Rest in peace, Tarik Bhai!

How old are you? That is what we would normally ask if we want to know of what age someone is. Tarik (Ahsan) Bhai asked the same question when I first walked in Holiday office, with only four more people, including Enayetullah Khan working on the news and the editorial at the time, as assistant editor. But just after he had asked the question, he corrected himself and asked the question the way he had to: In fact, how youger are you? I answered. That was towards the close of 1998. I was a bit sheepish on my first day in Holiday.

He was twenty years senior to me; he still is, at least up this point. From tomorrow, I will keep growing and he has stopped doing so.

We had never known much of him but some fragments of his life from random chats we had between one edit and another, especially in Holiday days with one issue to be accomplished in a week and five people in all working for the whole week, as it became difficult after New Age had come out in 2003. The way we worked chaged; the working hour changed; and we increasingly became pressed for time for random chats, with one issue to be accomplished every day.

We know that he studied in St Gregory’s High School and completed his secondary education from the institution in 1965; he did his higher secondary at Notre Dame College. He continued with higher education in economics in the University of Dhaka and some time later, he went to Pakistan and enrolled in a university there but did not finish his studies.

The war for independence began; he was moved to Afghanistan for safety and he later rejoined his parents, who had been in India for some time during the war. He took up a newspaper job, reporting and later editing. He had also been into shipping business. Finally, he started working with Enayetullah Khan who often called him ‘Our Englishman,’ for quite a long time in Holiday and then in New Age whet it came out.

In recent times, his health broke down but he kept coming to office off and on helping us to cope with our workload. It has been about a fortnight since he came to office last and when he was about to leave, in a wheel-chair, stopping short before the door, he called me. As I hurried to him, he asked whether we would meet again. I told him that he would. It was not a hope against hope.

But he was right as he had always wanted to be. We did not meet.

Rest in peace, Tarik Bhai!

Akkas, Abu Jar M. (2012 DEc. 12). Rest in peace, Tarik Bhai! New Age. 9 (Written on 2012 Dec. 9)

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