In memoriam

Imtiyaz Husain

IT'S a tough call to unwind almost half a century of life to search out the prints that were left by Imtiyaz, for our lives were knotted together over this long stretch. When, in our late teens, we met I do not recall, for life was then a passion on the run lured by hazy dreams; we shared the zest for life, no-holds barred, mostly in the folds of Ramna, the young romantic Dhaka which in many ways mirrored our age.
Imtiyaz Husain stood out among friends as a tall, sturdy and handsome man, the envy of many of us in the University of Dhaka in the early '60s. Surely, he was sought by charming young ladies for roles in Shakespeare's plays. He turned down, for reasons he never fully explained, the offer to be the hero in one of the early films in the then East Pakistan.
Moving on with life, he did his MS in Psychology with a first class, one of the early adventurers in a subject still to be taken seriously by the rest of us. Looking back, that in a way sums up his attitude to life. Imtiyaz was always in search of frontiers.
Our lives changed courses -- sometime we were in the same boat and at others, in different ones, but our coordinates were never too far off. We grew into family friends, Neela Bhabi looking upon my wife Asma as a younger sister, for Imtiyaz was a fast friend of late Hashu, the eldest brother of my wife.
With the liberation of Bangladesh, as we were establishing the Bangladesh Freedom Fighters' Welfare Trust, Imtiyaz was called upon to move from the Investment Corporation of Bangladesh to join the team at the Trust along with Shafiq and Kutub. He did so gladly, leaving his preferred carrier as an investment specialist. He made valuable contributions in getting the Trust moving and, in particular, looking after the welfare of the freedom fighters who were then in disarray.
When we were at the Leeds University in 1975, Imtiyaz came over to Bradford University nearby. It was there, over delicious kebabs at Karachi Restaurant at Bradford, he met Reaz who, over three decades later, was to be his last companion at Kabul.
Imtiyaz was not cut out for jobs. He set up P&M Consultants, one of the first such private initiatives, in late 1970s. Over the years, he went back to work in the capital market, set up his own firm, became the president of Dhaka Stock Exchange and, I dare say, the leading specialist in Bangladesh. He was the pioneer in introducing automation in the Dhaka Stock Exchange, which he was keen to modernise.
Imtiyaz belonged to the school that thought regulation and development of market went in sync, helping and complementing a common goal. Simply put, let market grow with the regulation it can live with for its age. He wrote papers and columns, and gave lectures enunciating a working model for such a paradigm in the capital market of Bangladesh. As part of that pursuit beyond Bangladesh, he went to Kabul on a World Bank assignment to set up the Capital market there -- a challenge few would dare accept. Before he could finish his task, Imtiyaz passed away in Kabul on October 29 due to sudden cardiac arrest.
In recent years, we invariably got together at my place before heading for the Jumma prayers at the Azad mosque in Gulshan. Noon-time Fridays, Imtiyaz would walk slowly up the stairs in his typical slow gait while calling out my daughters, Duli and Mridula, whom he had befriended by then. The young and the old would get in to animated discussions on any topic on earth, with Imtityaz occasionally, mischieviously, throwing in a controversy.
Imtiyaz loved reading, his boundless interests spanned literature, business, economics, arts, history, as also contemporary thoughts on numerous subjects from astrophysics to behavioural sciences. Knowing that he was to travel to Afghanistan, I recently bought him the book by Khalid Hosseni, Thousand Splendid Suns, a poignant tale of ordinary folks caught in the tragic twists of the violent history of Afghanistan. Who knew Imtiyaz would travel there to tie us permanently to a sad story line in that unforgiving land.

Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, Bir Bikram, PhD, is Adviser to the Hon'ble Prime Minister.