If the greatest art is to live a fulfilled life and there was an Oscar for that, then surely Zia Mohyeddin would be its recipient. Just a few days back he walked out of a theatre at the Arts Council in Lahore after having cast his spell on an audience with one of his inimitable dramatic readings. It was at the Lahore Literary Festival. He walked out and neither did he know and nor did we that this would be his last act and that the curtain would not rise on him again.
An actor to his bones, Zia saheb had been at the game for scores of years. I remember him first as a kid when he played Brutus in his own production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. It was at the open air theatre in Government College, Lahore. I was there because my mother was playing Calpurnia, Caesars’ wife. And my mother had taken me along with her to see the play.
My next close encounter with him was when I was in England with my parents in the early sixties. Still in my knickers and a dark blue St Michael sweater that I wore unforgivingly in and out of school, my mother, Zia saheb and myself were going somewhere queuing up to get a ticket for the underground at the Finchley Road tube station in Hampstead. Zia saheb drew out a wad of pound notes from his pocket to pay for the tickets. I had not seen so much money flake out of a pocket till then.
Zia saheb was doing well at the time. He was playing Dr Aziz in Passage to India. I didn’t understand the source of that money at the time but learnt later it was because he was not a common wage earner but a star at West End at that moment. Dr Aziz was a landmark role for Zia saheb and thereon he played major and not so major roles in several West End productions which also travelled to Broadway.
My mother and father raved about how he was accoladed for that performance. They were there on opening night or close to that. They visited him backstage where he was showered with bouquets from his well wishers including one from Sir Laurence Olivier wishing him the best and praising him for his performance.
In the course of time he not only performed on stage but in films and television also. He was in several of them but probably most of us know him for his appearance in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. From a column he wrote for The News, one learnt that he had become a friend to Lean, his Indian wife and Peter O’ Toole.
Other than his acting assignments, he also hosted a talk show for ITV in England called Eastern Eye. This followed or preceded the Zia Mohyeddin Show in Pakistan, which kept us glued to our TV sets.
Zia saheb worked on a particular schedule throughout the day. He would go for his morning walk followed by breakfast, land for office at 10am and, because a working day starts at 9am, he would stay back at his desk and duties till 6pm so that he could complete an eight-hour working day.
This was towards his last engagement as head of the performing arts institute in Karachi, NAPA, which he had helped set up.
Earlier, when he was heading the Dance Troupe of PIA in the seventies he probably arrived sometime well before the clock struck nine. Such was the man. Punctilious and particular in his habits as well as professionally.
Zia saheb leaves behind a wife, Azra, and four children. A certain light has died with Zia Mohyeddin’s passing away. But his memory burns bright. The writer is a film, TV and theatre personality.