(L) A news item reporting hundreds of Indian tanks slashed deep into Pakistan in a bid to sever the vital communication artery linking Lahore and the capital, Rawalpindi (The Australian, September 13, 1965). It was the East Bengal Regiment that saved Lahore from being over-run by Indian troops. The years 1968-1969, were a tumultuous period in the political history of the state of Pakistan. My father a Bengali civil servant from East Pakistan, was an official in the then central government in Islamabad. I was a schoolboy in the 10th grade. In February, 1968, President Ayub Khan suffered a near fatal heart attack in Rawalpindi. I distinctly remember that there was this 48 hours of gripping silence in Islamabad, especially at the government level. There was a complete blackout of news on the fate of Ayub. Nobody knew who exactly was running the country. There was widespread speculation that the self-styled Field Marshal had actually died. Meanwhile, as death danced at Ayub's door, the jockeying for power had begun in earnest at the army General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi. An Ayub protégé General Yahya Khan, C-in-C of the army and his nefarious cohorts General Hamid et all, were getting restive to take over. There were rife rumors of an impending military coup d'etat. However, Ayub survived to linger in power until 26 March,1969, before handing over the presidency to Yahya Khan in the face of relentless people's agitation throughout the country against his hated regime. Subsequently, the despicable Yahya would go on to infamously unleash an apocalyptic genocide on the unarmed people of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) as a final solution – an ultimate denial of their political rights in 1971.The rest is history!