One of the greatest things a person can have in their life is a good relationship with their parents. A relationship centred on love, respect, and friendship but more importantly on space for individuality. I've been fortunate to experience a relationship like that with both my parents, and today, I want to share about my father, Naazir Mahmood, in honour of his 60th birthday.
In the three decades of my life, I’ve seen my father as a funny man, a kind man, a progressive man, and a man who cherishes the company of his friends and family above all else. Born on 17th June 1964 in Karachi to a middle-class family, my father spent his younger years helping his father and three brothers in a glasswork business after attending classes at a government college. While his siblings set up their own businesses into reaching adulthood, my father decided that was not his calling and he embarked on a professional career at an advertising agency.
This marked the start of an interesting journey that would lead him from journalism to heading a prestigious higher education institute in Karachi. However, my aim is not to highlight his career trajectory, but to focus on his interests outside work, the kind of person he is, and what he means to his family and friends. My father’s second love is that of movies.
Growing up watching them in his company, the likes of Charlie Chaplin and classics of Italy’s neorealistic cinema, my sisters and I learned to appreciate films not just as entertainmen.
