GORDON COLLEGE

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22.                              GORDON COLLEGE

I am not well . I can barely move because I have wounds covering the entire my right calf up to the foot .In addition , both legs were swollen  although the swelling has receded. Besides I cant drive .Previously in the dark . But now even during the day , I barely drive around Naval Anchorage where we live . This why despite my promise to Amer , the younger brother of Amera, that I will come and condole her death in the fourth week of January , I could not make it . It is true that on a couple of occasions , I , accompanied by my family ,went to Rawalpindi Cantonment to visit my married daughter .

My dear friend ,Navid Zafar , told me about Amera’s death from cancer He told that an obituary notice was placed in the daily ‘The News’ by the family . I somehow missed it although the first thing I do is read the obituaries on a particular page . Not that I am happy over somebody's death but I find newspapers dull and a waste of time because there are hardly any interesting news .

I joined the Masters in English late almost one month and half late in October 1964 . There were many girls in the class . Two girls were for most of the time together .One was slightly taller than the other .Gradually I came to know their names . The shorter girl was Amera .Both came from Kinnaird College , Lahore .Soon the taller girl, Fareeda Hasan, joined the Government College, Lahore. And Amera was left alone because she did not mix up with the class' other girls because of a difference in temperament .Gradually she made friends with those girls who were inferior to her in their social standing . With males because in the class , there were only four or five young men, including yours truly , who joined the class directly after graduation the rest worked in offices , her behaviour was forbidding so much so that a man named her 'dictator'.

She was a quiet and studious girl .She would quietly drive away or call her car in any vacant period we had .The only dialogue she had

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with males in the class was to enquire if we had any class that day . However , she stood third in the examinations in the University of the Punjab . I was in Karachi then . I sent her a telegram with the words "Splendid Performance".

I joined the civil service . But we used to meet in the National Institute of Modern Languages , Rawalpindi . Brig . Nazir Ahmed , the then Director of the Institute also came to sit down with us . Then the faculty was like a family . Beneath her cold façade , she possessed a warm heart : a heart of gold .She was moved by poverty although she was a daughter of a well known doctor of Rawalpindi . Two incidents come to mind . Before a party being held in the National Institute of Modern Languages , I found her placing eatables in different plates . I asked her what she was doing . She replied that she was setting plates for lower staff of the Institute .On another occasion on Eid , I was standing in the sun in a friend's house opposite the Institute. I saw her car entering it. I went to meet her .On seeing me , she got out the car and greeted me warmly .She had brought meat for the staff of the Institute .

However , her life was full of misfortunes .She married late .After 6 or 7 years of marriage , she was divorced .She was the mother of three lovely children .Soon after her divorce , she began to fall ill .But her illness could not deter her resolve to work to the best of her abilities in the Institute of Regional Studies and be a good mother .

Mahfooz ur Rahman
Her old class fellow