Ed. Note: Addition to the heading by Editor

Express Tribune: Anwar Mooraj: Whenever we are heading for the New Year, I get this irresistible urge to exhume and disinter the stories by which we remember some of the personalities that have enriched the folklore of Pakistan. This year, I will start with ZA Bokhari, writer, poet, broadcaster and musician and a former director general of Radio Pakistan. One morning, whilst ruffling through a sheaf of papers on his desk, he received a phone call from a highly agitated prime minister Khwaja Nazimuddin. “Bokhari Sahib, I just received an angry telephone call from Maulana Ehtishamul Haq Thanvi. He felt insulted because when he stepped into the car you had sent him, he discovered he had to share it with Ustad Bundo Khan. Can you please apologise so the matter can be brought to a successful conclusion?” The next day, Bokhari telephoned the prime minister and said “I have already offered my apologies”. Nazimuddin was pleased. “I hope the maulana sahib is pacified”. There was a pregnant pause at the other end and Bokhari said, “No no, I have apologised to Bundo Khan.” You see, religious leaders are born every six months, but it is only once in 50 years that the subcontinent can produces a virtuoso like Bundo Khan.

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A.S. Bokhari and the UNICEF

Akram Piracha in the Raza Rumi Blog “All Things Pakistan” Says:August 5th, 2006 at 8:38 pm pakistaniat.wordpress.com/2006/08/05/guest-post-patras-bokhari A little known contribution of Bokhari is the survival of UNICEF, which was about to be disbanded after having completed its humanitarian mandate in the WW2 devastated Europe. This most respected and best known humanitarian/development UN organization set the pace and pattern for the subsequent UN development system. Created for the suffering European women and children, the time had come (1952?) to close its doors. Elenor Roosevelt, wife of the US President was the Chief US delegate. Bokhari as the chief delegate of Pakistan was elected to chair the Committee meeting. She read from the prepared US statement given to her, thanking UNICEF for a job well done and proposed its winding up. Bokhari at that point in a dramatic manner stepped down from the Presidents Podium and resumed his seat as Pakistani delegate. He said that listening to Mrs. Roosevelt, he felt that he was presiding over some funeral. He said although UNICEF’s work in Europe may have ended, there were millions of suffering women and children in the developing countries that were in far greater need of UNICEF’s help. This reprimand stunned Mrs. Roosevelt. At the next day meeting of the Committee, she thanked Bokhari and reversed the US position. UNICEF mandate was extended and it has remained the flag-bearer of humanitarian development until these troubled times.See link: