Abdalians Alumni Home

The 17th Entry (1970-75) celebrated its 39th anniversary of going to Cadet College Hasanabdal on 2nd May, 2009 in Islamabad. They had actually joined the College on 29th April, 1970, but decided to hold the event at a long weekend so that people outside the city could also attend.

Tariq Obed initially thought of this idea taking the cue from Abdalian-13. Some other friends supported the idea despite shortage of time and together, they managed to hold a very successful event. A small little committee was formed of which Asmat Saleem and Naeem Ajaz were the key members. It was held at Saqib Abbasi's farm house in Islamabad and Saqib and his wife proved to be hosts par excellence. The dining tables along with the food stations were all ready by 6pm while it was still daylight.

L-R:Saleem Mughal, Sultan Mahmood, Allah Nawaz, Athar Khakwani, Mukhtar Ahmad

L-R: Mujahid Khurshid, Imtiaz Brar, Shah Shaukat, Asmat Saleem, Naeem Ajaz

L-R: Mujahid Khurshid, Imtiaz Ahmed Brar and Asmat Saleem

The 17th Entry off and on holds entry dinners in Islamabad. Shoaib Shafi has also held such dinners on more than one occasion in previous years. The interesting part of this 39th anniversary dinneron was the fact that many people has come from outside Islamabad.

By 9 pm the dinner arena was 90% full with some 130 guests including the 17th Entry boys, their wives and children. Imtiaz Ahmed Brar was the first to arrive on the scene at 6 pm. Tariq Obed welcomed the guests and invited people from the gathering to come and speak about their experience at Hasanabdal. Shoaib Shafi was the first speaker, who narrated a few stories, fully censored!

Thereafter, it was a volley of speakers, including, Pervez Bin Saeed, Shahid Naeem, Shoaib Ishtiaq, Asad Raheel and others. Yawar Kamal, Shoaib Ishtiaq and Abid Khawaja, along with their wives came all the way from Karachi just for the event. The Lahori team consisted of Shahid Naeem, Shahid Aziz, Ahsen Nadeem, Nadeem Hasan Khan and Asad Raheel. Ofcourse the majority of the boys were from Rawalpindi and Islamabad, where they are about twenty seven in number. Allah Nawaz, who was lost for quite a few years, suddenly emerged and it was great to see him bring his whole family.

Tariq had also arranged to show some old photographs from Hasanabdal days which was quite nostalgic for the old boys and brought back tons of memories. Some of these photographs appear in the picture gallery on this web site.

The guests were served with "soft" drinks as they came along. It seemed that no one amongst the boys was really interested in the food, until it was actually served, which consisted of great bar-b-cue and falooda. There was a cake too, that was cut by Yawar and Shoaib, being the ones coming from the farthest. Somehow, Tariq forgot to invite Abid Khawaja for the cake ceremony, for which he will now pay very dearly!

The evening ended with group photographs on the west-side lawns of the farm house.