BASHIR TARIQ
LAHORE - Arfa Karim Randhawa’s death has saddened everyone in Pakistan and abroad. But it looks that Microsoft President Bill Gates has been distrusted more than anybody else by the IT wizard’s early departure for the hereafter. “This is the black day of my life and same for Pakistan because I lost my princess colleague and Pakistan lost her Pakistani,” according to a message the billionaire sent to the bereaved family.
The Microsoft president had offered to bear all treatment expenses in the US of Arfa Karim, who died 27 days after she suffered a heart seizure. The whole nation had been praying for her to get well, but she departed for the life-after last Saturday and was buried in her native town near Faisalabad.
Meanwhile, her mother Chaand (family name) has not come out of the tragedy of her beloved daughter’s death. Visibly shaken by the colossal loss, a wailing Chaand shock her head in negation on Tuesday night when her brother Zulkifal stopped her from going to the graveyard where Arfa is buried. “Bhai (brother) you know she (Arfa) was always afraid of being alone. Since she is alone [in the graveyard] she needs my company,” a howling Chaand told Zulkifal and made him, too, to weep.
Arfa was lucky to have been born in a family packed with some of the starts of this country, and her achievement in a tender age was a truly stellar attainment. Her father Mr Amjad Karim Randhawa, as everybody knows now, retired a few years ago from Pakistan Army from the post of colonel. But that only caps a list of very successful names on both sides (maternal and paternal) of her family.
The little star’s two paternal uncles served, on various degrees and in different capacities, in the Pakistan Air Force. Mr Sabihun Nasir, the eldest of the four brothers, took up the difficult task of controlling the air traffic. Scaling various ladders of success in the CAA, he is now posted in a high position at Sukkur airport. Then comes Sohail Metla (Metla is the caste and most of them take the Metla suffix with their names), who after retirement from the PAF is currently based in the UK serving a government department there.
Who does not know the cricket star Waqar Younus? Arfar was his cousin. Waqar’s uncle Group Capt (ret) Salim Metla (elder brother of his father Younus Metla) was considered one of the best PAF officers of his time. As part of the PAF’s team (Metla was in-charge of the air controls during the war) which served in Syria during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Salim Metla was responsible for downing several Israeli fighter jets. The Syrians made the PAF team, including Mr Metla their “Blood Brothers.”
Faisal, another star, is younger brother of Waqar Younus.
He is currently serving as pilot in the national flag-carrier, the PIA. Their third brother, Ali Metla, has recently been posted as officer in an international bank in Dubai after serving the bank’s branch in Lahore.
A close look at Arfa’s immediate family tells us that the now-gone glory’s two brothers (both are younger to her) also love computer. “She used to lovingly tell her brother-competitors that she would not allow them to surpass her in the IT field,” a close relative told this scribe the other day. (And look how she was true in her assertion that she died taking her claim with her – intact!)
The same source, quoting her father, said that at the time of her meeting in 2005 with Bill Gates, his (Bill’s) top associate was found saying that he for the first time saw Bill Gates showing ‘less confidence’ than his opponent (in this case Arfa Karim). “She was a kitty of confidence and self-assurance,” the source said.
Brilliance has a sort of platonic love affair with the Metla family. Something like a housemaid, traces (rather abundance) of it can be found in the very lives of Arfa’s paternal grandfather Mr Darwish and his elder brother Sabir Metla. They were called “The Right Brothers’ of Vehari. A noted mathematician, Mr Sabir was a school head. Mr Darwish had become a property developer in a time when hardly anybody would have dared to enter this risky field – and that, too, in a small town such as Vehari. He was also among the pioneers who “discovered” the Dubai mania.
They say that the lineage plays an important role in someone’s life. It holds true as far as Arfa Karim was concerned. Does the place of birth, too, feature in a name? If it does, then Vehari must be praised because majority of the younger Metlas were born in Vehari. The rare genius as she was, Arfa’s youthfulness and exuberance also stemmed from the Metla pedigree (from the maternal side at least), which made her to stand out as a special one in the field of IT. May your soul rest in eternal peace, Arfa Karim!