When you are part of broadcast media, gradually you start looking at life like a show reel, a clip, a segment that should come with three buttons. One to play, other to pause and a third one to stop it. Unfortunately we realize it quite late that, in reality, it is just the red square stop button that works.
In a usual human life it comes into function at the end of the reel story of any individual, unless that person is born and raised in Pakistan. Here life can come to a halt any time, and in many cases way before the acceptable time of departure.
There is no dearth of heart rendering stories to share. It’s perhaps the only type of literature and storytelling we are left with.
But some stories are about those who recorded these tales to show the world, and the coming generations, of the blood and gore that has inculcated numbness into our conscious minds, leaving us dull and indifferent to more pain that is inflicted upon us.
During all these years that I have spent working in the media industry, the only thing that haunts me are the faces that I never saw again. When I look back I am reminded of numerous colleagues and friends that left us too early, or without proper goodbyes.
One minute they were alive, alert, in front of the cameras, or sometimes taking notes, some taking the hardest of the shots and pictures during tough duty hours along the crowded cities of nameless towns of Pakistan – but the very next moment lines went dead, their assignment desks could not trace their whereabouts, their editors could not find them, followed by the usual ominous phone call that is made by someone who was left alive to tell the tale.
The train of thought takes me back to 2007 Lahore, when I was part of a team preparing to launch a news channel. It was the usual training day on a crisp November morning. Different reporting teams were preparing to go in the field to shoot the assigned pieces by trainers.
A tall guy with a slightly slander built and a beard always clad in Shalwar Qameez came up to me and discussed his reporting idea. Since it was winters already, most of the reporting themes for training were weaved around something warm like coffee sellers, dry fruit vendors, or shops selling deep fried Lahori fish.
The reporter who talked to me was Mukaram Khan Atif. He had come from Khyber Pakhunkhwa and belonged mainly to the tribal belt of Pakistan.
Mukaram was excited about producing a report on secondhand warm clothes that are sold in the intricately laid streets of old Lahore. He came back that evening flushing with enthusiasm, the footage was shown for critique the next day.
He recorded his piece to camera quite professionally, but the script for the piece needed some tweaking. After reviewing the footage I kept it in my head to convey this to Mukaram whenever I should meet him next.
The days went by, training proceeded further, Mukaram along with others did all the required segments of those sessions.
At the closing of these sessions, like the last day at the campus, everyone was busy taking pictures and brimming with newness of the assignments. Making plans to produce something newsworthy from their respective bureaus.
It was the time when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. Pakistan was facing another political turmoil and the country was still in the grips of a perpetual scare when the training came to an end.
Mukaram went back to his station. All he had was a camera and mic. We hardly spoke after it, except for the exchange of story ideas or update on developing stories, as I was working as an assignment editor those days.
We all moved on with the daily drudgery of life. Some stayed back with the same channels, while others like me left for other jobs.
It was a fateful day in 2012 when I received a phone call from a colleague about Mukaram. He was shot the head and had died. The killing was claimed by Tehrek-e-Taliban Pakistan. In a message from TTP spokesman, he was accused of ‘propagating against them’. He was shot dead while he praying in a mosque near Charsadda, where he had shifted due to life threats.
His was the first such sudden death followed by a series of tragic killings of many of my acquaintances, colleagues and friends, at the hands of the extremists, that left me in shock.
When I think of Mukram today I feel a twinge in my heart. Why I never talked to him, if it was safe in the area he was working from. I never got a chance to praise his reporting piece from training days. I never got an opportunity to tell him how he could fix that camera script either.
May be I was too late and extremism was writing its story more efficiently than my lousy phone call to Mukaram on this frivolous matter.
On Thursday, when more ill-fated people went missing in Sehwan, I was again reminded of all the unsaid words I failed to convey, over all these years to the ones who never returned.