The name ‘Fazil’ means someone who’s a scholar, someone talented, someone generous, someone worthy of high praise. Never has anyone been so aptly named. For that was Fazil Khan.
We woke up today to the devastating news of Fazil’s demise in New York’s Harlem in an apartment fire caused by a lithium-ion battery. The grief and disbelief is hitting us in waves even as we pen our tribute to a journalist par excellence and the purest of souls.
Incredibly talented, charmingly humble and with a smile that melted the coldest of hearts, Fazil Khan was a spot of sunshine in this dreary, dark world. And he leaves it darker.
Reading the tributes left on social media by the lives he touched, we couldn’t help but notice how no one was a stranger to his helpful nature. Appropriately, @merefazildost was his Twitter handle. Even when he asked for help, it would never be for himself. While the details of the tragedy that took him from us are yet to be out in public domain, we wouldn’t put it past him to help others around him first than dash to safety first himself.
His smile and his specs are the first things we picture when we think of Fazil. During one of the lighter moments in the newsroom, a few of us even teased him that Superman and he are the only people to use specs as a disguise. It was one of those silly moments among colleagues, one that we would cherish now forever.
Though an introvert at heart, Fazil was always up for a nuanced discussion on topics that were the news of the day. He showed keen interest in cricket chatter, often glancing at the television screen across his workstation to check the score.
Despite his tall stature, Fazil was approachable and soft-spoken. He helped you with a smile on his face whether you were his senior or an intern.
After he had left News18 to pursue higher education at Columbia Journalism School in Columbia, I (Nitya) had shared with him my hopeless desire to learn coding from scratch with no foundational knowledge whatsoever. It was late in the night for him and I later learnt it was exam season for him, but Fazil spent a good one hour taking me through the basics and charting out a learning path for me. Any other person of his expertise might have prefaced the guidance with pessimistic caution about diving into something so niche so late in the career, but not Fazil. Over the next few days, he even diligently kept sharing useful links and tips.
He was respectful, encouraging, warm, kind and self-deprecating. “If I can do it, anyone can,” he said. No, Fazil. God broke the mould as they say.
He told a common friend that he was the first in his family to make it abroad and was over the moon about making his mother proud. We, who have known him a few years, are unable to accept that Fazil is no longer with us. We can only pray and hope that God gives his family the strength to bear this punch to the gut.
Farewell, Fazil. We’ll look you up in the stars.
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