Day 8 in Dhaka

I walked into her apartment and saw this poster of Gandhiji. I was in Khursheed Irfan Ahmed's home. Khursheed Ahmed was born Khursheed Akhund in Sindh in 1929. Her father, Mr. Abdullah Shafi Mohammad Akhund was a man who believed in women's education. He sent all three of his girls to school. Khursheed went to Kinnaird College in Lahore. She was preparing to take her ISc in 1947 when a communal riot broke out.

Khursheed learned that the resistrar of the college, Mr. MG Singh was murdered. It pained her very much as she knew the gentleman personally. Mr. MG Singh was killed just because his last name was Singh. He was not even a Sikh, rather a Hindu. Because of the turmoil, the ISc examination was cancelled and Khursheed returned to Sindh. On her way back home she wore a cross around her neck at the suggestion of the nuns of her school for protection. She remained safe in the train.

Khursheed Irfan and her brother in Sukkur, Sindh in the 1930s


  After partition, she saw things change slowly. She saw her frineds, Swaran Malhotra, Indu Chatterjee, Jaswinder Gill and many others leave Lahore. In a few years, Kinnaird College was an All-Muslim girls' college.

Khursheed Akhund married Mr. Irfan Ahmed Chowdhury and came to Dhaka in 1958. Mr Erfan Ahmed brought up and and educated in Calcutta . Mr. Ahmed saw the terrible riots of Aug 1946. He felt that he could not take it any more and moved to Dhaka. He was the general manager Burma Shell  in Dhaka and  was later assigned  on ambassadorial  posts by the government of Bangladesh.  The couple had 2 daughters. Mr. Chowdhury passed away in 1974. Today Mrs. Khursheed Irfan Ahmed lives in Dhaka surrounded by books, music and friends. She is a social worker, psycho therapist and a humanitarian.




Khursheed Irfan Ahmed

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This city no longer mine
-Khursheed Irfan Ahmed

Withered memories of emotional ties
Of  families frittered away
Memories
Of parental care
Of mates no longer alive
Of the  native language
forgotten....distorted
With words from other lands

This city    no longer mine

The ominous blackness of the kites
across the high rise
Scar the sunlit skies
birds in flight
send a message of fright
To the return of the prodigal
That karachi is no longer the city of light
The fiery laburnums shed no light
shadowed by black shrouds
marching in
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