THIS IS MY STORY—70
MY JOURNEY THROUGH THE ERA OF AYUB KHAN TO THE TIMES OF IMRAN KHAN.
GHULAM AKBAR…….
From Naukundi to Lahore
After listening to this inspiring speech, I embarked upon my journey back to home on the 7th of September 1965. I left my wife Shameem and my two-year-old son Inam behind to come later in company of my brother-in-law. My parents were in Lahore, and I wanted to be with them as early as could be possible. My father was blind. __
It was a patience-testing journey. It took nearly twenty- four hours to reach Quetta. The movement of the train had been at virtually snail-pace.
What filled my heart with great pride at my ‘nation’ was the incredible keenness of the passengers of the Lahore-bound train to reach the ‘war-front’, that the city of Lahore had been transformed into. There was a change of trains at Rohri. I reached Lahore in the morning of the 9th of September.
During our journey we were thrilled by the news of the heroics of our air force—specially the unforgettable feat of Wing Commander MM Alam who had downed five Indian jets in barely three minutes in the skies of Sargodha.
Amazing was the faith of those who had travelled with me to Lahore, that the city of Baadshahi Masjid and Ali Hajveri (RA) was invincible.——
In the days to come, the proud nation was to learn about those of our heroes who had inspired a small force defending Lahore to defeat the designs of a far larger army. Among them the name of Major Aziz Bhatti Shaheed was to become a symbol of dauntless valour for generations to come. The name of Major Shafqat Baloch also was to acquire the dimensions of a living legend. Countless other heroes too were to write a new chapter in the history of dauntless valour that had origins and roots in the third decade of the seventh century.
Those who remember the two weeks in the middle of September 1965 are certain to carry undying memories of the songs that were created to inspire the nation—the songs that had the names of Soofi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum, Madam Noor Jahan, and Mehdi Hassan linked with them. The song “Meray Naghmae Tumharay liae haen” written by Jameeluddin Aali and sung by Noor Jahan was destined to become the allegorical symbol of the immortal bond of the people of Pakistan with their soldiers.
I am not chronicling history. This is just an autobiography. Yet my journey through time wasn’t in any kind of disconnect with the events that were shaping the history of Pakistan. Being a journalist, I was directly engaged in the act of observing these events critically. Being young and idealistic I saw the events through the lens of patriotism. In hindsight however I can analyse those events far more objectively and realistically now.
About eight years after that war with India I was to get engaged in a strong politically motivated association with a key character of that war—Air Marshal M. Asghar Khan whose book on the 1965 war was to be published by me in 1979. It was titled the First Round. If that title is regarded as prophetic, it implies that the Second Round can’t be rule out. Even though being an idealist, I have not shared some of the mundane, realistic and down-to-earth views of the late Air Marshal Asghar Khan, I harbour very great respect for the integrity of this great Khan. More about him will be written in my later chapters. Here I will restrict myself to his account of the factors and reasons that had led to the 1965 war.
