Not a perfect ending

This is your Chief, whatever you meant by that. Can you hear me?

You had everything throughout six decades of your life organised almost by design.

The mop on your head was groomed to perfection. I always suspected that the few strands that came to rest on your forehead at the end of a busy working day were also tailor-made.

Pardon me for two editorial lapses already: one, I should not have referred to your head full of hair as a 'mop' in a public forum, and two, for misrepresenting your habitual demeanour, for honestly I never ever saw you 'busy'.

Your office desk could be mistaken as a table ready to be served in a posh restaurant, so spick-and-span it always was, and yet you were News Editor, Managing Editor, Executive Editor, Press Secretary to a caretaker government, Press Councillor at a Bangladesh mission, and CEO of a TV channel. In Facebook language we say, 'kyamne ki?'

If there was a prize for the 'best dressed media personality', you would win indubitably. Sometimes we take refuge in journalistic jargon when 'hands down' sounds too ordinary for special people. I cannot credit your immaculate bearing to Cadet College education for I too am an ex-cadet. Don't tell me your Momenshahi was any different from my Jhenaidah. They all made us wake up at five and turn in by ten with lots of physical and academic exercises, and fun and games in between.

You led an almost spotless but chequered career that would be the envy of the finest business administrators. With your natural flair, you could take over the administration of any corporate house with the confidence and authority of always having been there. 

My earliest memory of you and a newspaper is during your admin stint with the Bangla daily Sangbad in the early 1980s in Old Dhaka. Over dinner somewhere you convinced me to contribute a sports column, albeit occasionally. Once while receiving my article ball-point-penned in a sheaf of A5 newsprint paper, customary then, you narrated the hilarious folly of one your staff, who had translated the title of the then regular TV series Marcus Welby, M.D. as Marcus Welby Mohammad. I will never forgive you.

More than a decade and half later, after Morning Sun, UNB and the Bangladesh Embassy in Japan, you emerged as the Managing Editor of The Daily Star when I was 'Advisory' Sports Editor at its Dhanmondi premises, while also teaching at a university. You took so much interest in the sports page that they made you Executive Editor. Your other virtue was you were an avid reader of Chintito.

When The Daily Star commenced 2006 with the construction of its own building (at its present location), the management rightly thrust on you the status and burden of 'project director' to oversee matters on its behalf. You made life difficult for the consultants and the contractors. As an in-house consultant, I was actually on your side, but you also made me walk the extra mile to see that this leading English daily got a decent building.

Your reputation must have spread high and wide because soon after you were invited to join the Caretaker Government 2007-2008 as press secretary to the Chief Advisor. You managed difficult press conferences with your astuteness and the experience of handling people like us.

After you joined Maasranga Television as its Chief Executive Officer 2010, you asked me every time we met, and they were not few, that you and I should meet to discuss a television programme about which I had hinted. Frankly, the distance and the traffic jam kept putting me off, although I looked at your building every time I plied on the Kakoli-Uttara road. The jams may one day go, but you have traversed beyond human estimation.

So perfect and precise were you throughout life that the public outcry against a recent Maasranga report on the knowledge of GPA-5 achieving students and possible consequences, and your sense of responsibility, must have affected you to the core. The incomplete human being could have swallowed the bitter pill and survived. 

I never asked you why you called me 'Chief'. There would always be enough time later to sort out such nitty-gritty among friends, I thought. It kind of sounded good on you. It still does, even in silence.

Rest in peace, Syed Fahim Munaim, known as Tipu to everyone who knew him. May Allah (SWT) grant you a blessed place in Jannah.

The writer is a practising Architect at BashaBari Ltd., a Commonwealth Scholar and a Fellow, a Baden-Powell Fellow Scout Leader, and a Major Donor Rotarian.