He travelled through challenging and exciting times with the elegant ease of a good human being. For him as for members of his generation the journey began nearly seven decades ago. Dear friend, classmate Masum Ahmed Choudhury was a child during the early 1940s when our world experienced the unprecedented devastations of the second Great War. The period also signified the closing years of British colonial rule in the sub-continent. His adolescence and youth saw the consolidation of internal colonialism of the post colonial states of Pakistan, a process that deprived Bengalis of their rightful place in the nation's life.
He began his career as a young teacher of history in the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and Jagannath College, Dhaka during the mid-sixties. Then he competed successfully in the superior services examination and became a member of the central information service of the government. After liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 Masum was absorbed in the Foreign Service and worked in high positions, eventually to serve as High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, Maldives and Pakistan.
Ambassador Masum Ahmed Choudhury turned out to be a diplomat with a difference. His success in the time-tested arena of diplomacy was securely built on foundations of honest simplicity and disarming friendliness. Sincerity and innate politeness constituted the essence of his engaging personality. These characteristics easily endeared him to all whom he met including us his friends since school days.
The dawn of our long and lasting friendship began in the early 1950s at the St. Gregory's High School in Dhaka. Our paths became one again when we were students at the Dhaka University and engineering college (later BUET) in the last years of the '50s and the early '60s. The strong bonds of friendship forged during our childhood and youth survived exacting test of times. We remained fast friends even as life parted our ways along different professional avenues. In many ways for Masum and the rest of the group the journey was the destination. One did not look for the end but enjoyed every step along the throbbing corridors of tumultuous and rewarding times.
Along with other members of his generation Masum witnessed the historic Language Movement of February 21, 1952, and later participated in the Dhaka University-centric civil resistance against the autocratic regime of the military leader Field Marshall Ayub Khan during the early 1960s. They were also part and parcel of the spirited and rebellious movement for assertion of Bengali rights in pre-1971 Pakistan and contributed their quota to the blood-soaked and glorious War of Liberation.
Masum and his friends and fellows also worked with dedication in building the new-born Bangladesh which rose like a Phoenix from the ashes of the ravages and devastations of the war.
Tumultuous times could not dampen their spirit. Masum was the epitome of steadfast composer and joyfulness of ever optimistic humanity. He inherited the sprit of patience and quiet courage from a family with a rich tradition and sense of high moral values that knew no compromise.
His father late Giasuddin Ahmed Chowdhury and mother late Rafiqunnesa Chowdhury reared their children with love, affection and care.
The galaxy of achievers within the close family circle and his own outstanding accomplishments could not make him waver from his simple and modest ways from the beginning till the end when he breathed his last in the far away United States on March 18, 2012. Masum remained what he always was, a good-natured and amiable friend and family man. He loved and cherished his wife Nasima and two sons Nafis and Nabid and poured on them caring love and affection. The human condition often pained him but did not limit his enthusiasm for a joyful life adorned by concern and love for others.
From late teenage Masum joined us as founder member of budding writers' group called 'Chokrobak'. The wonderful world of literature made us all come alive with the joy of creative writing. In meeting them and others anew and again, Masum like Tennyson's Ulysses became a "Part of all he met."
Above all, his feelings and love for friends and dear ones made him stand out in incomparable glory. During early February, when he was counting the penultimate days of a cancer-riddled existence in the USA, he found time to telephone me in Larnaca, Cyprus where my wife, class friend of both Masum and me, Syeda Umme Sufia was undergoing treatment following a mild heart attack on board an Emirate flight from Malta to Dubai. I was unnerved and worried by this sudden adversity in strange land where we never thought we would be under such circumstances.
Masum, despite his terminal illness, ensured that his son Nafis's associates in the capital of Cyprus, Nicosia extended their help to me and Sufia at this hour of our distress. This was the quintessential Masum. A unique friend who ignored his own pain and sufferings to help and assist others in their predicament. Now, that he is no more, one can only remember him in tearful fondness thinking of the rich and glorious moments with smiling Masum throbbing with delightful life this side of Eternity.

The author, founder Chairman of Centre for Development Research, Bangladesh (CDRB) and Editor quarterly "Asian Affairs" was a former teacher of Dhaka University and former member of the erstwhile Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) and former non-partisan technocrat Cabinet Minister.