The Dog Days of IBA

Mohammad Ayaz Abdal

It was a hot, sunny and sticky day (as if there is any other kind in Karachi) when I got my notice of admission to the IBA. I survived, not just the initial written test but also the dreaded group interview. If you have ever seen a trembling rabbit in the sights of a hunter’s gun, you may understand the feeling.

But then there were some interesting incidents too which bring smile to me even to this day. One of my friends was interviewed by Mr. Iqbal Ismail (a renowned finance professional and a stock market broker now) who simply asked him, “ Do you know anything?”. My friend replied, “No”. He was admitted. This was the only question asked and answered in that interview.

After the much-dreaded group interview over there, the newcomer has to pass another hurdle, that of the group discussion. This too inspires much fear. There is a topic on which you have to speak for a few minutes and then the group discussion starts. I collected the points in my mind but something else happened. The girl before me somehow spoke all the points that I had thought of. Fortunately, I was able to actively participate in the group discussion and I think that may have saved my skin.

So began my journey to the fabled IBA at the Karachi University campus. Settling in was not easy.

On the first day, we were thrown into the pool as per the old tradition. In a vain attempt to save myself, I tried to put all my weight on the remaining leg that was still on the ground but to no avail. My hands and other leg were already grabbed by other senior students. Being of abundant corpus, three people tried to lift that leg but were unable to. I finally surrendered, as I was scared that this may result in repeated involuntary trips to the pool in the coming days. I heard a comment while I was flying into the pool that made my day:

Yaar, aainda wazan kar kay admission ho ga.

IBA was ruled by Dr. Wahab during those days with an iron fist. A stern administrator, a sharp marketer, and an amazing politician. He planted self-serving stories that he is the one who established the discipline, which is the stuff of many legends.

We were told one simple principle; the IBA cannot afford to be closed. So do not ever think about fighting at the main Karachi University campus. Should you slap somebody at the University (before they kill you) you will be out of the IBA. If somebody slaps you and you reply, you will be out of the IBA. We were literally implementing Jesus’ principle of turning the other cheek over there. You may think that this is a joke. Let me give you a few examples.

The IBA teams were playing a cricket match at one of the University stadia. We got it reserved for us. In the middle of the match, two jamatis stomped in, threw out our stumps, and told us to get out, as their friends are planning to play a match within half an hour. There were three dozen of us versus two matchstick-size guys. Can you guess what we did? Yes, very abjectly came back to our campus.

This is not just limited to outside the campus. Two of my friends were having some fun. One of them shook a Pepsi bottle really hard to spray his friend. Suddenly they were surrounded by jamatis again who were yelling and asking if he thinks that this is champagne. We are talking about a small, frail, and petrified young man who cannot even withstand one slap. His friend, who is a solid Pathan, stood in front of him with his hands open and saying:

Yaar chor do, mazaaq kar raha tha.

That Pathan guy almost received about a dozen slaps on his face. He remembered the two golden principles. Always stand up for your friend and never fight back. And yes, the jamatis loved us poor disciples of Gandhi and Mandela, more afraid of Dr. Wahab.

The first 2 weeks were eventful. On one occasion when our bus entered the University (Pakistan Rangers had not conquered the university yet), the bus was invaded by PSF activists at the cafeteria. For the first time, I saw what a TT looked like, with its barrel on my head. They asked us to come out. On the previous day, a student was killed by the rival faction and they were searching for the other members of the faction in our bus. But before we came out of the bus, somebody yelled:

Abay yeh zanany IBA kay haiN

and we were allowed to go in peace. I never loved my masculinity (or lack of it) more than on that day.

After a couple of months, a teacher of the main University died. We were in class and saw Dr. Wahab, surrounded by some yahoo-looking University students, approaching the classrooms. Our teacher simply said to the yahoo guys:

Dr. Wahab will now announce that IBA is closed due to mourning of the said teacher. You can now go home.

And to the IBA students he said:

You guys will go to the City Campus (behind Nishat Cinema) and this class will resume at the same point after one and a half hours from now.

Can you believe that after one and a half hours, we resumed our class and the rest of the periods as if nothing had happened? However, we were not able to go back to the University Campus for another six months.

Let me illustrate this with one more interesting incident when the IBA closed down for one day! This was an anomaly. In the best of times, in the worst of times, in the age of wisdom, in the age of foolishness (with apologies to Dickens), the IBA was never closed. The entire student body came to the City campus where they were told that IBA is closed. We were astonished. A tradition was being broken. You know why? Zia ul Haq died a day before in the plane crash and the government announced a day of mourning and a holiday, and yet the whole of the IBA was there, as we refused to believe that death of a President could force closure of the IBA.

In the second semester, (apart from us throwing the juniors in the pool now) a few things changed. There were now Rangers staffing the Main Gate of Karachi University. No buses could go in the campus. We were dropped at the University road, allowed in only after the Rangers checked our ID, and then walked to the IBA with the load of books, assignments, and reading material.

The Rangers never mistreated us, as the IBA ID card was the proof that we are only there to study. Some days, when there was some tension and nobody else was allowed to get in, we were swooshed in without a problem by the Rangers. The other students hated us for that. We had to walk a furlong where either we take the University buses to the IBA or the IBA bus which would have come back to pick us up. During that furlong walk, we were surrounded by the other University students because of two reasons. Firstly, we had the best chicks in town, and secondly they were yelling slogans like:

jamia mein pappu aaye

We never minded that slogan as we very well knew where we would be after two years.

Some more memories:The IBA’s University Campus has beautifully maintained lawns and they won various awards. In fact, Altaf Hussain of MQM fame used to sing praises of these lawns in his earlier speeches as he and his colleagues use to take panah in the IBA when they were followed by rival factions during their student days.

On attendance the IBA had a very simple rule: ‘You can be absent from a class any number of times. We will not ask you the reason. But the moment you cross this limit, no matter how serious or genuine the reason is, even if one of your parent actually died, you will fail the course’.

Another part of this rule on Exams says that you can be called for an exam any day, no matter what day it is. I remember that we gave our Micro Economics Final exam at the University campus in the morning of Jumatul Widah (Friday being the weekly holiday).

The Annual IBA picnic is the source of much fun. Our picnic was at the beach. Again some of my friends tried to throw me into the sea. I was quite far away from the water, sitting in the sand, quite aware of their intentions, as I had thrown a few of them in the sea in the earlier part of the day. When they came to grab me, I started throwing sand at them. They grabbed me and tried to take me to the sea and but after a few yards they were panting. I walked to the sea on my own accord on my own two feet, and finally somebody pushed me in the water….But they really had to clean the sand from their hair, nose and ears on that day….yesss!.

We were arranging seminars from the 3rd semester. Dr. Wahab was extremely punctual. If the chief guest or any guest speaker were late, the seminar would start on time. Usually, like all good Pakistanis, the chief guest or the other speaker would enter the hall with a sheepish smile to take his place.

On sheepish smiles, I remember another story. Dr. Wahab had a very strange accent. He was a good teacher but to understand his accent was difficult even for us desis. So once he asked this question to a student

“Johnny, if a country has many sheep what would it have? Johnny replied that perhaps the country has a lot of wool. Dr. Wahab was very upset, and replied…”Don’t joke Johnny, if a country has many sheeps it will have a strong navy.” (He, of course, meant to say ships, not sheeps).

IBA had some great teachers. Some of their stories have become legends. The late Mr. A.L Spencer, once replying to a question about how many dams were made in Pakistan said,

“Son, we haven’t made any dams, but we produced a lot of damns”

How true he was! And then there is the legend of Johnny…..no, not the one mentioned above but Dr. Junaid who used to teach Managerial Policy. From the first semester, we used to have nightmares about Managerial Policy in the final semester. He used to yell and throw abuses at boys and girls alike. He had the audacity of making girls stand on their chairs. Students had to work their tails off to collect original research for his course; otherwise he would fail them no matter what happens. His famous statement was:

“Managerial Policy is not made in class room atmosphere, it is made in an atmosphere of hate, tension and ulcers. I will create the same atmosphere in this class.”

Don’t get me wrong; after all that, he was simply worshipped by his students. He had a passion and honesty for the material he taught. Another person worth mentioning was the late Mr. Fazle Hasan. He was introduced by a graduating student in the Convocation in the following words:

“Anybody can teach Finance. Fazle Hasan taught us life”…

and by God, he did. Fazle was a character. He hated Martial law and was a staunch PPP supporter. So if the class was for 50 minutes, he would make fun of the generals and call them retarded instead of retired. He will tell you stories about his life and his MBA days in Pakistan and USA. In the last 10 minutes, he had the uncanny ability of explaining the most difficult finance concepts in such easy terms that you would not forget for the rest of your life. He had a golden heart. Many IBA students, especially coming from a low-income group, owe their MBAs to Fazle. He would not only arrange the semester fees for them through his contacts in IBA alumni, and business and industrial circles but also sometimes even put his own salary towards it. I am speaking of the times when the fee of this great educational institution was the princely sum of Rs. 3,500 per semester.

Another interesting character was David. He was an old peon…an amazingly sweet and funny character, the only person who could sing, dance and joke with Dr. Wahab in front of others, and Dr. Wahab would just look the other way. Legend has it that when Dr. Wahab copied Zia ul Haq by coming to campus on a cycle, David took a lift from him. He was sitting on the back seat singing old Indian love songs.

David also did another service. After the IBA would close for the day, he would visit all the banks and multinationals and would collect bhatta(ransom) from the old students. Most of them had no problem. Some haughty ones hated to see his face. David didn’t give a damn. He would totally ignore them as he had a long list of his fans in higher places. If you wanted a copy of a mark sheet or your degree from the University, David would arrange all that for you.

In the final semester, we had to complete quite a few projects. So most of the time, we were on the streets of Korangi, S.I.T.E and the Wall Street of Pakistan, i.e. I.I. Chundrigar Road to meet with industry leaders and professionals to collect data for our projects.

Crashing becomes more rampant in the final semester. Crashing refers to real hard work in the last few days to complete our final reports and prepare for our final exam. Once to keep ourselves awake, we all took a quarter cup of boiling water, put three teaspoons of strong coffee, and gobbled it up. After that novel learning experience I never had a problem of just drinking either tea or coffee before going to sleep. Once I was studying at 4 am and I literally saw the book going three feet up in the air and started dancing. Instead of thinking anything else, I just grabbed it, put it down on the table, closed the light and went to sleep.

So our last day arrived. We planned a big party. Special shirts were made. We were the class of 1990. Color throwing, or holi, was a part of it. We arranged water-based colors, which could be easily cleaned, along with cans of shaving cream. We had a lot of fun. We paid extra to the janitorial staff so the premises should be thoroughly cleaned. We did not intend to damage our great institution. One of the traditions was to ask all our professors to donate towards our party fund and they did donate generously.

Before wrapping up, I have to tell you the story of our comprehensive exam. Simply known to us as the ‘compre’, this is a 6-hour final exam after you pass all the semesters. If you fail this exam three times, you do not qualify for the MBA degree. The day before the compre, the “pakka qila” incident happened in Hyderabad. The whole southern Sindh was closed down. Next day with shaky legs, we set off towards the IBA University campus in our cars, travelling in groups for security. Although IBA would never close down, but it would stop operating its bus – to prevent it from being burnt down. The probable philosophy was you can always get students but getting the funds for bus is a mighty task.

While maintaining this “no close” policy was pretty safe for the professors themselves as they all lived in the University staff town, it was us the students, who had to come from all over the city during rain or riot.

Needless to say, the compre went off without any incident behind closed doors so as not to give any indications that IBA was working that day.

After two years of very hard work and out of the original 30 students, only 20 survivors were sitting in our convocation. It was a proud moment for all of us. We had passed many a hurdles to reach our goal. I shall never forget the time we spent at this glorious institution.

ATPs Similar Posts

1) Trip Down the Memory Lane: UET Lahore
2) Islamia College, Peshawar