when i thought of writing about amazing people the first person who came to my mind was my father - tahir hussain wafai - he was amazing to me not only because he was my father but because of his love for books, reading and research and collection of different things!
we proudly say that we have got around 4000 book in our home - sort of a library of our own - most of the books in that library are collected by my father. he would spend thousands of rupees every month to buy books, magazines, dictionaries and what not!
the first book that he has retained was bought by him when he was 12 years old and since then there is no looking back. he also kept record of every book he bought. there is actually an index number written on every book that he bought and later when we started buying our own books, once a month he would sit down and ask us all to bring our books to be numbered. he bought books from everywhere - from the most prestigious bookstore to the second hand books sold on footpaths.
he also had deep love for our language - sindhi - he bought sindhi books thinking that if sindhis will not buy these books then no one will. so we have got two or three books from the same editions. he not only bought books but he was an avid reader as well. being an auditor he hardly stayed at one place, so he bought books and read them in buses and trains. the best quality was that he retained all the information that he read about. my mother called him walking encyclopedia in her book.
he also collected stamps, coins and quotes. one of his habits was to maintain the english language dictionary! we used to have that ferozsons dictionary, it was a basic dictionary, but as our class advanced our needs for more words increased. if he would read a new word in any newspaper, he would insert that word in that dictionary. then i asked him to buy me OALD, but this didn't stop him, he wrote allt hose words in a separate diary that i call - tahir wafai's own dictionary.
he encouraged us to buy books even, he would take us to book fair that was held in haiderabad every year and give us an allowance for buying books. he would remember the name of every book that anyone of us asked him to buy.and when he was posted in karachi, he would go for walks and if he saw a book about embroidery he would buy it for me and cooking for my sister, Archie comics for my brother and any other crafts books for my mom :D
brought up in poor circumstances, he never let go of his love for books, reading and stamp collection. he said that best investment is to buy books and spend time reading them. Amar Jaleel in one of his articles said that, "when people have money they don't have time to buy books and read them, and when they retire they have all the time to read books, but they don't have money to buy the books". so he bought books saying that when he''ll retire he would read them, but life did not give him enough time to finish all the books he bought.
another of his quality was his patience. he would listen to everyone and answer all the questions patiently. it was fun to talk to him. ask him about everything and he was able to discuss it. this quality is in very less people.
all in all my father was an amazing man. being from a middle class family and facing many problems during his childhood, he never let such things ruin his life or cause hindrance in his path of achieving things. he proved that if you are meant to be nothing would stop you .:)
i love you baba and i miss you!
Sugandh
