JournalismPakistan.com | Published 2 months ago | Dr. Nauman Niaz (TI)
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ISLAMABAD—There are rooms one steps into where the air carries a certain gravity — not of heat, nor dust, but of the sheer density of intellect and presence it contains. The editorial desk of The Muslim in those years was one such rarefied summit. It was less a newsroom and more a sanctuary, and those who occupied it — Maleeha Lodhi, Shireen Mazari, Aroosa Alam, and in time, Mushahid Hussain and Syed Fahd Husain — were not just its custodians, they were its towering peaks.
To the uninitiated, to one like me then lingering at the margins, clutching my humble letters to the editor as though they were visas to an undiscovered realm, the sight was at once a marvel and a trial. There was a quiet intimidation in their poise, a reminder that here, journalism was no gentle craft but an unexplored cauldron. One entered not to experiment, but to endure — to prove oneself in the furnace where words were hammered into steel.
The News International: A New Chapter in Pakistani Media
In that arena, print journalism was not a trade; it was an ordeal, a long and exacting pilgrimage. To reach those desks was to confront not just the sharpness of prose, but the silence between sentences — the unspoken standards that judged with greater severity than any editor's notes. And yet, in that severity lay the most potent kind of inspiration: the kind that neither coddled nor coaxed, but forged. When I was summoned into the fold of The News International, another stage revealed itself — one lit not by the glare of spotlights, but by the quieter, steadier glow of craft.
There stood Maqsood Ahmad — 'Merry Max' — an ex-Test cricketer whose laugh carried the ease of someone who had already played his innings under far greater pressure. His words moved with the rhythm so common to cricket, and his stories carried the dust and sunlight of real grounds.
Beside him, a younger voice — Imran Naeem Ahmad — wrote in sentences so measured, so unhurried, they seemed to stroll into the page, yet always arrived precisely where they were meant to. I fell for his prose almost instantly. In our small archipelago of Pakistani print, he was the S.W. Swanton 'Jim' — a gentleman of letters, unassuming yet exact, as though each word had been revealed to him in confidence.
The Architectural Mind Behind Editorial Excellence
Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, the Resident Editor and the architectural mind behind The News' editorial sobriety, admired his ethic in a way that needed no flourish. From her, admiration was rare, paid only when the work abided not just the polish of skill, but the moral weight of integrity.
On the editorial pages sat Syed Talat Hussain, a man who had shaped his way through the dense undergrowth of limitation to stand among the profession's most articulate names. I once thought I detected in him a flicker of arrogance, but later understood it for what it was — a craftsman's guard, the armour worn to preserve the sanctity of the work.
Meeting the Master: A Lesson in Precision
When at last I met Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, the image I had nurtured from afar did not wither; it grew taller, denser, more complex. She was polity wrapped in precision, her mannerism balanced like the unending scales, her intellect quicksilver — shifting, darting, expanding. One of my pieces found its way to her desk and returned drenched in red ink, as though it had weathered a monsoon of correction. Line by line, I rewrote it — and in that act, my apprenticeship truly began.
She was not just an editor; she was the axis upon which the wheel of the newsroom turned. Her words were not tossed into the air like confetti; they were laid brick by brick, the careful architecture of thought rendered into prose. How she wrote, how she thought, how she carried herself — all of it accepted the symmetry of design, deliberate and unhurried.
The Unchallenged Doyenne of Pakistani Media
In my eyes, she was the unchallenged doyenne of Pakistani print media, and when she later strode into diplomacy with the same precision and authority, it was no surprise. Those seeds had been sown long before, among the paper stacks and ink spills of her newsroom — in the command that filled a room without raising its voice, in her unflinching analysis, in the peculiar eccentricities and sudden mood-swings that only made her more human. And yet, at her core, there was an impenetrable constancy — a stillness no storm could undo.
Her poise was never ornamental. It was a tool, honed and purposeful, as much a part of her as the pen she wielded. She mentored without announcement. Praise was rare, edits were ruthless, but always they were purposeful. Under her, you learned not because she demanded it, but because you realised you had been permitted to stand on ground where excellence was the floor, never the ceiling.
Reflections on a Vanished City of Excellence
Now, looking back, that newsroom feels less like an office and more like a vanished city — a place you cannot return to, except in the half-light of memory, but which will always govern the compass of your craft. It was there I learned that red ink was not a wound, but a guide; that the gravity of brilliance could intimidate yet still nourish; that beneath the titles and portfolios, there always remained the editor — the one who taught us that if you wanted to write, you had to be prepared to be rewritten.
The Constellation of Mentors
Fortune, I have come to believe, does not reside solely in coins minted or lands inherited, but in the company one keeps, the shadows one chooses to walk under, the hands that quietly shape the edges of one's being. I was born into a house where the direction was right — a father whose quiet dignity shepherded me through early years, a mother whose unpretentious love wrapped every corner of my early life in warmth. The outside world, in all its rawness, never turned hostile; perhaps because that early shelter had already stitched armour into my spirit.
And then the universe, in its peculiar generosity, placed mentors in my path like constellations scattered across a private night sky. In the wards of medical school, I learned discipline and the weight of precision. But in the smoky, clattering world of journalism and broadcasting, there were six whose silhouettes rose like minarets on a skyline you could spot from miles away — each a monument, each a lesson, each an enduring presence in the long corridors of memory.
The Enduring Inspiration
Maleeha Lodhi — not in the manner of chalk and blackboard, nor in the structured cadence of a classroom, but in the quiet, inevitable way the sun teaches the leaf to turn towards it. To watch her at the helm as Resident Editor was to understand that writing is never only about the print on the page. It is about the scaffolding unseen — the weight, the balance, the deliberate architecture that holds those words upright against the winds of mediocrity.
Through it all, Maleeha remained. Not as a flare of ceremony, not as a thundering proclamation, but as a constant undertone — the recurring note in a symphony that you only truly hear when the music fades. She was inspiration, yes. But more than that, she was the reminder that excellence is not only in what you say, but in how you hold yourself while saying it.
Early Life and Educational Foundation
In the long scroll of Pakistan's public life, some names drift by like seasons — noticed, noted, and then gone. And then there are those whose presence is less like a passing cloud and more like a mountain — immovable, shaping the winds themselves. Dr. Maleeha Lodhi belongs to the latter order.
Born on 15 November 1952 in Lahore, cradled within the quiet certainties of an upper-middle-class home, she seemed from the start to carry an instinctive choreography of poise and purpose. It was a grace not of ornament, but of orientation — as though she knew, even then, that her path would be drawn towards high tables and harder rooms.
Academic Excellence at LSE
Her formal journey began in the disciplined corridors of the London School of Economics, where she embraced political science — the power, the prose of governance. She earned her doctorate in 1980, and remained in the Department of Government, teaching political sociology. In those years, she refined the habit of looking at politics not just as an exchange of blows across the aisle, but as a mirror held up to the soul of societies.
Breaking Barriers: First Woman Editor in Asia
In 1986, she returned to Pakistan unsettled and searching, and there took a chair history had not yet set for a woman — the editorship of The Muslim. She became, in that instant, the first woman to edit a national newspaper in all of Asia. Four years later, she would found The News International, shaping its voice with a pen that was both scalpel and compass — cutting through cant, steering towards clarity.
Diplomatic Career: Washington and Beyond
In 1994, the tide shifted to diplomacy. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif sent her to Washington as Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States. She would hold that position until 1997, and again from 1999 under President Pervez Musharraf, leaving in 2002. Thereafter, she stood in the high traditions of the Court of St James's, as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. At every stop, she carried Pakistan's voice not just as a brief to be read, but as a living, breathing cause, precise in her language, persuasive in her delivery, unflinching in her work ethic.
International Recognition and UN Service
Her standing was soon recognised beyond the map of bilateral ties. In 2001, she joined the United Nations Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Disarmament, where she served until 2005, a time when the world itself was rethinking its definitions of danger and security. From 2003 to 2008, she once again held Pakistan's brief in London, spurring it through years of turbulence and recalibration.
A Diplomat's Response to Crisis
On 12 September 2001, she sat in the State Department during the meeting between Richard Armitage and ISI chief Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmed, a conversation that would redraw Pakistan's role in the War on Terror. She defended her country with a diplomat's economy of words: 'We have to draw a distinction here between rooting out terrorism and the issue of self-determination of the Kashmiri people. These are two separate issues,' she told CNN in 2002.
Recognition and Awards
The accolades came, though they were never the point: the Hilal-i-Imtiaz in 2002 for Public Service; two essay collections (Pakistan's Encounter with Democracy and The External Challenge); and the widely read Pakistan: Beyond the Crisis State in 2011. In 1994, Time magazine named her among 100 people who would define the 21st century — the only Pakistani on that list.
Return to the United Nations
In February 2015, history came full circle. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appointed her as Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, making her the first woman to hold that office. From that pulpit of the world, she argued for Pakistan's place in the international order with measured authority, understanding that diplomacy is not only the art of negotiation, but the art of endurance.
A Legacy of Dignity and Vision
In every role — scholar, editor, envoy — Dr. Maleeha Lodhi has inhabited the rare space where intellect meets influence. Hers is a career threaded with the belief that Pakistan's narrative can be told not with defensiveness, but with dignity; not in reaction, but with vision. And perhaps that is her true legacy: to have stood at the world's podiums, not merely as a representative of a state, but as an interpreter of its aspirations.
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