Syed Abu Zafar

Syed Abu Zafar is a very well-known personality amongst the Pakistani expatriate community in Saudi Arabia. He is professionally a management consultant with education, training and experiences in public administration. Currently he is self-employed and works as a consultant to several companies. He is located in Riyadh and keeps himself busy with his indulgence with Toast Masters International where he renders valuable contributions as its senior representative in the Kingdom.

Abu Zafar was born in 1939 in Calcutta and as a child lived in Muzaffarpur in Bihar in India with his uncle – Khan Bahadur Syed Ghulam Jilani who was the Commissioner there. During this period his father, who was a Police Officer under the Indian Police Service - was posted in the former East Bengal much before the partition of India. After the partition of India and creation of Pakistan since his uncle was not allowed to opt for Pakistan, Abu Zafar then left his uncle and travelled to East Pakistan to join his parents in 1950.

He studied in St. Gregory’s School in Dhaka where Kamal Azfar was his class fellow. After one year he then transferred himself to New Government School in Dhaka – a school built exclusively for the Urdu speaking populace there. After passing matriculation in first division and with a couple of distinctions in 1952, he then joined Dhaka College to pursue his studies in intermediate education. Sqdr. Leader MM Alam (the 1965 war hero) was a batch senior to him in New Government School. In 1954, due to the language movement in the former East Pakistan, he moved to Lahore to pursue higher education. He joined FC College where he studied Sociology & Political Science in BA. For his master degree, he joined Punjab University where he pursued MA in Sociology. In Punjab University, he was one of the founders of the student’s union activities where he contested the election and was elected to the office of General Secretary – the first ever in the Punjab University after partition – way back in 1957. Being a literary person from the beginning he laid the foundation of a literary club and organized the first ever Mushaira named Shaam-e-Taseer. In 1959, he returned to East Pakistan after accomplishing his master’s degree but soon returned to Karachi to join Shahnawaz Ltd. After on year of service there, he then joined PIDC.

He joined NIPA in 1962 where he trained the civil servants in management. From there he went to the University of Southern California to pursue a masters program on Training of Trainers. He returned back to NIPA in 1963. In the meanwhile, he got engaged o his wife in November 1968 and later got married to her on 16 April 1969. His wife Raena is the grand daughter of Nawab Sir Salim Ullah, the founder of Muslim League and is also the niece of Khawaja Nazim Uddin – the Governor General of Pakistan after the death of Quaid-e-Azam. Soon after getting married he was once again lucky to have secured a scholarship to pursue higher studies in Public Administration in the University of Southern California. However, due to insurgency in East Pakistan, the government of Pakistan called him back. On his way back to Dhaka, his plane landed in Karachi on 26 March 1971, as it could not proceed to Dhaka. In Karachi he rejoined NIPA and stayed there up to 1975. After NIPA he joined Grindlays Bank, National bank, MCB as their Vice President and finally the Premier Tobacco in 1982 where he served as the Group Personnel Manager responsible for human resource development.

He finally arrived in Saudi Arabia in 1984 with SAVOLA Group in Jeddah through the initiative of his wife who wanted him to quit the demanding job with Premiere Tobacco and to settle down with a routine job. In March 1985, he arranged for the first ever Mushaira under the banner of Mehfil-e-Sher-O-Sukhan in Jeddah. In 1989, he got a job with Riyadh bank and then after got transferred to Riyadh. In Riyadh, he very soon became a popular figure amongst the social and literary circles and continued with his literary pursuits and never looked back ever since.