THIS IS MY STORY—39
MY JOURNEY THROUGH THE ERA OF AYUB KHAN TO THE TIMES OF IMRAN KHAN.
GHULAM AKBAR
Journey To Karachi
In the morning of the 11th of April 1962, we moved out of Multan—heading for Karachi. We stopped at Sadiqabad for lunch and at Hyderabad for dinner and night’s stay. It was a wonderful sensation, to be in the city where I had passed the best part of my early youth.
After taking breakfast on the 12th of April we proceeded towards our destination.
We were in Karachi by lunch time. Our first task was to find a shelter.
Kohistan’s previous office in Karachi had been at the corner of New Chali and I.I Chundrigar Road. As the previous Resident Representative Rafique Akhtar had refused to vacate the office on the grounds that it had been personally rented by him, we had no option except to find a new address.
The first provisional address we managed to find was Bristol Hotel that was situated close to the Railway line. We rented two rooms in it and informed all the advertising agencies and concerned organizations about our new address and telephone number.
It took us two days to find a suitable place to house our office as well as the family of Habibur Rahman Chapta.
It was a bungalow in a street that hit Sir Syed Road PECHS, which touched both Khalid Bin Walid Road, and Tariq Road.
The bungalow was owned by Dr Ali Ahmad the younger brother of Chaudhri Mohammad Ali a former Prime Minister of the country.
For my own residence I rented a small apartment near Tariq Road.
By the 16th of April, everything was in place, and we were fully operational.
Our first priority was to let it be known to all concerned that Daily Kohistan had a new office which was run not by Rafique Akhtar but by a very young man named Ghulam Akbar.
I think Hameed ullah Sahib, our Advertisement Director, did a great job of it. He was already well-known in the concerned business circles of Karachi. He introduced me to practically each key figure in the world of advertising at that time. Being Nasim Hijazi’s nephew was a great advantage. I won instant attention.
The key advertising figures of that era that I remember keenly, fondly and with a touch of nostalgia are C.A Rauf Chief Executive of Lintas, Nusrat Bukhari Chief Executive of Thompson and Thompson, Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor and Sultan Mahmood, both at that time co-owners of United Advertising Pvt Ltd, Mohammad Mushtaq Chief Executive of National Advertising Pvt Limited, Nazir Soofi Resident Director Crawfords, Wajid Mirza CEO D.J. Keymers Iqbal Mir CEO Prestige Advertising and S.H. Hashmi CEO Orient Advertisers.
