s a freshman, one of my first teachers at Government College, Lahore, was Khaled Ahmed. He had a dreamy, lost look and a bohemian demeanour. His shirt often popped out of his trousers, which were also unstitched at places along the seams. With a book in hand, he would amble into the classroom and begin a soliloquy-like lecture in an impeccable English accent. At times, he would gaze out of the classroom window at the lush gulmohur in the month of May and start to recount the pleasures of nature intertwined with the text, trying to help students connect with the unity of the Beautiful as expressed in words or otherwise.

Most of the students, however, merely admired his wordplay without fully grasping the subtleties of the abstract constructs. One often wondered whether Khaled Ahmed had attended the best schools in the country, as his spoken English was far superior to that of many others who delivered lectures and were reputed as professors of English.

Much later, going through his writings, one realised how hard he had worked on himself, tirelessly learning the English language in both its written and spoken forms. He had attended Urdu-medium schools and initially could not make head or tail of the lectures delivered in English at the college he joined on pure merit. Yet, through sheer determination, he worked his way up to become a well-read man with a keen sensitivity to languages.

I recalled seeing him in Foothold, a Taufeeq Riffat play staged in English, before I joined college. It was only later that I recognised him as the actor I had seen performing for a sparse audience. The verse play, which I could hardly understand as a school-going child, along with the ambience and atmosphere of the theatre, was too overwhelming to leave a significant imprint at the time.

Khaled Ahmed was eventually lost to the Foreign Service. (Many Ravians end up being the bureaucracy’s cannon fodder.) One only heard of him occasionally through some of his poems published in The Ravi or, much later, during his trips back home when he would drop by to lecture or moderate sessions. He never missed an opportunity to visit his alma mater.

Then, in the late 1970s, I saw Khaled Ahmed on a 50cc motorcycle visiting the college to cover the rehearsals for the Government College annual play. I asked him what had become of his diplomatic career and what he was doing in Lahore. Considering me too junior and insignificant, he merely rolled his eyes, reminiscent of his dreamy, lost look, and feigned ignorance of the question. I later learnt that he had left the Foreign Service and joined The Pakistan Times as a journalist. This apparent “backward climb” was difficult to digest and fully comprehend, but since it was Khaled Ahmed, one tried to see it as a great virtue.

Khaled Ahmed had no biases and actively covered the burgeoning local theatre in Urdu and Punjabi, highlighting its strengths and recognising the exceptional thespian talent of the performers. Before long, he began writing about languages and the cultural values that needed to be preserved and cultivated to uphold the ideals of a civilised society.

A staunch advocate of liberal democracy, he championed its values throughout his career as a journalist, often warning against the dangers of Pakistan’s transformation into an ideological state during the Zia years. His experiences in Moscow and Prague had exposed him to the limitations of ideological systems. He often dwelt on the democratic virtues of freedom of thought and speech. Yet, like many others of his ilk, he found himself pushed to the margins by those who, leveraging religious ideology, were claiming centre stage.

From The Pakistan Times, which relied on government handouts to pay its shrinking payroll, Khaled Ahmed moved on to work and write for nearly every major newspaper in the country. During this time, he continued his research both locally and abroad, producing several insightful books that critically examined the pitfalls of the policies Pakistan was pursuing.

The writer is a culture critic based in Lahore