Obituary: Athar Shah Khan 'Jaidi' is no more.

Byline: Peerzada Salman

KARACHI -- Athar Shah Khan, the renowned writer, playwright and the actor who created an iconic character Jaidi which he himself played with endearing zaniness, passed away here on Sunday. He was 77. He leaves behind his wife and four sons.

Mr Khan was born in the Indian state of Rampur on Jan 1, 1943. After independence his family opted to migrate to Pakistan and came to Lahore where he acquired his early education. He graduated from the Urdu Science College, Karachi, and then obtained a master's degree in journalism from the University of Punjab.

Mr Khan wrote and performed in several shows and plays for radio (such as Rang hi rung Jaidi ke sang) and television (Hello hello, Intizar farmayey, *Burger family, Jaidi in trouble, Ba adab ba mulahiza hoshiyar*, etc). He contributed to quite a few films as a story and dialogue writer, including Bazi and Manjhi kithey dhawan (Punjabi).

However it was in the mid-1970s, after coming to Karachi to write a TV play, that his popularity increased manifold. For one of his plays he penned the character of Jaidi, a bespectacled goofy man who has limited proficiency in the English language but likes to think he has total command over it; and has the same idea about his knowledge of life and its intricacies which invariably ensnares him in funny situations. The producer asked Mr Khan to play the character himself because no one could do justice to it; and the rest, as they say, was history.

He became a household name and his recognition as Jaidi upstaged his tremendous writing abilities. A memorable line from the play where he tries to display his love of the English language is: 'There are many boys in the world, highly educated, matric second division.'

Mr Khan was an incredibly creative person. Although he was known as a showbiz celeb, his reputation in the literary world was no less formidable. He wrote short stories in the earlier part of his career and was a poet of high merit. His ghazals were...

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