Publisher's Nauha of Aftab-i-Alam Patchwork of Memories

 Rashid Butt

To me, it’s quite hard now, to decide whether Aftab Alam Kizilbash was my friend, I were his friend or both of us were each other’s friends, since he opted for Eternity on October 5, 2003. Memory resigns, how many years have lapsed , but I do remember our first meeting at his dinner table. Tea was served and, per chance, in petit cups. Without any prelude, he said, "I will tell you a joke. At a function in Lucknow, the host served tea. First of all it was quite late and above all cups were very small. For some time, my cup remained un-attended. The host asked me to have my tea. I simply bent my head aside and replied 'Put it in my ear'. By that time, I had already finished my tea. And that was, perhaps the outset of our friendship. Though the cycle of our meetings remained infrequent, whatever be the frequency, the aura of the mentioned meeting always stayed fresh till the ensuing.

With dazzling complexion, a glowing face, he seemed to be some heavenly body living in this world of mortals. Qudratullah Shahab's first 'Love' was a Hindu girl. One of his Professors nicknamed her the 'Golden Girl' because she wore a rare touch of glowing beauty. Aftab Kizilbash was neither my Love nor a Golden Girl. Yet, indeed he was golden boy – A Golden Old Boy! 'Love' he was of course, of his wife Husn Bano. Here a doubtful enigma, still, do prevail that who was the 'Love' amongst both of them? It seems they were a pair of a sort of divine love! The sad demise of Aftab – or I would say – reversion of the Golden Old Boy to the Gold Mine of Eternity, has left Husn Bano – the lonely soul-in recluse.

He was a man of supreme ideals, persuasions and perseverance, with a will to remove mountains, meteoric, restless, sporty, fidgety like a child. He had undergone the bypass. Doctors had advised him not to climb the stairs but he always had an impulse to climb like a child, moving ahead of all.

I had desired that the Book, story of his conceivements and achievements, which Husn Bano has narrated in a beautiful style of a story teller, should have been published during the course of his life time, but he "refused" to let my desire fulfilled and rendered my routine Note of a Publisher – a mere Elegy, simple Nauha!

Courtesy: Aftab-i-Alam Patchwork of Memories by Husn Bano Kizilbash