I had always been vaguely familiar with a certain lady called 'Razia' who it seemed was always making news. She was my khala's friend in Karachi and was associated with some magazine. Unfortunately those were days when everything in life was apparently perfect and i never used to feel the need to look deeper into anything that appeared in the news or happened in our society. There had been a raid at her apartment one night and she was being harassed by the government for again printing something that was otherwise true.
I never did any follow up on that story.
That was about 8 or 10 years back. Yesterday someone mentioned the ex-editor of newsline as perhaps one of the most courageous journalist of our time and my mind kept bugging me with the name 'Razia' again. And I finally started looking her up.
Razia Bhatti was the editor of Herald and then later on founded the magazine Newsline. Both are amongst the most respected english publications in Pakistan. I came across this article by Eqbal Ahmad which is a brilliant and vivid description of a brave woman.
Both these articles serve as a short biography of Razia's life and her work.
Quoting from the article written by Eqbal Ahmad, of his first impression of Razia Bhatti, he wrote, "She will crash, I had thought then, or else she will help transform journalism in Pakistan. She did both."