Abbas Kazim
(2002)

Abbas Kazim: Fire Down Below

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A close friend of Abbas said to me the other night that his death was nothing less than a Greek tragedy, that if there is a life after this one and he is there looking down, can he see the apple of his eye, the son he doted on, sitting inside a jail cell, half comprehending what happened that Saturday morning? Can there be a greater tragedy? The news about Abbas has been heartbreaking. He may have had his faults – and these were legendary as was all he did, but to be put down by some half-wit illiterate lout from somewhere in the boondocks for a paltry sum of money, is soul chilling. Years ago he had managed to survive a terrible accident, after his car had rammed into the insides of a trailer truck in Sindh that had broken almost all his bones. He had serious heart problems some years back and fought it out, but he ran out of luck in Lahore this October. He was not the one to go down without a fight, so what happened? Was he caught so completely off guard? 

Abbas did not go through life gently. That was not his style. Not for him the soft tongue, the low murmur of voices, the gentle persuasion. These were alien to him because he stood at the opposite end of the spectrum, preferring to live in the eye of the storm. When he was bludgeoned to death on an October morning with the first traces of winter in the air, allegedly the victim of a rank amateurish plot hatched by his only son, Asad and carried out by two hired assassins from Kasowal village with the help of Abbas’s house guard, it shocked everyone into stunned silence. The very notion of his being murdered so brutally and so senselessly, in cold blood chills the heart even now. Abbas Kazim was one live wire who was never at rest and never still. Somehow his passing away seems utterly purposeless. Writing this from memory, even more bizarre.

My association with Abbas began somewhere in the mid eighties. We both knew, more or less the same people; well one should quickly qualify that. No one could know as many people as Abbas did. My circle of acquaintanceship would be a very small one compared to his limitless universe. He knew everyone. At the time we met, he had a couple of ventures going in his head. I never asked him then, or years later why he was pursuing the line of publishing and not a regular career like law. You didn’t ask such questions if you were friends with Abbas. He was better known to my advertising peers because he had made quite a reputation as the hunk in a commercial for Fabron starring opposite the sultry and sumptuous Shamsi Sheikh or Naveen Tajik – it was either of the two. All I remember from that campaign is Abbas lounging nonchalantly from a train door as a bewitched young lady looks on longingly. He had the searing looks that came out well on celluloid, but I doubt modeling was on his agenda ever.

The two magazines Abbas began from a little office on Turner Road were a cut and paste job with articles, pictures, interviews freely and happily reproduced from wherever possible. Having been roped into a freebie, which involved heavy-duty editing and layouts of the two ventures (it was always hard to say no to him), we happily disagreed all the time. I felt that the magazines lacked originality and were shabbily produced. Abbas thought otherwise and had absolutely no plans to improve their presentation. He was pushing a budget item and he was past caring for such niceties as copyrights, credit lines, et al. In fact one of the early covers showed his two children – one of them was Asad climbing aboard a New Khan coaster. Abbas was of the view that this was modeling for free and they were cute kids anyway; on either count, it was difficult to argue with him. How well the magazines did, I had no idea. So many years later, with the magazines long gone, I still have no idea. All I do remember is Abbas Kazim careening about town in a battered green Toyota Corona – a legacy of his father’s once-official limo but now in a fairly advanced state of disrepair. As always, he was running forever against deadlines. In a way that was his trademark for the rest of his life – running against deadlines. And he was perpetually late.

Years later, that pattern had not changed a bit. I saw less and less of him, my punishing schedules leaving me little time to sit and spin yarns or spend long, lazy days at test matches and one dayers – Abbas was full time into cricket promotion and sponsorships, from official mascots to cycle stands and everything in between. We maintained fairly regular contact, by phone or the occasional drop in visits. And it was always hectic. There were any number of papers flying about, incessant ringing of telephones, faxes coming in, every conversation interrupted by more calls, more people dropping in. Abbas had the ability to carry on a dozen conversations at the same time, disposing off three trucks of onions in Samundari and buying three of rice in Gujranwala while taking quotations for cricket bats for Pepsi or getting Bishen Singh Bedi’s flight number. If you wanted a conversation with Abbas, you wedged it between all these disparate strands of chaos. If you wanted a meaningful conversation, well there was little or no opportunity ever. His way of managing his businesses – there were more than one and I never quite figured out what all they were, was pure disorder and bedlam. There were loose papers everywhere and these would be dug out of heaps of empty chips wrappers, coasters, rumpled newspapers, bills, message slips, invitation cards and other assorted paraphernalia. He seemed to be eternally on the run, grabbing contracts on the go, squaring up deals and almost always, going on verbal commitments. As such things go, there was never a shortage of hiccups and thousands went down many drains. But he was doing well financially. From the days of the crude paste up jobs in Turner Road to the swank house he had built on Zafar Ali Road, from the stuck-together with tape and hope Corona to his sleek BMW and a fleet of other cars, he had come up in the world. There was a great farm that was coming up outside Lahore, taking up more and more of his time. We made elaborate plans to take a trip there and check out the spread. It never materialized and never will now.

I was always surprised at his love for cricket. I have a private theory that he was not really interested but it was good business, lots of traveling and a chance to meet many people, not all of who were unknown. He was on best-buddy terms with Clive Lloyd, Bishen Singh Bedi and just about most of the cricketers of the world. He was on first name terms with the Pakistan side, always ‘in’ with the news. Not only the players, but the establishment too were friends of Abbas Kazim and if they were not at the receiving end of his sharp tongue, they were his great buddies. But then he thrived in the company of people and I would add, largely males. He was most at home with his huge circle of close friends, passing acquaintances and hanger-ons, the latter a resilient and fungus-like breed of people who thrive wherever there is money, food, drink and fame. But Abbas was generous to a fault, his home always open to all who visited. There was never any shortage of food and although he never drank, it was made available to those who liked a drop or two.

The business of cricket was always a subject of intense discussion between us. The contracts he had lost, those he had won, the money he had made and lost and made again. We never really discussed cricket like I would with say Shahzad Humayun. I think Abbas just saw cricket as a business activity but one that seemed to have caught his fancy greatly. While his friends were always around him – Israr, Anjum, Sipra – the list is endless, he was in his elements; rude, polite, abusive, disarming, generous, cutting, charming, gregarious, all at the same time. When Mahmud Sipra arrived with his stunning new wife, Eman, we were all invited to a bash at his house. Even Imtiaz Sipra was there holding forth. During the evening, Abbas turned to me and said without warning, ‘You know come to think of it, you have been pretty much a failure in life.’ Eman was shocked, but I was immune after so many years. I said, ‘But of course. I couldn’t agree with you more.’ It was one of the few times, he wasn’t ready with a one-liner retort and the moment passed. Of course there was no rancour. We were well past that.

In between the years, there were the marriages and the children. I saw his children grow up sporadically it seemed, since there were gaps when we met but at least I found him to be almost all the time, indulgent and affectionate, though there will be many who will recount the opposite. His daughter, Juggan came to intern in my agency and inside of a week, turned it upside down. She played such havoc with the system that we didn’t know whether we were coming or going. I thought of picking up the phone and calling Abbas but didn’t. Mercifully, she cut short her internship and left while we collected the pieces and tried to clear our heads. She was a whirlwind, driven by the same kind of intensity that was the signature of her father. Asad, whom I hardly knew, was always quiet and shy. It was only after the terrible event of October, that I learnt he was disadvantaged. Surely the significance of what he was doing couldn’t have registered with him. Abbas was violent and it came out with the women, the children and the servants. He would fly into rages and see nothing. It left many people deeply bruised and perhaps young Asad carried these scars deep inside him. It was a twist of irony that while he sang praises of his children and thought no end of them, there were dark sides to these relationships as well. What was the reason for the violence that burnt with such ferocity inside Abbas’s heart? I have no idea in all honesty. His personal life had been a series of ups and downs but he had reached a point when he was affluent and could easily mellow down. It was not to be. There was seething rage that would spew out like a volcano and when it did, the red, hot magma burnt every one. That was the contradiction that was Abbas. Whatever your problem was, he was there to solve it. He was the type of friend who would walk a hundred miles for you. At least on two occasions he went out on a limb for me and did it with the nonchalance that came easy to him. He was warm and affectionate and his face would light up and his trademark Cheshire cat grin would spread right across his face as soon as he spotted you. He was a friend in a crisis but how many he had when he was in one, I do not know. The anger inside him would rack his soul and family and friends were seared alike. It broke so many hearts and shattered so many dreams, but if he was flawed, which one amongst us isn’t? Whatever Abbas Kazim may have been, he did not deserve to die when he did and the way he did. Perhaps he now has the peace that eluded him so long.