Early Years at KE: The Girl Groups

In my earlier blogs, I mentioned two groups for boys and one for girls. To this list you, my readers have added ‘Anonymous Group’ and ‘Paindoo group’. Today I will highlight other groups among girls.

Girl Groups and their ‘followers’ (Here you may include all boys which still had a beating heart)

Here I feel I am walking on thin ice. One false step and I am history!

Besides, Quadratus Kinnairdus from Kinnaird College, there were several girls (I think) from Lahore College. Ambreen Rauf (# 1), Atifa Naheed (# 2), Fareeda Zahoori (#7?) and several others. This group had a large ‘following’ among boys. Another prominent group was that of Zara Haider, Mehr-un-Nisa, Naghmi Shirin, and others that escape my memory. This group had a large following also but most of us were either ‘deathly afraid’ or ‘respectful’ as the case may be, of Prof Zafar Haider to venture into knowing this group’s graceful members. It was not until the final year that some of us discovered that this group was actually very nice!

And then there was a group, which may have been a subset of a larger groups already mentioned. Its members were Rubina Aslam, Rameez’s sister (sorry cannot remember the name) and others. Some of us who were friend with Rameez would catch a stray sentence here and there to know some of this group’s activities. It was rumored that this group may have been responsible for naming one of my dear friends as ‘Hanger’. I think it was a cool name, given that the boy in question was very slim and some of his shirt may have been big and that it may have appeared to some observers as if the shirt was walking on its own, and hanging on a hanger. I wonder why it did not catch on like Bhindi. Or maybe it did? Who knows!

And then there was one girl who had ‘I hate everybody’ embroidered on her lab coat. I heard that to the contrary, she actually like most people and was very pleasant to talk to.

Now there is a lesson this you boys… although I have a feeling it may be too late to put into practice at this stage in the game for most of us. And the lesson is ‘Do not judge the book by its cover’. However, I must confess when it comes to girls most boys miss that point particularly at that age. Although I was aware of that even then. You see my Ammi had mentioned it to me several times. However, I could not say that ‘the cover’ was not important to me. Besides, in my defense I would like to point out, that in KE of those days, most of us did not have the opportunity or the ‘skill’ to have any meaningful conversation with a girl. Therefore, for most of us, ‘the cover’ was everything.

I am sorry for the above analogy where I am describing girls as books with covers. It does seem pathetic not that I think about it. I guess it may simply be that I am still a little awkward when talking about girls in a public blog such as this.

Okay so let us move on…

Mufti…or Not:

Here we go again, you may say. Do we really need to know more about you?

Hey, I reply, I am writing this blog, remember. If you have a problem with that go write your own blog.

Just kidding!

I was not going to write this piece on my background, but I found that some of you had trouble remembering me. Being that I am no Aamir Ali, the matter got further complicated by my last name. In King Edward, I was known as Nauman Jameel.

Now you are hearing from some guy named Nauman Mufti, claiming to be from your class. So to clear the air, let us take another trip into my background. My Dada Abu was Mufti Abdul Hameed, who I have mentioned in my previous blog. Incidentally, my Nana was also from the Mufti clan. His name was Mufti Abdur Rashid. My father’s full name was Jameel Akbar Mufti. When I was born, my Abu named me Nauman Jameel Mufti. In 1974 when the Bhutto government announced that, certain titles such as Khan Sahib, Khan Bhadur or Nawabzada etc were not allowed to be used. One of disallowed names was Mufti, or so I was told by the clerk at Hyderabad Board responsible for issuing the Matric Certificate. Therefore, when I received my Matric Certificate my name was Nauman Jameel and my father was listed as Jameel Akbar.

I want to tell you I was not outraged. Having suffered through school, with comments like ‘Muft ka aya’ in elementary school or questioned about my religious knowledge, in later years, I was somewhat relieved. For religious scholar, as the name Mufti implies, I was not. However, my ‘non-Mufti’ era was going to end eventually. When I got married, our Nikah Registrar, following proper protocol asked me to produce my birth certificate where my full name was written and that went on my marriage certificate. My wife’s name on her passport was thus Lalarukh N. Mufti. When our son was born, his name was written as Altumash N. Mufti. Guess who was the only ‘non-Mufti’ in our household? Yes, yours truly. There after spending 20 years of my life, during which I attended GC, KE and four US Universities, I officially changed my name to Nauman J. Mufti in 1994 when I became US citizen.

So relax, no stranger has invaded our class forum.

Next Blog:

Some more boy’s group including Islamabad group and FC College.

College Magazines including Listen, Vision etc.

Humay Yaad Hey Kuch Zara Zara: Your Perspective

I thank everyone who commented so far on the blog. This is no longer my memoir of those days long gone that we spent together. It is yours too. Let us make it our blog.

I will post Part 3 of my contribution next week Ishallah. In the meantime, enjoy the contributions from your other class fellows.

Your response to the first Blog

Wajahat Hassan commented on your link:"Dear Nauman, Please keep going! Those with early dementia like me can't remember too much of those golden days. You haven't mentioned the third group to which I belong "the paindoos". We were mesmerized by the lights and glitter of Lahore and freedom of away from home and not thinking of who the CR will be till some of us failed the first "stage" exam in anatomy. It was hard work remembering medial, lateral, inferolateral, posterolateral etc and at the same time thinking which cinema we will be going out tonight from the luxurious accommodation in the Hall road hostel.Bye for now. Wajahat"

Qayyum commented on your link:"Wajahat, by the way this Paindoos group was the biggest but people were afraid to admit it. I started my paindoo life from Government College a bit early and I will never forget my first breakfast in mess of Iqbal Hostel. Honestly by that time, I have never seen a fried egg and I was just thinking how the others are eating this half cooked egg."


Qasim Ghani Choudry commented on your link:"And then there were anonymous of the class also. We all got divided into smaller groups in the college and close end groups in the boarding houses. But still we were all connected through someone in our group and had a feeling of classmates. Keep on going Nauman. I am loving it"

Wajahat Hassan commented on your link:
"Nauman's initiative has ignited happy memories of our time in KEMC when everything was so young, beautiful and free. The English music [which I still don't understand], a packet of gold leaf cigarette [usually empty] in the shirt pocket, motor bike without license and ............ and then there were girls, the very studious one who spoke English!"

Shahid Bashir commented on your link:"Nauman continue your tale of the good old days and maybe we can all join in with our memories of those days and share our perspective. Very good keep it up"

Abdul Qayyum commented on your link:"Interesting links are emerging. Nauman, soon your blog will be very famous and we all will narrate our stories of good golden days. "


Your response so far to the Second Blog

Zahid posted something on your Wall and wrote:"Nauman I really enjoyed 2nd part of blog, I do appreciate your sense of humour, keep on posting. Cheers. Zahid"

Shahid Bashir commented on your link:"another wonderful trip down memory lane Nauman. I have known you since 1975 and I have found out so much more about you today. keep it up"

As you can clearly see, it is your perspective that will make this blog reach it true potential. So please keep those comments coming. Have you noticed some thing. This 'tasweer' is missing a key ingredient...'rung'.

Just a hint... No pressure...

Early years at KE- Part 2

Day Scholars and ‘Hostelites’

Speaking about various groups in our class, there were two distinct categories. One were the day scholars and the others were the ‘hostelites’. The day scholars had homes in Lahore. Among my close friends Shahid Bashir, Aamir Ali, Afzal Saeed, Tajummul, Agha Arif, Sohail Kiyani, Kamran Hameed and Nasir Javed, Javed Ajmal were day scholars. And then there were people who lived in the hostels. Among my close friends Qayyum (Multan), Sadiq Zia (Sadiqabad), Talha and Mateen (Islamabad) were in that group. The last two I mentioned, I met for the first time not in King Edward but MAO College hostel. More about this soon.

Ki Jaana Maen Kuon

By this time my readers may wonder, just who is this guy. In one word, I would call myself an ‘anomaly’. My mother and father were from Lahore. My Dada Jan was Post Master General of Lahore soon after partition. He lived in Moochi Darwaze. He build two houses, one in Lytton Road where he lived and the other in Temple Road which he rented. He passed away in 1977 when I was at GC. I was born in Peshawar where my dad was a Naval recruiting officer at that time. I received early schooling in Karachi and at age nine moved to Chittagong in 1968, where my father was Chief Education officer at Marine Academy. After spending three beautiful years there, we were lucky to catch the last flight out before the 1971 war. I then studied at Cathedral School for a year, I moved to Cadet College Petaro in interior Sind. Why not Hasan Abdal? Dad was back in Karachi and Petaro was nearer. I did my Matric from Petaro and topped the Hyderabad Board. I won Nishan-e-Haider Scholarship which paid for me to study anywhere in the country all expenses paid, I chose GC for my F.Sc, because my Dada Jan and Dad studied here. And that is how I ended up in Iqbal Hostel. So, even though I had two ancestral houses in Lahore, yet had to live in a hostel. If you are confused by now, I do not blame you. So was I. I would say to myself Ki Jaana maen koun and I still do. Okay, enough about my background.

No place to go

Since my family was still in Karachi, I had to look for hostel accommodation. The only ‘accomodation’ I could find was the disaster section of Hall Road Hostel which had been earmarked for demolition. I would spare you the description. After spending only one night in that hellhole of a place I got a tip that there was nice accommodation available in MAO College Hostel. It was there I met Talha and Mateen and we became friends instantly. Talha was light hearted and outgoing. Mateen (may Allah have a place for him in Janat) was gentle, serious and hard working. I still remember our brisk walks from MAO College through Anarkali to KE. Sometimes we took the bus. We paid the bus fare, until I learnt the ‘code’. I would see that MAO college students who boarded the bus with us would simply say ‘MO College’ when the conductor came to collect the fare. The conductor nodded and moved on without charging a fare. However when I tried that the first time it did not work. The conductor made me pay. I then realized that I had made two mistakes. One, I had said ‘MAO College’ instead of ‘MO College’ and second I was carrying my lab coat. Needless to say I corrected my errors and never had to pay the fare anymore.
I have many fond memories with Talha and Mateen. I remember that both of them kept their books very neat and clean. Their Gray’s Antomy had covers and looked brand new. They used fancy book marks. I, on the other hand would use the femur or any other bone I was studying as my bookmark. You do not want to know how my Gray’s Anatomy looked. Mateen always got good good grades and passed all his anatomy ‘stages’ in first attempt. I wish I could say the same for Talha and me!

House at last, but no home.

My comfortable stay at MAO College however soon came to an end. I learnt that one of our ancestral houses was being illegally occupied after the original renters had walked away without paying rent for a year. It was up to me and my younger brother to get that vacated. I would not go in details here but I will tell you this. I told the illegal occupants that we were from ‘MO College’ and they left. Some of you will remember this house in Temple Road. This was the same house on the roof top of which we celebrated the Basant that Shahid, Qayyum and Sadiq Zia remember. Living there was very tough for my brother and me because we did not know or had time to cook or clean.

Girls of King Edward Class of 84
And the competition to get noticed by them.

Sorry for the last few passages. They became rather gloomy. As one poet says ‘wajood e zun se haye tusweer a qaenat me rung’. So here it is, the ‘color’. Besides adding color to blog, I am writing this for the current generation of Kemcolians for whom this may sound totally greek.
Girls at King Edward were a chosen few. After all,they were the top 20 girls from all over Punjab. The ratio of 20 girls to 200 boys was huge disadvantage to the boys. If you were a boy, what were your chances to get noticed by a girl, any girl for that matter? And if you preferred attention from someone you felt attracted to, forget-about-it. True there were some boys with ‘quality attributes’ such as being handsome. Imran Rahid or Imran Nazeer come to mind besides others. Some were tall and smart like Aamir Ali and Saeed Uddin. Others had cars and flashy clothes. Rest of us had to do weird stuff to get noticed. Some sat in the third row, others were loud in the back with trademark sounds that they produced during the physiology lectures. Some had ‘great entries’ like a chant of ‘Ghora Ghora’ from his friends and supporters for Athar Usmani. Sohail Kiyani was of course ‘CR’ and Aamir Ali had several quality attributes all rolled into one.

While some of us gave up trying to get noticed, others tried anything and everything. From colorful gaudy clothes, to strong perfume. One classmate had a toothpick in his mouth and wore sunglasses. No need to name names you know who you are. I too tried a few things myself and determined that I was invisible to the girls. I also tried sitting in the third row and making loud funny comments (At least I thought they were funny). No one looked back. No smile, no giggle. I was already convinced I was invisible to the girls, I now concluded that I was inaudible too.

Since my family was in Karachi and some of my friends from Cadet College Petaro were at Dow Medical and Sind Medical College I visit these colleges and thought wow these guys are so lucky. My friends there would routinely be having chai samosas with girls in small groups. There were also some established couples. Even in Lahore, I visited my friends at Allama Iqbal. Things were different there as well. For one thing there was no secluded cafeteria like ours. The boys were routinely seen talking to girls on matters beyond the lame asking for notes that we some time resorted to. Incidently Lalarukh, my wife is from Allama Iqbal but we never met during college years.

Coming Up Next
The magazines such as ‘Listen’ and ‘Sheikon ki Sheikian’
The physiology lectures by Nusrat Waqar and Dissection Hall.
The first Professional exams.
Celebration after the first professional results.


Mysteries to me
This will be a constant feature. Besides celebrating and laughing at our past, I do have some ‘selfish motives’ I hope in response to this blog my readers will provide me answers to some questions that to this day are mysteries to me.

One mystery from my previous blog was

1. Who was or were the authors of ‘Batain Humary Ghor se sun loo’

Today I will add the following

2. How did all the girls fit into that tiny room know as ‘Girls Cafeteria’.
3. Was I really invisible to girls?

I realize that the answer to both of these question depend on response from a few, none of which may be reading this blog, but hey, after all these years can you blame me for trying?

Early Years at King Edward Medical College

The professor was wearing a white coat and making drawing of some type of circles on the black board. In the front row of the big lecture theater, about 20 girls sat, most of them also wearing white coats were listening intently to what the professor was saying. A good number of them were taking detailed notes. It was early in the morning. The weather was beautiful and I was tired from being up late the previous night. I was drifting in and out of consciousness. Every now and then, I heard the words ‘osteoblastic type of cells and osteoclastic type of cells.

After the lecture, my friends and I headed for the cafeteria which seemed to be like an oasis in a desert of dry lecture theaters. I remember thinking to myself how the knowledge about osteoblastic cells will help me ‘heal the humanity’ and more importantly how was I going to survive here, if I could not pay attention to the lectures.

The year was 1978. I had finally made it to King Edward. It was a new place and yet it felt like home. After all, most of my friends from Government College Lahore (GC) had also made it. Shahid Bashir, Sohail Kiyani. Tahir Majeed from S-4 (there were seven sections in Government CollegeS1-7) were all there. So were some other friends like Agha Arif, Tajummul, Aquil Haider and Afzal Saeed. I also knew Kamran Hussain, Naveed Yazdani and others. And then from my Iqbal hostel there were Aamir Ali, Qayyum, Pervaiz Iqbal (Roll #1 of GC) and Ijaz Mahmood of Chichawattani (I remember that was name on his door at Iqbal Hostel).

The elections for Class Rep (CR)

Those were exciting times. I remember how we were sitting in the cafeteria when the topic came up. There were 72 people from GC in King Edward. The second largest group was from Cadet College Hasan Abdal with twenty something. We knew if we all supported one candidate, we had a good chance. Agha and Sohail were both very popular. They were particularly liked for being funny and smart. I remember that during a ‘strategy session’ it was decided that Sohail Kiyani would be our candidate and Arif Agha would tell folks that he is also running. Later he would withdraw his nomination in favor of Sohail. I remember Agha telling people that he was running but somehow either people found out or he spilled the beans. So that strategy did not pan out. However Sohail did win and was from that day on referred to as the CR. Although I do not believe girls had a separate representative but Atifa Naheed was called GR.

Popular Names

Speaking of popular names, I remember a few to this day. Athar Usmani was called Ghora, Aamir Ali was Bumba. But no name was as popular as ‘Bhindi’. Sofia Ismail was taller than most other girls and also very articulate. The name spread like wild fire. You could be talking to someone in Allama Iqbal Medical College and they would know who Bhindi was. One day I saw our CR being confronted by Sofia. She was saying ‘Kaya maen Apa ko Bhindi nazar aatti hun’. Sohail was all red and looking at his shoes.
‘Quadratus Kinnairdus’ was a name given to a group of four girls from Kinnaird College. One day in Anatomy Hall lockers we all found a poem addressed to the girls. I still remember that the first line was ‘Battain Humary Ghor Se sun Loo, Chamak chulo, Chamak chulo’. One of the mysteries for me to this day is ‘Who was the author? Or perhaps it was a group effort. Perhaps my readers can enlighten me. It is okay. We are all grownups now.

I stop here for now. My cat is knocking on my door and it is time to go to work. I have a lot more that I remember. I may write about it if you guys want to hear it. I apologize to anyone who feels I need to apologize.

Thanks for listening.