chairman of the Idara-i-Yaadgar-i-Ghalib and was closely associated with charities such as the Lady Dufferin Hospital, of which she was a member of the governing body. She built up a fine educational institution - the PECHS Girls School - from scratch, and later founded the PECHS College for Girls in Karachi.

Baji, as she was fondly called by one and all, was born on Nov 27, 1913 in Lahore, where she did her matriculation in 1928, securing first position and winning a gold medal. She was the first Muslim woman to achieve that honour. In her intermediate science examination, she repeated the outstanding performance.

Her father, Dr Ataullah Butt, who set up the Tibbia College in Aligarh, suggested she study medicine, but her interest was in the liberal arts. Baji went on to do her BA (again a first class first).

Shortly after that she was married to Col. Majeed Malik, the first Indian to be appointed a full colonel in the British Army. He too was a learned man and was the first accredited correspondent of Reuters in India before he joined the army.

Not many people know that Majeed Malik was also a fine poet. Of all his poems, the one that he wrote so lovingly with Baji in mind - "Magar ae haseena-i-nazneen" - became one of the most popular love songs of its time. The poem scored over the poet in much the same way as the Elegy Written on the Country Churchyard has got precedence over Thomas Gray.

Baji went to Aligarh where she did her BT (the old equivalent of B.Ed), and true to her tradition she stood first. She later did her MA in philosophy from the University of Bombay. That was in 1939, when her eldest child was born.

She taught in Delhi, Bombay and Aligarh before partition. It was the Father of the Nation, who asked Col Majeed Malik to come to Pakistan and serve the new country, which was passing through trying times.

Well read in Urdu, Persian and English, Begum Majeed Malik served as a consultant to the ministry of education for two years from 1952 where she supervised curriculum development and translated numerous books in Urdu and English.

From 1955 when she established the PECHS Girls School to her last days she was totally involved in the education of girls. Despite her frail health and the loss of her two daughters, which devastated her, she made it a point to attend various functions at the school.

Having grown up in an environment steeped in the artistic and intellectual traditions of both East and West, she saw to it that the students of the two institutions got the best of both the worlds.

If there were calligraphy classes in school, there were also students' projects on conservation, one of which was attended by the Duke of Edinburgh and another by Prince Barnard of Holland. Before Sindhi was made a compulsory subject in schools, she had introduced it in the PECHS school.

To date there are music classes in the PECHS school and until the Ghanshyams migrated to the US in the 70s, classical dance was an optional subject. Baji's residence, before and even after the death of her husband, remained an open house, where at every meal you found guests being entertained.

One of the close family friends who stayed with the Maliks whenever he visited Karachi was Faiz. She spoke of him with the kind of pride a sister would take when mentioning her outstanding brother.

Listening to her about people one had only heard of was a treat. You felt as if you had met them in person. "Two tongas were sent to the railway station when Barey Bokhari Sahib (Patras) visited Aligarh.

One carried his luggage to our house and the other transported him to the residence of Prof. Rasheed Ahmed Siddiqi. After paying a courtesy call on Siddiqi Sahib, Bokhari Sahib would come to stay with my father," she once told this writer.

Baji had the fondest of memories of Aligarh. She spoke animatedly about the university and the people who either taught or studied there. Affection and generosity were the hallmarks of her personality.

One of her last acts of generosity was the donation of two large paintings of Sadequain, whom she once looked after in his lean period, to the Mohatta Palace Museum.