(Ghulam Mustafa)
He was my mentor, my teacher, my mentor, who taught me to hold hands in life and walk in the fast-paced media race. How to write a good script. How to make a unique story. Everything was taught how to develop a story from ideas. And there was no regular class for this teaching, he just scattered the pearls of knowledge on the go. From where materials would be provided for thinking and understanding. He would often go out of the Jio office to smoke a cigarette, and we would follow behind him and the river of his thoughts would flow in the talks and tens of story ideas would be lying in our cradle and we would be left thinking which story to do and which to leave. Many times it would happen that we would forget many ideas but they would remember, when they met, asking what did you do with this story? It will not be out of place to say that they used to share grace, of thinking, of thinking, of ideas, of stability of the media, of taking the media industry forward. In truth, he was a walking think tank. Geo Think Tank!
We knew him from the time of NTM when sometimes he used to visit the office of NTM located on Razi Road in PECHS. This was the time when Mir Sahib was thinking of a TV channel.
Then as soon as NTM ended, we switched back to print media but these contacts remained. And then the day came when an interview call came for Jio. About eight months before the start of Jio, these interviews were recorded on camera. A panel of six people, including Imran Aslam, Mir Ibrahim, Azhar Abbas, Ustad Nasir Beg Chaghatai, Abdul Rauf, who have the ability to change the course of time, are sitting in front, they are interviewing and new people like us who have stepped on the path of journalism. The new kids are sitting in front of them like a school student. There are also technical questions of TV production, so the reporter’s sources are also discussed, previous work is also reviewed. The interview came but then one day Azhar Abbas met with him at Ghazal in Regent Plaza and the next day he was called to sign the agreement and then spent one and a half months in training at Awari Tower. The entire lead team of Jio also sits in the classroom with us, they were actually trying to teach us and then one day in Awari the Jio logo starts playing on the screen and everyone has tears of happiness in their eyes and then This process of learning from them was continuous. Awari Tower was replaced by Jang Building, classrooms were replaced by the corridors of Jio and the pearls of thought falling from their tongues while walking, which we tried to wrap in our cradle, but such valuable pearls are worthless like us. Where could you manage? Some hands would slip and fall.
Sometimes when they were going to have a cigarette, I would hold their hands, just like children hold their father’s hand, and say, Sir, give me two minutes, and then I would take them to the audio studio on the ground floor and ask them to watch the Geo Inocitegate documentaries. He requested to do the voice of the promo. Many times he would correct my mistakes while reading the script of the promo, I felt like and I believed that his voice would blow away my promo, then there is no stopping the story from being popular. It was possible and true that his voice would captivate the listeners. Sometimes I would look for him and go to his room on the fifth floor of Jio, and find it empty, then I would understand where he would be and then I would run with fast steps towards the mezzanine floor, I would understand that he was in his secret room. I would be where he would definitely be doing some creative work at that time, writing the script of a play. Thus, I would reach the mezzanine floor. He would enter the room without making any sound and sit in a corner, as soon as he was freed from his thoughts he would look at me and ask how is the GM doing.
President of Geo. Busy with so many tasks. But I had the honor that there was never any restriction on me when I entered his room. I think I was his and Azhar Abbas’s favorite reporter in Geo.
Once I was coming out of Jio’s building when I saw Imran Aslam coming from the front, it was night time. I greeted him, asked him how he was and asked him to come and drink tea with us at the hotel in Pathan. They said let’s go and we sat at the tea dhaba in front of The News. Seeing Imran Aslam, Jeev K and his colleagues also joined the party. This two-hour event covered many topics. As the conversation progressed, it came to increase in salary, and they said to raise their voice for their rights, speak up. Then they themselves said that if you don’t raise your voice, you will be in a loss like me. Then he himself started telling his story that I was in The News when the planning of Jio started, I was shifted to Jio and a couple of years passed. Regarding the salary, Mir Sahib never asked, nor did he remember and I never mentioned it, until one day in the meeting of the directors, Mir Sahib came to know that Imran Aslam was working on the old salary of The News. Mir Shakeel-ur-Rehman himself was also surprised that why you did not tell him. They said, I replied that what should I say. Khair Mir Sahib issued the orders there and his salary was according to the leading staff of Jio