Remembering Karim Uncle

Ambassador Rezaul Karim with grand-daughters

As a diplomat, Karim Uncle spent a great deal of time abroad in some posting or the other. Sometime in the early eighties, he came back to Dhaka. It was during this period that I got to appreciate all the roles he would juggle. I still remember his evening routine after work. He would go to his mother's room and spend some time with her. Then he would sit and chat with his children and their friends. After which he would relax with Salma Auntie for the evening or they go out together to a diplomatic function.

Coincidental or not, Karim Uncle started his walking-stick collection about the same time his teenage daughter started turning heads. The sticks would be in grand display in the living room. It seemed a fittingly diplomatic way of keeping the boys away! Today the collection comprises of 360 walking sticks from all over the world. They were such his pride and joy that Salma Auntie teased him for loving the sticks more than her. To which he replied that he loved her "360 times more". That was Karim Uncle through and through. Unabashedly, openly loving.

His big build notwithstanding, all of us children loved him like a big teddy bear. When we had children of our own, they loved him even more. He would offer to babysit them although he could barely walk due to his knee problems. He loved to have the toddlers clambering all over him until we would be exhausted from watching them. But then, most of us got exhausted just hearing Karim Uncle's schedule for the day! And this was when he was supposedly 'retired'.

Karim Uncle had always been busy with some kind of work or the other. He spent his entire life in the diplomatic service, a profession with no set hours. He was at office during the day and entertaining diplomats during the evening. After retirement, we thought he would slow down. But he guffawed at us and continued at his usual high-octane rate. He wrote articles, books, memoirs. He started a little farm in Shalna. He raised funds and founded a college in Kushtia. He headed a non-profit organisation. He had multi-faceted roles as advisor, consultant, and counselor. If anything, Karim Uncle was busier in his 'retirement'.

As testimony to his accomplishments and dedication, people flocked to him all day, every day. The Karim residence was like a 'magic dip'. One never knew who one would bump into. There would be needy people from Kushtia, political aspirants from Dhaka, or visiting diplomats from another country. Sometimes there would be different collections of people in different rooms of the house! But true to nature, Karim Uncle would be a gracious host to them all.

Karim Uncle loved his profession and perhaps that is why he was so successful at it. He was born to be a diplomat. It thus seems apt that he died as one too. Barely two months after he had been reassigned as Ambassador, Karim Uncle died on 29th October in Cairo.

We used to joke with Karim Uncle about his capacity to eat and the growing size of his girth. But after his death when I saw all the people from different segments of society, country and world that paid condolences to the Karim family, I realised he had one other part which far surpassed his generous midriff. It was his heart and the capacity he had to ove.

May Allah forgive Karim Uncle and have mercy on him and grant him an abode in Jannath Ameen.