OBITUARY
Lt Col Dr Syed Mohammad Hasanain Bokhari
(10 November 1918-29 November 1998)

‘Kulu nafsin zaiqat-al-maut’ [Every soul must die one day].

Noted Columnist FARHAN BOKHARI writes an eloquent OBITUARY of his father

The proclamation in the holy quran is an apt description of the meaning of life. It is essentially a temporary phase for every human being, an opportunity to establish a legacy before returning to Allah Almighty for the eventual judgement.

For a soldier, especially one ingrained in the tradition of the old, traditional school, trained to live a life with honour and dignity, these words from the holy book carry special significance.

In the days as I and other members of my family mourned the death of my father, we were inundated with many words of sympathy from a cross section of society. A pioneer, a creator, a good man, were just some of those words, in part a customary feature.

However, those who offered their condolences mostly remembered the large chunk of Colonel Bokhari’s career, a man who opted for military service right after graduation, and devoted his life to the cause of promoting scientific research in Pakistan.

The military’s prime pathological establishment, the AFIP (Armed Forces Institute of Pathology), in Rawalpindi, and subsequently the NHL (National Health Laboratories), later renamed as the NIH (National Institutes of Health) after his departure from that project, in an attempt to give glory to a crumbling institution, still bear his memory.

Till his death, he took pride in the AFIP, a military institution which is smaller in size of the two, but nevertheless, relatively better run in a disciplined environment. 'Its the people who count, not the palatial structures’ he once said.

The renamed NHL’s collapse, a source of great distress to its founder during his lifetime, is essentially a story of the problems of Pakistan. As 'sifarish’ and mediocrity crept in to the realm of scientific research, so did the breakdown intensified.

It was customary for him to leave home before sunrise, return well into the night, never take a weekend off let alone a vacation, and carry on tirelessly during the decade of building the renamed NHL. His passion and determination never wavered, despite an apparently unjustified supercession of his military rank while serving the federal government.

The renamed NHL’s 643 acre estate, literally rose from barren soil where little greenery existed before, and wildlife including poisonous snakes were aplenty.

The success of this particular endeavour however was the result of two relatively straightforward principles in life.

Personal integrity and a struggle for Ôakle-halal’ was a must. In one instance while working in Islamabad, Colonel Bokhari’s duties included that of monitoring the CDA’s water supply.

On one occasion, a sample was sent to his office, quickly followed by the visit of a senior CDA official. There was a connection between the two. The sample was contaminated and the official came to offer a plot of land in a prime sector of Islamabad.

The CDA man was promptly dismissed, followed by a promise to never move to the new capital city. He breathed his last at the military hospital in Rawalpindi, just five minutes away from his Cantonment home where he settled down a few years after partition.

The second guiding principle essentially related to tea building and motivation. 'A raj’ (mason) who charged four Rupees during the NHL project worked much harder than the man who charges 200 Rupees today’ was another familiar and oft spoken line.

However, driven by a sense of modesty, he was the last to acknowledge that much had changed in personal values from his time of Pakistan’s golden era of the 60s, to that of a crumbling state led by a corrupt elite of the 80s and 90s.

The condolence meeting at the NHL auditorium to mourn his death, brought words of praise including one which said that every morning while driving to his office, he would stop his jeep on the way, to give a ride to as many employees that could fit. The call of status and protocol were unfamiliar terms.

True to the cause of Pakistan, his career related setbacks, did little to force him into leaving the country. But the fall of Dhaka was the most significant shock which drove him into months of illness. In 1972, he quietly boarded a plane to Sudan for a five year assignment with the World Health Organization, to reform that country’s laboratory network.

Upon his return to Pakistan in 1978 when the Zia dictatorship was unfolding and Pakistan had entered another black era whose eventual outcome was to have been drugs, militancy, violence, mediocrity, corruption and the failure of the dream of Pakistan, the city life became just too unpalatable. He then spent over a decade at a small village in Sheikhupura, running a family farm and treating hundreds of patients free of charge.

For his soul, the tributes from well known individuals perhaps would mean little than the villagers and common folk who came to offer 'fateha’. Some quietly wept remembering a doctor who made it affordable for them to receive medical treatment.

In Islamabad, one memorable tribute came from an individual at the renamed NHL who said, if you strike a nail at any wall around the laboratory site today, and if it doesn’t penetrate, it was probably built during Colonel Bokhari’s time. There could be no better acknowledgement of the services of a man who struggled for an eventually lost dream when Pakistan could well take pride in itself as a proud nation.