the masses not just in India but all over the world. He made a film Pardesi in collaboration with Russia in which the directors and cast were chosen from the two countries and worked in perfect coordination with each other. The film was a success in Russia too.

Abbas belonged to a family of the well known reformist poet in Urdu Maulana Altaaf Hussain Hali, a student of Mirza Ghalib . His grandfather Khwaja Gulam Abbas was one of the chief rebels of the 1857 revolution, and the first martyr of Panipat to be blown from the mouth of a cannon. Abbas’s father Ghulam-Us-Sibtain graduated from Aligarh Muslim University, was a tutor of a prince and a prosperous businessman, who modernised the preparation of Unani medicines. Abbas’s mother, ‘MasroorKhatoon’, was the daughter of Sajjad Husain, an enlightened educationist. The family tradition made him into some kind of a rebel himself. While pursuing his M.A. in English Literature he hoisted the tricolour on the student’s Union office at Aligarh Muslim University and was expelled from the University for this ‘crime’.

Beginning his journalistic career with the radical paper ‘National Call’ edited by J.N. Sahni , he went to Mumbai and joined ‘Bombay Chronicle’ in 1941 and served there as a sub editor, film critic and editor of the magazine. He began a weekly column “Last Page” and shifted the column to ‘The Blitz’ which he joined in 1947. He continued writing this column without a break for more than forty five years. This is a record in the