Pushp Saraf
pushpsaraf@yahoo.com
Since the passing of my dear friend Basharat Ahmad Khan in Srinagar on July 24, my thoughts have often returned to the class of 1970 at Sri Pratap College, a heritage institution of Jammu and Kashmir where our lifelong bonds first took shape. Among my close friends from that memorable class, two others I have lost in recent years are Vijender Pal Singh and Harpal Singh Bedi. Each remains vividly etched in my memory.
Looking back, it is remarkable how swiftly our friendship blossomed after I moved to Sri Pratap College in Srinagar from Maulana Azad Memorial College, Jammu. I had chosen to forgo admission to the Regional Engineering College (REC), Srinagar, deciding instead to pursue the humanities-drawn as I was to journalism and the prospect of working in the national capital.
During my college years, I learned much from my father. Since he spent considerable time in the Valley, I accompanied him to Srinagar-first in 1968 and again in 1969-to complete my graduation. That decision proved pivotal in many ways. It deepened my understanding of inter-regional realities and also gave me my first major professional experience: a month-long tour of the Valley covering public meetings of Sheikh Abdullah, then an outspoken advocate of the plebiscite cause. That, of course, is a story for another time.
Basharat, Vijender, and Harpal were all stars of our college. Basharat took to television-the new medium of the late 1960s-like a fish to water, soon becoming a familiar face in Srinagar. Vijender, with his easy charm, was immensely popular on the social circuit. He was the only one among us to have formally studied journalism. His printing press in Lal Chowk kept him constantly busy, and he remained rooted in Srinagar even as the rest of us moved to Delhi. I was the first to leave, soon after completing my graduation in 1970.
From 1988 onwards, when I began revisiting the Valley regularly during the peak of militancy on behalf of The Indian Express, meeting Vijender became an almost daily ritual. He would arrive on his two-wheeler at Ahdoo’s, where I stayed, and we would set off on drives along the Dal Lake, up to Chashma Shahi, munching corn on the way back. We always returned before curfew so he could reach home safely. Occasionally, other old classmates joined us at Ahdoo’s for tea and kebabs, reviving the warmth of our college days in a difficult period.
Harpal, on the other hand, was more reserved-introspective yet always open to meaningful conversation. During his time at Jawaharlal Nehru University (his contemporary and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, in a moving tribute, called him “the first generation JNUite”), I invited him home for dinner and long discussions. By then, he had become a prolific contributor to The Sunday, the magazine through which M.J. Akbar made his editorial mark-often writing five or six articles in a single issue. His grasp of national and international affairs was profound. I urged him to enter journalism as a profession, but he was reluctant then.
It was therefore a pleasant surprise, on my return to Delhi after six years in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, to find him firmly established as a sports journalist. My talented friend and former colleague T.R. Ramakrishnan, himself an outstanding sports writer, sent me a note from Wisden, the Bible of cricket, which had acknowledged Harpal’s passing-with warm words about his popularity and sense of humour.
Basharat, Vijender, and Harpal were all straightforward, principled men-never hesitant to speak their minds, always guided by what they believed was right.
In our younger days, we shared many moments both light and intense. I remember Basharat once dragging me to the local radio station to meet a young woman singer who was soon to be married to a mutual friend. Vijender, ever persuasive, tasked me with delivering his wedding card to his fiancée who lived near Jawahar Nagar.
On the academic front, we formed an anti-copying front in college to protest against the widespread malpractice of mass copying then prevalent. Basharat once showed great courage, standing up alone to a group of troublemakers who tried to heckle him in an isolated corner of the vast college ground.
Decades passed. Basharat and I met occasionally in Delhi before he decided to return to Srinagar. The last time I met Harpal was in our colony at Saket, where he arrived with the bowling legend Bishen Singh Bedi to visit an ailing veteran journalist. Harpal would often draw a witty distinction between them: “He is BSB and I am HSB”-a phrase so characteristic of his humour that even Wisden took note of it. Whenever we met in later years, we greeted each other playfully with, “How are you, young man?”
Among our classmates was another figure who went on to play a prominent public role-Ghulam Nabi Azad, later Union Minister and Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir. The first photograph in his autobiography shows Basharat seated while Azad stands beside him, almost in a patronising pose. But in truth, during our college days in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was the other way around. Azad himself acknowledged as much during his tenure as Chief Minister when, at a function in Srinagar, he fondly recalled Basharat by name-invoking their youthful commitment to Gandhian ideals and the camps they had organised together.
Basharat once told me, with quiet amusement, that after that public mention, an IAS officer sharing his name had been inundated with congratulatory calls. Around the same time, another officer from the Valley told me he remembered, as a boy, seeing us all gathered at Basharat’s house for what he called a mehfil.
Another distinguished classmate, Tsering Dorjay, went on to become Chairman and Chief Executive Councillor (CEC) of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC-Leh). Like Azad, he remains active and engaged, though now beyond the arena of electoral politics.
When the news of Basharat’s passing reached me, I happened to be at William Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage in England’s Lake District. On one of the walls is an inscription in which the great English poet, reflecting on the death of his brother, describes how he found some comfort in the shared human experience of grief: “Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.”
Those words resonated deeply. So much has changed since our movie outings at Regal and those evening walks over fifty years ago. The three of us – Basharat, Vijender, and I – did meet on a few occasions, the last time at the wedding of Vijender’s youngest daughter, along with our spouses. All thoughts and prayers at this juncture are with Shameemji and Swaranji and their children.
Swaranji’s brothers, Rajinder Singh Raina and Jagmohan Singh Raina, are good friends now. Jagmohan has become a popular leader of the Sikh community, while Rajinder, though less vocal, keeps track of people and events with rare attentiveness.
Friendship, once forged in youth, endures far beyond the years.
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