Zafar Kazmi
The man who knew how to live and how to die

By A.H.Akhund

While Zafar’s joblessness made no difference to him, it certainly destroyed the Sindh Provincial Museum. Pygmies who enjoyed the status of petty officers, started claiming the credit for its excellence.
A senior woman official who literally begged for a position in the culture department to save the culture of Sindh, deserves thanks for the removal of her illustrious predecessor. Among her laudable services was the turning down of the department’s request to retain the services of Zafar as consultant. Today Zafar lives while she is an inconsequential blip.
Zafar Ali Shah Kazmi was a multifaceted person - focused and unpredictable, bold and cutting, soft and brash. He has recorded each and every moment of his life. If and when his memoirs are published, one would know his mind. I hope his sons have his diaries published.
Many claim to have known him during the different stages of his life - from the time that he rebelled against the dictates of cultural inhibitions to the days when he was confined to his small abode that gave peace and tranquillity to his restless soul.His life began in Amri, where with two friends -- Mansoor Veeragi and Alan Faqir - he used to roam the ruins of Amri and the banks of the mighty and turbulent Indus. The extremes of his personality, beautiful and dangerous, can be traced to those days.
His sojourns and loves are well known. They range from Rudolph Valentino to Motilal and Dilip Kumar, from fearless fights around the Saeed Manzil (Amar Jail has immortalised his adventures as the feared gangster of Barnes Road in one of his short stories), to the crabbing days, from the film studios of Lahore to ((Mayo)) National College of ((Fine)) Arts and then to the NJV as a drawing teacher and a sculptor par excellence.
When he settled down to a married life, his love for his family was commendable. His wife faced the brunt of his cruel temper and gentle rustle. He fared well in the upkeep of his family. His children loved him; to them he was Papa. To us, he was Daadah.
His stay at the University of Sindh, his ouster and triumphant return to the Sindh Provincial Museum and then as an important member of the triumvirate in the Culture Department and the projection of Sindh’s cultural heritage, are all an epoch.
Dr Baloch and Justice Nana were his benefactors, but it was his talent and God-given qualities that made him shine. He played with the soul of colours - his earlier works are classics in the depiction of Sindh’s beauty.
I came to know him in the late 60s through Mumtaz Mirza and Amar Jalil and over the last 30 years, I remained closer to him than any of his earlier friends. We fought, ridiculed and enjoyed the complexities of this quixotic journey.
He loved life but did not care for it; he was reckless. He strongly believed that it was not for us to worry about life and its trivialities. Those things are for the Creator to figure out.
He was never well off, but how he scraped by, no one knows. I never found him preoccupied, tense or worried. He would always say ”Yar, hey kum thounjo na aahey. Chaad Maula tey”. He never complained.
He was a connoisseur of beauty and everything to him was admirable. But he was not a hypocrite and he would never tolerate one. Mercurial as he was, he could be an embarrassment to his friends and, with an appalling measure, would cut us to size.
Hamid Haroon, Mumtaz and I (Jalil was scared of him), -- more so I -- had the privilege to joke with him and tease him, but he never reacted. In the same stride we would laugh off his assaults. One had to understand Zafar to appreciate him.
He gave away all his antiquities for setting up the museum and official audits have not been able to reconcile the wealth that he gave to the museum. He was not paid back. He was never regretful, but sad to see the museum decline so rapidly.
My last conversation with him during his illness was brief as he was in pain and could hardly hear what I was saying, but he came to the phone and kept repeating, ”Rab jo karam ahay”. When I went to see him on Eid, he was sleeping peacefully, wearing a smart, blue sleeveless sweater and a golf cap. To me he appeared the same Zafar I saw in the early sixties during a cricket match at Kotri. He was fearless to the point of recklessness and was prepared to render his accounts.

In Dilip’s Daagh, there is a scene in which his drunken friends carry him on a cot to the graveyard and having lost their way, contradict each other. Suddenly Dilip gets up and tells them: ”Shamshan kidhar hai vow tou ham jantay hain, magar hum to bata nahey saktay, kuen key hum tou becharay mar chaley”. I would often tease him, ’Shamshan kidhar hey’, and he would say ”Chadd Badmashey”.
Little did we know that both these foster brothers - Alan Faqir and Zafar Kazmi - would found their own ”shamshan” where in death as in life they would be the sole lions. Alan lies buried in his house in Jamshoro and Zafar Kazmi in the Sindh Museum, a place which he created and is his identity. Whoever allowed this has done a great service, for once the present flim-flam from Sindh’s culture vanishes, Zafar will be remembered.
It is said that had death not been a gift and inevitable, man would have wasted his whole life attempting to avoid it. He would have risked nothing, attempted nothing, undertaken nothing, invented nothing, built nothing. Let us thank God for having made us this gift, so that life is to have meaning. Let us thank Him for having given us weariness and pain so that rest and joy are to have meaning.
The end of Zafar’s journey is the end of an era never to be repeated. People have changed, values are devalued, Sindh is not as romantic as it was in the 20th century. Zafar will not be born again.
Thank you and adieu my friend, you have ended your journey; we plod along.

(Zafar Kazmi, painter, museologist and poet, served as curator of the Sindh Museum, Hyderabd, which he had built up from scrap and without adequate financial assistance. After a protracted illness, he died in Hyderabad on Jan 12.)

(Mr. AH Akhund is currently Secretary, Govt. Of Sindh, Mines & Mineral Development Department and one of best friends of Zafar Kazmi).

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