LAHORE “She Came, She Conqueror and She (suddenly) died”, that’s perhaps the most appropriate obituary, which comes into mind on the death of Arfa Kareem Randhawa, who became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) in the world in 2004 at the age of 9 years, and died on 14th January , 2012. She left a lasting mark on the world before she left for her heavenly abode. She may be better off with Allah Almighty than with us all; that’s the best possible explanation which comes to one’s mind. There are many common factors between Arfa and Alexander the Great; like the little girl Alexander of Macedonia was the youngest conqueror of the world and died in his early thirties after being dubbed and acknowledged as the conqueror of the known world at that time. However, Arfa sits on a much higher pedestal in terms of achievements on comparative grounds. She was the youngest ever MCP, the youngest pilot as she was certified for flying a plane from a flying club in Dubai at the age of 10. In August 2005, Arfa Karim received the Fatima Jinnah Gold Medal in the field of Science and Technology. She also received the Salaam Pakistan Youth Award again in August 2005. Arfa Karim is also the recipient of the Presidential Award for Pride of Performance and is till the youngest recipient of that award ever. In November 2006, Arfa was invited by Microsoft to be a part of the keynote session in the Tech-Ed Developers conference held in Barcelona. The theme of the conference was “Get ahead of the game” and she was the only Pakistani among over 5,000 participants in that conference. Arfa Karim also became the brand ambassador of PTCL EVO service (wireless broadband Internet service) in Pakistan. She remained in intensive care at Combined Military Hospital (CMH) after suffering an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest a few weeks ago. After battling for life for 26 days, one of Pakistan’s brightest brains left this world for good. Born in 1995, Arfa Karim got the honour of World’s Youngest Microsoft Certified Professional when she was only 9 years old in 2004. Bill Gates, the Chairman of Microsoft, invited Arfa to visit the Microsoft Headquarters in the USA when she was only 10 years old. That was Arfa Kareem, far ahead of Alexander or any other living or dead icon who could achieve such greater fate in just 16 years of life. There is no words to present to the thunderstruck parents of this amazing genius but , if it could help at all to decrease the pain of the grieved parents of Arfa at all, she did for Pakistan in just seven years since she came on the world scene what all the ambassadors, sports men and women, intellectuals, artists and statesmen could not do in the last 67 years: She made us all stand tall in the world with this little girl holding our hand and saying :I am from Pakistan , a great country!
