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MAHBUBUL ALAM (1936-2014)

A journalist, a friend

Syed Badrul Ahsan
One more of the 1960s' generation of journalists goes the way of all flesh.
Mahbubul Alam carries with him the story of a life that has had its moments of luminosity as also its patches of grey. In his final avatar as editor of The Independent, it was a constant battle he was up against. When he took charge of the newspaper in the 1990s, the feeling was strong among the reading public that under his leadership the organisation would grow and prosper. That hope was belied, for reasons not hard to fathom. Yet Alam struggled bravely on, until a few months ago. After decades spent in activist mode, he was finally into retirement.
There was in Alam a very human desire to be in the centre of things, which explains the many roles he played through a lifetime spent in the intensity of excitement. As a young man working for the Karachi-based Dawn newspaper in New Delhi, he covered the funeral of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964. He used to regale a younger generation of journalists, in the 1980s, with tales of the oratory of such personalities as Indian politician Syed Badrudduja he had experienced at the funeral.
By the 1980s, of course, Alam was an older, different man. He was making his way back to journalism after a stint as Bangladesh's ambassador to Bhutan. He was taking over as editor of The New Nation from the venerable Motahar Hossain Siddiqui. There was little question that he intended to make some positive changes in the newspaper. Impressed by the story of Lee laccocca's rise in life, he made it a point to ask the young newsmen
around him to read the man's biography.
A certain restlessness constantly defined Mahbubul Alam. He basked in the glory that had marked his youth. In middle age, it became obvious at some point that he needed a change, through moving from journalism into government. The 1980s were the times when he served, besides Bhutan, as minister press at the Bangladesh embassy in Washington; as director general, external publicity at the Foreign Office here in Dhaka; and as managing director of Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS). He was comfortable in government, which truth was to become pronounced one last time when he found a place as adviser in the ill-fated and ill-conceived caretaker government led by President lajuddin Ahmed between October 2006 and January 2007.
It was Mahbubul Alam's misfortune to have been associated with the Plain Truth, a regular propaganda tract run by Radio Pakistan throughout the nine months of the Bangalees' struggle for liberation in 1971. It was a stigma that was to remain with him and was to put an end to his brief stint as press secretary to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in early 1972. For the more than four decades that he lived after that 1971-72 episode, Alam never spoke about it.
Mahbubul Alam's journalistic career
may have been interrupted by his forays into other professional territories. But there is little question that there was about him an approachability that endeared him to others, to those who had cause to work under him. Chivalry was his hallmark and so was his informality. His patience with his colleagues hardly ever wore thin, unless he thought he was being taken advantage of. He had a good sense of humour that drew people to him.
Despite the many difficulties he was constantly up against as editor of the newspapers on his watch, Alam never failed to persuade younger journalists to be part of his team. In the early years of this century, informed that a journalist, having finished a stint as media spokesperson at a Bangladesh mission abroad, was coming back home, Alam called the individual long distance, told him his newspaper required his services and appointed him to a senior position in those brief moments of conversation.
That was Mahbubul Alam's magnanimity. And it was there because he belonged to an era where men in positions of influence, warts and all, readily acknowledged the promise and the ability to shine in those who had followed his generation into the world of the newspaper.
Let Mahbubul Alam rest in peace. And let us find peace in memories of him as a journalist, as a friend.