I was in London on April 4th 1979. Very early in the morning the telephone rang. The ringing of a telephone bell at that early hour has the menacing urgency of a fire-alarm. It was a friend who simply said: “Turn on the radio.” It was less of a command and more a cry of anguish; such was the tremor in the voice. I pressed a few knobs of the bedside radio and finally heard a newscaster announcing that the death sentence of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had been carried out. Disbelief turned to rage and rage settled into grief. A close friend had died. He had been an elected Prime Minister (the first ever) of our country. It seemed to me to be an evil moment and it was terrifying to consider the ramifications.

I knew the phone would ring again and continue to ring and private grief would be turned to public sorrow. My wife and I had planned to go to New Gardens and we did. April is the month when the seasons change shifts and flowers are begotten and the leaves on the trees are a fresh green it provides a kind of reassurance.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and I went back many years. Had he lived our friendship would have been hearing the half century mark. We had been school-boys together at The Cathedral School in Bombay. We had played cricket indeed that had been the bond. We bunked classes to watch the Muslims play in The Pentagular, celebrated their triumphs and agonized over their defeats. I think our foremost ambition then was to become first class cricketers. We swam and played squash at The Willingdom Club, went to the cinema he carrying a torch for Ann Sheridan and I for Esther Williams but both Gary Cooper fans. Our families were friends and there was much coming and going, they had a house on the sea-front in Worli and we also on the sea front, in Shivaji Park. It was an unexceptional boyhood happy, carefree and the only sorrow we knew was when it rained and the cricket was washed out.

When the time came to go abroad for studies, we both went to the University of Southern California and were roots-states at Mrs. Bess Jones Lodgings on South Flower Street and Jefferson Boulevard. It was a typical student’s rooming house. Mrs. Jones was a patient landlady but we really never gave her any cause for complaint. We were not bell-raisers. Sometimes we would fall behind in our rent ($ 5 a week) and Mrs. Jones would slip a note under our door. We would tell her about exchange restrictions in our country and since she had no idea of what we were talking about, she never threatened its with eviction. We bought a car jointly a Nash from a used-car lot of The Smiling Irishman. When it was asked about Richard Nixon: “Would you buy a used car from him?” I often thought of The Smiling Irishman. The car, in the parlance of disasters, was lemon. We never got to re-selling it. We just abandoned it.

In Los Angeles we did much what we had done in Bombay only we were that much older and all our American friends remarked that for our age, we were remarkably politically mature. I don’t think we were anything of the sort but because of our background we had more serious interests and our reading went beyond the comic-strips in the newspapers. We participated as much as could in campus activities, were members of the debate teats and went regularly every Saturday during the season, to the football games. On Sundays we played cricket at Griffith Park. The standard was poor and he and I were the super-stars of our team ‘The Corinthians’. It was fun-cricket and we toured around California. We were protective of each other and since I was older by a few months. I kept an eye on him. It was no ordinary friendship. We were like brothers. And even when he became President and then Prime Minister, the terns of reference was to the friendship and nothing else. We did not necessarily agree on ever thing and I was certainly not a camp follower. In public I gave him the respect due to his high office, in the privacy of a one-to-one, he as Zulfi, which was not quite respectful but was infinitely more affectionate and sincere.

What was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto like as a young man? I have often been asked and I have always answered that he was like any young man who loved life, easy, uncomplicated in the main but with his share of hang-ups and occasional moments. He was a good friend and I would imagine a good enemy! He was fierce in his likes and dislikes and a little cruel with those whom lie disliked. He had strong views and could be prickly with those who disagreed with him. Did I think he had political ambitions? I don’t know. He never said any thing to me perhaps, because he thought that I would discourage him. I regarded politics as a dead-end. He did not ask me to become one. This was what made our relationship special.

However, I remember Piloo Modi telling me, as if he was invested with presence, that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto would be Prime Minister of Pakistan one day. Yet he was not single-minded and gave no indication of being driven by unreasonable ambition. Later, when he became Foreign Minister, he told me that he had set his heart on becoming Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations. What were his political planning? I think he was left of centre in a romantic sort of way. He was anti-colonial as we all were and if there was one issue about which he would really get worked up. it was Israel. He would sit in the student union cafeteria and he would be scathing about Israel. About America’s support to Israel, he would say: “not the United Stat6s but the Jewnited States of America.” But he was not anti-semitic.

Occasionally, some visiting political dignitary would come to our campus. Nixon came as did Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey, a consummate politician was trying to shake off a leftist label that had been tagged to him. He declared himself to be “a non-doctrinaire, new deal, fair deal, welfare-state democrat.”

These words made a great impression on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. I think his socialism was of this kind. He had too good a mind to be trapped in dogma. He and I would have long talks about Pakistan and we were determined that we would hope to wipe out poverty to remove social injustice and “to wipe every tear from every eye”, another phrase that attracted him and he quoted it often.

He went off to Berkeley and I stayed on at the University of Southern California. But we kept in touch and sometimes he and Piloo Modi would come down or I would go up to Berkeley. Then he went to Oxford and I lost touch with him. The boyhood had vanished and with its simple dreams. He was a precious friend and those were good days, cricket in the rain on the maidans.

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