hen my father died in 1972, Imran Aslam wrote a four-page letter to me from England that I have kept. He had moved to study there after his four years at the Government College, Lahore. No other friend or acquaintance wrote a letter of condolence – at best there was a hug and a few murmured half-finished words to negotiate the immensity of the loss. I was barely out of the teens.

A remarkable candour and sympathy were the traits that made Imran Aslam very desired company. The letter, of course, was about courage, resilience and fortitude - about not giving up. Imran Aslam himself was struggling at that time to keep the body and soul - studies and work - together in the harsh winters of London. The punishing routine took its steady toll, and he was hospitalised once he returned to Pakistan in the mid-seventies.

We had met at the Government College as freshmen in 1967. It was a new place, a new environment, a totally new culture with a certain freedom that appeared to be waywardness after the regimented years at school. New friendships were made; some withered away, some forged. The reason for it happening is still a mystery – it may have been the commonality of interests or the meeting of temperaments. Whatever, it was a group of first-year students who started hanging out for hours to escape the dreary lecture routine.

But soon, all kinds of auditions, interviews and checkouts started tempting the freshmen into the vibrant whirl of the various societies that made more sense than the dour teaching regimen of standup lectures. The extracurricular was where the heart was. Soon we realised that Imran Aslam was lapped up as a star English debater.

One saw a little less of him in the following months, sucked in by the debating circuit, representing the college at institutions around the country, always bringing back trophies and shields to add to the huge number that the college already had and did not bother to archive and store. He became an indispensable part of the team, and rarely did he return without a laurel. The success rate could not be ignored, and he was awarded the Roll of Honour before many others while still at the undergraduate level. The distinction is usually reserved for those who have worked and toiled through building their CV till they complete their master’s.

Imran Aslam never appeared to toil or work towards putting his CV together. It appeared that everything came naturally to him. The ease with which he did things made one suspect that there would be a compromise on quality. There wasn’t. One frequently saw him sailing through while the others fretted, laboured and sweated to make sense of the matters.

The love for theatre was another realisation as one went through the haze of expectation and romance. The college society, the famed Government College Dramatic Club, was dormant, and Usman Peerzada, who had seen and heard his father and brother exult about the Club, was most distressed and pushed for its revival as a single-point agenda. The appointment of Dr Mohammed Ajmal as the principal and Prof Rafiq Mehmood as the Club patron helped. Sarmad Sehbai and Shoaib Hashmi became the rallying point for the outpouring of thespian adventures. Imran Aslam was up there with Usman Peerzada and Salman Shahid to take up the cudgels.

It was rare for him to not deliver. From play reading to rehearsals and the actual performance, it was a journey of discovery and joy at having hit upon a vocation. He was on stage while Nazir Kamal, Anis Dani and I tried to make our presence worthy and useful by drawing the curtains, managing the lights, synchronising the sounds and fumbling with the almost non-existent box office. Our other friends, Hasan Imam, Shahid Kamal, Irtiza and Khawar Husnain, however, sought more meaningful activities outside the college.

Then came the 1970 elections, and we were all riveted by the politics and the media coverage. The television’s broad-based coverage with music as its most prized production and the attempt to record it on the cassette, a wonderful invention - small portable gadget imported from Abu Dhabi that kept us engaged even after the elections were long over. The constant playing of Mehdi Hassan, Fareeda Khanum and Habib Wali Muhammed was a kind of initiation into high culture. Kheyal, thumri and dhrupad were to come later. Habib Wali Muhammed’s rendition of Faiz’s Donon Jahan Teri Muhabbat Main Haar Kay is what we heard on a small-sized portable cassette player. Even after the tape was damaged by excessive use, it was heard with sonic gaps and variations of speed. In the later decades, both of us searched for this number but were unable to find it, though many others had sung the same ghazal in the years that followed. The nostalgia of it all could never be matched.

He never lost touch and, when he came back from England, was lapped up by the lucre of Abu Dhabi, but that was not to last very long as it grated against his grain though he had great experiences in transporting Imam Khomeini from Paris to Teheran after the success of the revolution, and Yasser Arafat on the royal plane of Abu Dhabi, besides regaling all with other hilarious anecdotes involving the rich and not so famous.

His association with the Star revealed the true colours of Imran Aslam. In the turmoil of the Zia-ul Haq era, he seemed calm and composed, not ruffled, and despite the immense pressure from various quarters, he had the time and leisure to navigate the theatre scene in Karachi, the fashion world and the openings into advertising. We looked forward to my visits to Karachi; the apartment in the Sidco Complex became our haunt. It was visited by many from the worlds of fashion, show business and the arts, and there was no respite for him being seconded for many tasks.

It was under his unsaid patronage that I started writing for the Star. The two editors, Zohra Yousaf and Saneeya Hussain, were both caring and affable, matching these qualities with their ruthlessness in maintaining editorial standards. But it was too good to last; he was hounded out and lost the job. The years before he joined The News were tough and unsparing.

He had many landmarks to achieve – establish the Daily News, oversee The News on Friday (later Sunday) simultaneously from Karachi, Islamabad and Rawalpindi with Beena Sarwar in Lahore as its immediate boss, and then Geo, which he headed from the very beginning. He stamped his preferences on TV and all networks in the country were forced to follow the lead.

He also had the genius of knowing what was going to be popular and acceptable and find favour with the common taste and married it to the high fluten with finesse. He ventured into screenplay, teleplays and stage plays, especially for children, on a regular basis.

He had an amazing gift of not wearing on his sleeve the great crush of work and responsibility and appeared to cruise through everything. He never nurtured, cultivated or carried a frown that many do when working as if the entire weight of humankind rests on their shoulders and which only they are destined to salvage and no other.

He would come to Lahore very often and, in the rush of meetings and appointments never failed to meet me, whatever the hour. We talked of the colonial era, the culture then, Bhopal, Panipat, Hyderabad Deccan, Aligarh and the charms of the old world that had disappeared. We talked more about people than ideas, the ethos than facts, what could have been said and was left unstated, what could have happened and did not. Despite his great facility with the spoken word, there was much that he still wanted to say. He talked about growing up in Chittagong and Dacca and mimicked everyone - the Bengalis, the Biharis and those opting for either the particularities of Lucknow and Hyderabad Deccan, and after whetting our appetite, we went to a certain joint for chaamp gosht.

What he wore on his sleeve was his heart, and he wore it well. Now that there is no fear of competition, let me confess, much better than me. His sense of humour and the ability to mimic won people over even before they knew it. His ready wit was quite rare, and the ability to collapse situations, words and sounds together brought out the hidden connections that one had not expected or suspected. It all helped him in his writing and speaking.

Then he fell very ill a few years ago, and the chances of recovery receded, but he did get a little better and, after some time, flew over to Lahore. I went to see him and asked him what had brought him to Lahore. “Just to see you, for I thought I would never see you again,” was his reply. He had no other engagement and he flew back the next day. I did not know what to say or how to respond. It left me weeping inwards.

The writer is a culture critic based in Lahore