Adil Najam

Seems like everyone who should have been a role model is becoming a symbol of shame.

The most prominent “aalim” in the country is spreading jahalat. The President of the Republic is shouting obscenities. And our endeared sportsman is biting cricket balls to cheat his way to victory (which still alludes him). And all of this is just what we have been talking about the last three days!

Yes, that is exactly what he did. With Pakistan on a losing streak, having lost the first four one-day games and well on its way to losing the fifth, Shahid Afridi took the cricket ball and actually started biting it, even as the television camera was squarely focused on him doing so. And why would Shahid Afridi indulge in this illegal, and rather disgusting, form of ball tampering?

Adil Najam

This video of Mr. Asif Ali Zardari losing his cool during a speech and angrily shouting “Shut Up” to someone in the audience has been making the rounds.

Adil Najam

Earlier this month (on January 17), Prof. Khawaja Masud – teacher, mathematician, philosopher, activist, progressive, and truly an intellectual’s intellectual – died in Islamabad.

I have been traveling internationally the last two weeks and did not hear of his demise till late yesterday. The fact that I got to hear of this only now makes the hurt caused by the news all the more intense.

Logically, I am sure he would tell me, it makes no difference whatsoever. But to think that yet another intellectual giant would have left us without one even hearing of his departure. Without having given him the respect of a silent prayer. Without the opportunity to take out a minute of contemplation on all that one had learned from him. Without pausing one’s own harried existence for just a second to look up in the air and saying, “Thank you, Professor Sahib. For all you did. And for all that you were!”

Prof. Khawaja Masud will be remembered by many, for many reasons. Professor of Mathematics, and Principal (1972-82) of Gordon College, Rawalpindi. Long-time author of the ‘Fueilleton’ column. Unrelenting trade-unionist and progressive activist. Close associate to Faiz Ahmed Faiz and others in what came known as the “Rawalpindi conspiracy.” And always, always, a concerned citizen.