Shahid Nasim Iqbal- Abdalian Entrymate

Meeting after 35 years.

Yes it is Shahid Nasim of Haider Wing.

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I met with him in Mandi Bahauddin on Friday May 31st, 2013 after almost thirty five years.

In the last five years or so, many of our age have reconnected to old class mates through internet and social media. Almost everybody I know has either an email group or FB page of their class fellows, of school mates, college mates and professional colleges. Still some manage to remain outside the reaches of these electronic catchers. Shahid Nasim is one of them who is blissfully spared of this media buzz.

It is strange that while everybody knew in the first few weeks of Hasanabdal that Javed Iqbal is from Mandi and that put Mandi Bahauddin on the map for the rest of us, nobody made the connection that his wing-mate Shahid Nasim is also from the same area. Perhaps Shahid was from the periphery of Mandi and not form the great metropolis Javed  led the others believe about his town.

I think Shahid Nasim was the most soft spoken kind gentleman we had in our entry. Tameer may be the close second. We in Jinnah Wing used to see him all the times heading to the masjid five times a day from the very beginning.He was tall and slender, a shy person  who had no particular interest in extra curricular activities except basketball and prayers.

He is a quite person, he was perhaps the only person admitted to QuadeAzam Medical College Bahawalpur. He told me that Zubair was also admitted there but soon got migrated to KE. After graduation he started working in his home area and except for one year he spent in Lahore for a diploma, he is in Phalia. He works in the Tehsil HQ Hospital Phalia and in the evenings has a busy practice in his home village. It is called Sohawa (different than what you see on GT Road). He has grown up kids and I think two of them are in medical colleges. He maintains a second home in Lahore for the kids and is very content to stay where he is.

I think the best quality of life is of those who are able to live a full working life in their natural habitat. For a rurally grown man, there is no more satisfaction than someone kine Shahid who works in his own area, in a purely rural atmosphere, busy to the minute, and earnng good income and a lot more goodwill and satisfaction. Similar is the story of Tariq Saeed (Javed Mandi's cousin and my class mate from RMC) who lives in Mandi and works both in Mandi and his ancestral village Gojra (not the big Gojra) a few miles away. I will write about him in a separate post.

He is a deeply religious man and I was expecting a long beard. While waiting for him in the hotel lobby with Tariq Saeed  I saw him coming and immediately recognized him. He looked the same, and surprisingly without the beard.

We spend the evening there in the restaurant. It was time well spend and worth the effort to reach out to him. His cool quite demeanor was as fresh as it was in 1973. A very contented man, with simple living and clear thinking.

He is not much in contact with the rest of the class. He did meet Ali Razaaq once and is in touch with Mohammad Ali, a fellow Haiderain, who like him is working and living in a small town for most of the professional live. 

Shahid Nasim does not have an email account, does not have time and interest in the Internet and uses the cellphone as the preferred mode of communication. He can be reached at (01192)-3007748106.