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.