On December 7, well known newspaper columnist Amina Jilani, known for her tightly packed irascible sentences, passed away at the age of 80 after fighting an illness for the past year. She took her last breath at the Cowasjee house in Bath Island, Clifton, where she was being looked after by the family with whom she had a long association.
Ms Jilani was born in 1937 and belonged to Bahawalpur where her grandfather was physician to the Nawab. According to an obituary for Newsline by her friend Muneeza Shamsie, a writer and critic, Ms Jilani’s father, Colonel Khursheed Jilani, had been a doctor in the Pakistan Army and had served in World War II. Her mother, Dorothy, was English. “In 1942, Amina and her family had been on the last ship to leave Singapore before the Japanese invasion. At Partition, they escaped from Delhi to Rawalpindi,” writes Ms Shamsie.
Ms Jilani was educated at a private school in England. According to Ms Shamsie, it was here that she nurtured her love for horses. “At one point in the early 1970s she did a short stint looking after some stables in England,” she added. “She loved to watch polo and horse-racing too.”
Ms Jilani studied Modern Languages at the University of Cologne in Germany and she spoke German and French fluently. She lived and worked at the Pakistan High Commission in London before returning to Karachi where she joined the Intercontinental Hotel. According to Cyrus Cowasjee, it was at the hotel that Ms Jilani met Dawn columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee in 1970-71. She subsequently joined the Cowasjee Group as his personal assistant. “She was a very gentle and soft-speaking person,” Cyrus Cowasjee told TFT, going on to describe Ms Jilani as “firm in her ideas and astute in her comprehension”. By 1973, however, she left for Paris to work in an American law firm for eight years.
But as Ms Jilani had spent much of the 1960s in Karachi, she eventually decided to settle here permanently in 1982-83, according to Muneeza Shamsie. She returned to live with her elderly mother in a flat in Clifton. And from 1983 onwards she went back to working with Ardeshir Cowasjee, running his ‘home’ office, as Ms Jilani herself described it in a short bio that was published to introduce an article she wrote on Mr Cowasjee for Hamazor of the World Zoroastrian Organisation (edited by Toxy Cowasjee).
It was in Ardeshir Cowasjee’s company—he was wearing a toga at the time—that tech guru Zaheer Kidwai recalled how he first met Ms Jilani who became a good friend. “I used to be at sea most of the time but when I started doing my computer stuff with Sabeen (Mahmud) we received a call from Ardeshir at 6am that he wanted us at his place by 8am because he needed to send something off,” he told TFT. “Amina was also there and Sabeen was very scared of him… the bird and dogs kept making a noise.” Perhaps sensing the need to rescue them, Ms Jilani saved the day by asking Ardeshir to go inside and read so that Sabeen and Zaheer could teach her how to fix the computer. “That’s how we became friends,” he said. Mr Kidwai would often pop in to see her every two to three weeks. “It was difficult not to love her, so full of life… she had a great memory and remembered everything,” he added.
Another friend with fond memories is Nighat Mir, chairperson of the Imran Mir Art Foundation. “I saw her in a very personal setting: our home or Ardeshir’s... most things we spoke about were of that nature,” Mrs Mir told TFT. “She fussed over what he (Ardeshir Cowasjee) ate. He would sneak an ice cream (he was diabetic) if she was not looking... and get an earful.” Mrs Mir described Ms Jilani as being “fiercely loyal, very protective and deeply caring” of Ardeshir Cowasjee, “in a very abrasive manner (at least in front of us)” for “her brusque manner hid her extreme fondness for him.”
It is not difficult to assume then, that it would have been difficult for Ms Jilani when Ardeshir Cowasjee died in 2012. “When Amina came to our house for the first time after Ardeshir died, she broke down and was quite inconsolable,” said Nighat Mir. “When Imran passed away [in 2014] she repeatedly consoled me, ‘He was a good man, Nighat he was a good man,’ and I know this one sentence said so many things she wanted to say about Imran who Ardeshir and she loved a lot.”
Nighat Mir and Ms Jilani had shared a love for dogs. “So vet and diet notes were frequently exchanged. Ben the cockatoo and the dogs knew she was boss and they got an earful too every now and then. If they could talk I’m sure they would have volumes to say,” she said. “We will all miss her but so will these ... very sensitive members of the Cowasjee household. I’m sure they must be pretty disconsolate,” she added.
Journalist and family friend Reema Abbasi described Ms Jilani as a powerhouse of talent, wit, honesty and irreverence. “One grew up teasing her as John Lennon’s reincarnation,” she told TFT. “‘We were counterparts, fool,’ she’d say.”
Ms Jilani certainly was an unfearing critic of power, violence and the rot in politics and she spared no one in her regular columns for Dawn, The Nation and The Express Tribune over the years. In December 2011: “the scariest bit of stuff in our press for three days running last week was front page photographs of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.” A month earlier, she had dwelt on the Birkin bag that discreetly appeared at our foreign minister’s “ministerial” feet. Zardari and Sharif were “clingers-on par excellence — the former being able to outsmart the latter at each step”. Her words, written in 2011 were prescient: “So it may not just boil down to tolerating Zardari until 2013, merely to sustain a democratic process. The country may have to tolerate an unpopular, corrupt and selfish leadership thereafter — barring a miracle from inner or outer space.” Voices such as hers are rare. One would only wish she had stuck around for the next elections.
Ms Jilani was born in 1937 and belonged to Bahawalpur where her grandfather was physician to the Nawab. According to an obituary for Newsline by her friend Muneeza Shamsie, a writer and critic, Ms Jilani’s father, Colonel Khursheed Jilani, had been a doctor in the Pakistan Army and had served in World War II. Her mother, Dorothy, was English. “In 1942, Amina and her family had been on the last ship to leave Singapore before the Japanese invasion. At Partition, they escaped from Delhi to Rawalpindi,” writes Ms Shamsie.
Ms Jilani was educated at a private school in England. According to Ms Shamsie, it was here that she nurtured her love for horses. “At one point in the early 1970s she did a short stint looking after some stables in England,” she added. “She loved to watch polo and horse-racing too.”
Ms Jilani studied Modern Languages at the University of Cologne in Germany and she spoke German and French fluently. She lived and worked at the Pakistan High Commission in London before returning to Karachi where she joined the Intercontinental Hotel. According to Cyrus Cowasjee, it was at the hotel that Ms Jilani met Dawn columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee in 1970-71. She subsequently joined the Cowasjee Group as his personal assistant. “She was a very gentle and soft-speaking person,” Cyrus Cowasjee told TFT, going on to describe Ms Jilani as “firm in her ideas and astute in her comprehension”. By 1973, however, she left for Paris to work in an American law firm for eight years.
But as Ms Jilani had spent much of the 1960s in Karachi, she eventually decided to settle here permanently in 1982-83, according to Muneeza Shamsie. She returned to live with her elderly mother in a flat in Clifton. And from 1983 onwards she went back to working with Ardeshir Cowasjee, running his ‘home’ office, as Ms Jilani herself described it in a short bio that was published to introduce an article she wrote on Mr Cowasjee for Hamazor of the World Zoroastrian Organisation (edited by Toxy Cowasjee).
It was in Ardeshir Cowasjee’s company—he was wearing a toga at the time—that tech guru Zaheer Kidwai recalled how he first met Ms Jilani who became a good friend. “I used to be at sea most of the time but when I started doing my computer stuff with Sabeen (Mahmud) we received a call from Ardeshir at 6am that he wanted us at his place by 8am because he needed to send something off,” he told TFT. “Amina was also there and Sabeen was very scared of him… the bird and dogs kept making a noise.” Perhaps sensing the need to rescue them, Ms Jilani saved the day by asking Ardeshir to go inside and read so that Sabeen and Zaheer could teach her how to fix the computer. “That’s how we became friends,” he said. Mr Kidwai would often pop in to see her every two to three weeks. “It was difficult not to love her, so full of life… she had a great memory and remembered everything,” he added.
Another friend with fond memories is Nighat Mir, chairperson of the Imran Mir Art Foundation. “I saw her in a very personal setting: our home or Ardeshir’s... most things we spoke about were of that nature,” Mrs Mir told TFT. “She fussed over what he (Ardeshir Cowasjee) ate. He would sneak an ice cream (he was diabetic) if she was not looking... and get an earful.” Mrs Mir described Ms Jilani as being “fiercely loyal, very protective and deeply caring” of Ardeshir Cowasjee, “in a very abrasive manner (at least in front of us)” for “her brusque manner hid her extreme fondness for him.”
It is not difficult to assume then, that it would have been difficult for Ms Jilani when Ardeshir Cowasjee died in 2012. “When Amina came to our house for the first time after Ardeshir died, she broke down and was quite inconsolable,” said Nighat Mir. “When Imran passed away [in 2014] she repeatedly consoled me, ‘He was a good man, Nighat he was a good man,’ and I know this one sentence said so many things she wanted to say about Imran who Ardeshir and she loved a lot.”
Nighat Mir and Ms Jilani had shared a love for dogs. “So vet and diet notes were frequently exchanged. Ben the cockatoo and the dogs knew she was boss and they got an earful too every now and then. If they could talk I’m sure they would have volumes to say,” she said. “We will all miss her but so will these ... very sensitive members of the Cowasjee household. I’m sure they must be pretty disconsolate,” she added.
Journalist and family friend Reema Abbasi described Ms Jilani as a powerhouse of talent, wit, honesty and irreverence. “One grew up teasing her as John Lennon’s reincarnation,” she told TFT. “‘We were counterparts, fool,’ she’d say.”
Ms Jilani certainly was an unfearing critic of power, violence and the rot in politics and she spared no one in her regular columns for Dawn, The Nation and The Express Tribune over the years. In December 2011: “the scariest bit of stuff in our press for three days running last week was front page photographs of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.” A month earlier, she had dwelt on the Birkin bag that discreetly appeared at our foreign minister’s “ministerial” feet. Zardari and Sharif were “clingers-on par excellence — the former being able to outsmart the latter at each step”. Her words, written in 2011 were prescient: “So it may not just boil down to tolerating Zardari until 2013, merely to sustain a democratic process. The country may have to tolerate an unpopular, corrupt and selfish leadership thereafter — barring a miracle from inner or outer space.” Voices such as hers are rare. One would only wish she had stuck around for the next elections.