OH! Nasir Ahmad Shakir, I can’t believe that yesterday we performed your funeral prayers. It seems that I am writing my lamentation not yours. Today I am breaking a promise I made to you. Once you said that don’t let down your words, because the words of an independent journalist are his trust. Today I feel duty-bound to write against the editorial lesson you taught me because I want to pay tribute to my editorial teacher.
Therefore, I will not try to balance this editorial at all, even if I am accused of not doing justice to the art editorial writing. Nisar Shakir used to say! Every writer who sweet-talks dies soon, so wherever you write, write with complete loyalty to your institution. Your pen is your capital.
OH! Nisar Shakir, who will do these things now? In this time of crisis, when journalism is in a very bad time and it has been replaced by the shimmer of cameras, where can I get words like yours?
For those who do not know Nisar Shakir, let me tell them that he was a friendly and sympathetic person. He was the title holder of friends, he was the friend of friends, where he would sit and the gathering would starts that is the reason why his circle of friends included elite, officers or laborers.
The readers who attended his funeral prayer at Darul Uloom Sarhad would have understood it well. Scholars, Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, bureaucrats, teachers, gentlemen, journalists, shopkeepers, laborers and people belonging to every school of thought participated in his funeral prayer.
May Allah bless my dear Muhammad Nazir Lala (of pakha ghulam), if he was alive, he would have attended the funeral of his friend, but he has already left the world. Like Nazir Lala, many characters are there who are devoted to late Nisar Ahmad Shakir and as long as they are alive, they will continue to sigh over his memories.
The life of Nisar Ahmad Shakir is an open book. He earned respect and honor throughout his life. Heroes like him are born in centuries. Whose appearance is not so prominent, but if their knowledge and height are analyzed, then the big personalities are left behind.
Nisar Ahmad Shakir was one such a personality who left us. When having a scholarly conversation, the memory of figures would be refreshed. It should be remembered that when the writer entered journalism, his teacher Salah Uddin Ahmad assigned him to Nisar Shakir and thus his first introduction to journalism was as a proofreader of the editorial page.
Nisar Ahmad Shakir did not leave any stone unturned in making him a writer. The writer thinks that he did not learn such a great thing from Nisar Shakir as of his class but he skilled him a lot. Perhaps Iqbal has said about such personalities that,
If his personality is to be justified, he was very pure hearted that why his friends and relatives loved him. One of his qualities was that he used to praise friendship and enmity at the front of any one. Such people can never be hypocrites and that quality was present indeed in him.
When he died yesterday, it was as if the ground had been removed from under our feet, although we knew that he might not be able to survive this deadly disease. But there was a hope in hearts that maybe he would recover again due to the assistance of his son Asif Nisar, but death did not leave that precious gem and he was separated from us.
But as long as his worthy kids like Asif Nisar and pupils are alive, the world will remember him.
