Jamshaid Ali Khan Lodi joined METU in 1960 and completed his B.Arch. degree in 1966. He married a Turkish girl and settled down in Turkey. He expired on June 30, 2019 at Ankara, Turkey. His wife had passed away a few months earlier. He leaves behind a son Alphan Lodi and three grandsons.

August 29, 2019

It is with sadness that I inform the Metupak community that Jamshaid Ali Khan Lodi died recently. After meeting him in Turkey in April I had told this community that he had been devastated with his wife's death and was not in a good condition. In addition, he was in big financial jam.

I tried to reach out to him after my return. In spite of emails, text messages, telephone calls and voice mail messages, I was unable to make contact. He did not answer the phone or messages. Recently, I sent his telephone numbers to Wasti asking him to find out if anything had happened to him. Wasti ran into the same problem, until he remembered that Cemsit (Jamshaid) had a son, named Alphan Lodi. He tracked him down on his social media,(https://deskgram.net/lodialphan. His site listed Jamshaid as his Late father with Jamshaid's picture. 

Abid Latif, Fareed Rabbani, Jamshaid Lodi and I had rented an apartment on Tunali Hilmi Caddesi just above the grocery store. The apartment was only a few feet above the street and our balcony faced towards the side, from where we could see a girl sitting in the window of an apartment a couple of hundred feet away. Jamshaid started waiving to her and she waived back. That kept going on for months. Finally, one day we saw her walking on the street towards the grocery store. I told Jamshaid to either go and talk to her or stop waiving to her. I pushed him out of the apartment, and he went and talked to her. Needless to say, this finally accelerated into their meeting at different times. Jamshaid told me one day that she was going to Karabuk and we followed the bus in my car. We went all the way to Karabuk following the bus and passing it at times. I am sure everyone in the bus must have been wondering what was wrong with the Mercedes going back and forth. Each time we passed Jamshaid waived to her and she waived back. That was the beginning. In 1965 Jamshaid rented an apartment all by himself and they began serious dating. Abid and Fareed used to pull his leg whenever she visited.

I have such fond memories of that time with him. Jamshaid was a good friend and although I did not see him for decades (almost 54 years). I did talk to him on the phone a few times. Meeting him in Istanbul brought back all the memories and it was sad to see him so heartbroken because of her death after 50 years of marriage and he told us that her family were not in favor of her to marrying him because they thought he would take her away. After constant persuasion, they reluctantly allowed her to marry him. And now she was gone. He looked very frail. I wish I could help him at this difficult emotional junction. But that is life. Now I keep on thinking about him and his end of life sadness. May Allah give him Jannat and forgive him. Inna Lillahe va innaelehe rajaeun. 

Farooq Azam Khan

In the late 1950s, I had a friend called Hassan Jawad who asked me to accompany him to visit a friend. We met a gentleman in a building next to what was then the KDA. We exchanged a few pleasantries and I forgot about him after this brief encounter. That was Jamshed Lodi wearing a typical Marie Colaco shirt.

Later I was to share apartments with him on Tunali Hilmi Caddesi when I arrived in Ankara. For some reason or the other, he was called Ramzan Usta by our seniors, who never explained why but he was the original Usta.

Summer arrived with all its beauty but many of us had to stay on for our summer practice in those lazy days. I learnt that Jamshed had fallen in love with a girl who lived on Tunali, further up the slope towards Esat Cad. One day, he asked me to join him for a walk after dinner. A short while later, he stopped and started gazing at a window on the 3rd or 4th floor and soon a female figure appeared, and he started send flying kisses towards her. When I noticed that she too was anxious to respond, my nervousness subsided.

After summer we rented a green colored apartment on the same street, probably number 66. I do neither remember her looks nor the name, but she became a permanent visitor there. She was his love and became his wife.

Waseem Siddiqui