A brother between two sisters, one less than two years senior and the other less than three years junior, is not exactly an easy situation to live with for the brother. I should know, I grew up in the situation, and one which was rendered even less easy with both sisters being smarter in school.

For a while the senior sister, Naushaba Burney, who passed away some days ago and the junior, Raana Jafar wife of ‘Arthur’ Hasan Jafar, who passed away some years ago and I, we were together in kindergarten and primary classes at the St. Joseph Convent in Nagpur, India. The nuns in school had a fetish for cleanliness, they had set up a system which instead of children playing during the break had them running around collecting trash, and carrying it to the nun standing besides the goodies cupboard who would reward the child with a handout of goodies, the size of the handout depended on the quantity of trash deposited in the nearby dustbin. This went on for a while with me under ‘coaxing’ of the sisters doing most of the running around, looking for and collecting trash. From the faces made by the two and their groans I somehow could never earn and come back with an adequate-sized handout of goodies.

It was Naushaba who in the end beat the system. One morning, before leaving for school she made Raana and me collect all the handy trash in the house and stuff it in our schoolbags. At break time, the trash was taken out of bags and I carried it to the goodies cupboard and in full view of the nun deposited the lot, and it was a good lot, in the dustbin. The nun, bless her, saw nothing strange in my ‘collecting’ the quantity of trash I deposited so early in the break. That morning, and thenceforth, no faces were made or groans heard at the quantity of goodies I would return with.

We moved to Delhi from Nagpur on our father’s transfer and thence to Karachi in mid August, 1947, when Pakistan came into being. We travelled to Karachi in one of the trains run specially to move government employees from Delhi to Karachi who had opted for service in Pakistan. A few days before, Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan had displayed Pakistan’s flag with the white portion to the press, Dawn had printed the flag in a largish format on art paper and distributed it with one of its issues, I was carrying one. When our train stopped at a station called Bhatinda in Punjab, there was a huge mob of Sikhs carrying staves, spears, swords assembled outside the railings of the station, our train had a Baloch Regt escort which probably saved the day for us. All the time Naushaba kept prodding me to wave the flag at the Sikh mob but I held back. As the train began to move, I gave in and stared to display and wave the flag from the window, there was distinct reaction from the mob, a certain unrest and jostling, my father pulled me back and we could hear the shouting and Baloch Regt soldiers’ boots running along the train, they had no idea what caused the unrest and jostling in the mob but they had promptly prepared and deployed. The times and national emotions were such that they had even impacted on the otherwise cool as cucumber Naushaba.

Naushaba got a first class in her Senior Cambridge in 1948; my parents were at loss where to send her for higher education. Lahore seemed the logical place and someone mentioned a well-regarded all girls college. I still clearly recall Naushaba’s letter to ‘Canet College’, Lahore asking to be forwarded application forms, the letter was delivered for a few days and later an envelope arrived from ‘Kinnaird College’ with the required forms.

Naushaba and English literature were made for each other. There was not a book or author she had not become well versed with by the time she entered college. At the University of California at Berkeley where she obtained a Master’s in the subject, the joke in the Department was Churchill is lucky Naushaba does not have his voice or he would have sat silent. This was with reference to Churchill’s mastery of Shakespeare’s plays and his habit of sitting in front row of theatres to watch them and recite the lines with the actors, and loud enough to be heard on the stage which made the actors edgy and often lose their lines.

Naushaba went on to do her Master’s in journalism from the University of Oregon, during the same period she was selected for Internship at the United Nations in New York for the summer where she had the opportunity to observe some of top world leaders at work, including Zafrulla Khan of Pakistan, V.M. Molotov of Russia and John Foster Dulles of US.

Her sojourn at the University of Karachi involving setting up of the Dept. of Journalism and teaching the subject is well remembered, and not only for coverage of the subject. She asked me to speak to her class on my experience in an American University. I faithfully outlined the University procedures and processes, which the students listened with bored expressions. The discussion somehow turned to the social scene in universities, and in the US in general, the students came alive, and the session became intensely interactive. Naushaba was thrilled and insisted we have more such sessions, she said such exposure with no outline or direction draws a lot from students, it gets them to truly think, to express and form opinions.

The write is former corporate executive husainsk@cyber.net.pk

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, February 21st, 2016