A Pak Gen worthy of admiration

Sumit Paul   

WHILE pursuing an MPhil degree on the stylistics of Mirza Ghalib’s Persian poetry in 1999, I hit a cul de sac because it’s well-nigh impossible to get hold of Ghalib’s Persian poetry, especially ghazals, because he destroyed much of his poetry, for his contemporaries and critics found it unintelligible. 

Frustrated, I wrote to the Director of India House, London, and professors at Tehran, Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard, but to no avail. Finally, a British professor of Persian and Central Asian Studies at Leeds University suggested that I approach a retired General of the Pakistan army, presumably the direct descendant of Ghalib. 

I didn’t expect any help from a Pakistani General, yet I wrote to him. Assuming that all sub-continental army officers were more at home with English, I wrote to him in fractured English.

After a fortnight, I received a parcel from Karachi. When I opened it, I found a handwritten letter in flawless Urdu and photo-copies of Ghalib’s 43 rarest Persian nazms and ghazals. That was enough for my research. I was on cloud nine and immediately wrote a letter of thanks, this time in chaste Urdu!

His reply was prompt. We began to correspond regularly. The General was a fascinating man. Despite his crisp British accent and impeccable English, he chose to converse and correspond with me in Urdu. He was an alumnus of Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst (UK). His superlative Urdu had no influence of Punjabi or any Pakistani dialect. From his immaculate Urdu, I could make out how good his great-grandfather’s (Ghalib) Urdu was! 

 In 2006, I went to Pakistan to deliver a lecture on Allama Iqbal’s Persian poetry at Lahore University. The General came to meet me from Karachi. The chain-smoker General was an absorbing raconteur. He was simplicity personified and very approachable. 

 I liked his disarming honesty when he laughingly told me over a glass of Scotch that ‘just two Sikhs defeated us in two wars in 1965 and 1971. But I’m happy for them as both were my dear friends’. The two Sikhs were Lt Gen Harbaksh Singh, the chief architect of India’s victory over Pakistan in 1965,  and Lt Gen Jagjit Singh Arora, the then GOC-in-C of the Eastern Headquarters when Pakistan got a drubbing in 1971. 

It’s aptly said true soldiers are gentlemen to the core — just like my late General friend from Pakistan who harboured no ill-will and was all praise for his Indian counterparts and their bravery.

His last words still echo in my memory: ‘I’m happy for them as both were my dear friends.’

General, I remember you with fondness and utmost esteem.