Feature

My Heroes

Professor Abdul Mannan

When I asked my eighth grader computer button pushing nephew what he wanted to be when he grows up he gave me blank look and did not have any answer. When we were of his age or even much younger this was a common question elder would ask the kids. Not that one had to have an answer but it was perhaps considered a good way of knowing how kids were perceiving their future. Who their heroes were and whom they wanted to be like.

Till my primary school days for some unknown reason I wanted to be a pilot. At that age I never chanced to see a pilot but wanted to be one when I was of the right age. Occasionally we would see a Dakota Aircraft of PIA flying over our house and would wonder about the marvels of flying. May be that prompted me to become a pilot. Even my father was convinced that I should become a pilot. He even tried to get me into the Sargodha Public School in Pakistan not realizing that every one who went to Sargodha did not become a pilot. My desire to become a pilot failed as getting into Sargodha Public School did not come through. I started to feel like a tiger hunter strapped all over the body with guns and cartridge. This was the time when the British tiger hunter in India Jim Corbett's books became a must read for me. Reading the 'The Man Eaters of Kumon' I was so thrilled that I asked my mother to ask my father to get a gun for me. Such requests to fathers always had to go through mothers in my days. Few months later my father got me a wooden gun from the local Boishaki Mela known as 'boli khela'. I was very disappointed.

Though all sorts of sports attracted me cricket had a special place in my list of likings. Pakistan's medium pace bowler Fazal Mahmud was my hero not only because he was the hero of Pakistan's first test victory at Oval in England in 1955 but also his hero like look, elegance, speed of bowling as described by the radio commentators made him appear larger than life size. When Pakistan team visited India in 1956 rumor spread that Lata Mangeshkar fell for Fazal Mahmud and we instantly started putting our share of the spice in the rumor and lamented why God did not make me Fazal Mahmud.

Mr. Harold Lobo came to teach us English in class seven. He was a MA in English from Karachi University. On the very first day of class he gave a brief run down of his CV in the class and did not forget to announce that he was born in Mangalore, not Bangalore in India. Till class nine we did not have to follow the Board syllabus and teachers would prescribe the text books according to their liking. Mr. Lobo prescribed Rudyard Kipling's Kim as English text in original form and not the British Council's children's edition. For the entire year we followed Kimball O'Hara (Kim) over Lahore and other places with Mr. Lobo. Traveling with Kim, I felt like Kim and suddenly Kim became my hero. Last time when I was in Lahore I did not miss the opportunity to visit the Lahore Museum where we first discovered Kim sitting on the top of the old gun Zam Zama.

In 1961 the world witnessed the spectacular feat of the Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin when he first walked the moon. I wondered what would it take if I wanted to accompany Gagarin in his next trip to space! For at least a year I had Gagarin's picture from the newspaper pasted in front of my reading table.

Reading was always my passion. Thrillers always had a special place when it came to choice of what I liked to read. I wonder how many youngsters read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holm stories these days. To me Doyle is the ultimate thriller writer and Sherlock Holmes was a perfect hero to a young man of high school age. The night I finished reading the 'Hound of the Baskervilles' I could not sleep that night, the following night and the night after. I would swear to my mom that I could hear the Hound of the Baskerville calling in its haunting and scary voice.

Che Guevara the Marxist revolutionary was doing the rounds when I entered the University. At my age it seemed everyone wanted to become a Marxist. For a would be Marxist who could be a better hero than just killed Che Guevara. Wearing a Guevara cap with a communist star and curly beards was just what you needed to worship your new found hero. It was believed that the Bolivian army murdered Che with the active help of American's CIA. This gave me an opportunity to abandon my previous hero John F Kennedy though he had no hand in killing Che. Kennedy himself was assassinated in 1963. At my age and my time all Americans were 'Ugly Americans.' Of course you had to leave out Dr. Martin Luther king the assassinated Black Civil Rights leader. I had to convince myself after all every American is not a 'Ugly American.' You needed special places for special heroes like Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King. My last hero made his appearance when we were leaving the university. A new nation was being born and a large than life size hero was the mid-wife. He was the hero of all time-he was Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

I wish my nephew and his generation had their own heroes and they also wanted to be like them. Young generation needs heroes and proper role models otherwise how can they be stopped from becoming drifters?

(Writer Professor of Business Administration, East West University. mannan@ewubd.edu)