Obituaries are usually supposed to capture the essence of a person, but in this case, I shall be only able to brush against the many lives, features, and impacts of Mrs Sonnu Rahman, known to most as either Mrs Rahman or Aunty Sonnu, who died just shy of a hundred years on 30 August 2025.
I first heard of her in September 1998, when my father was searching for an A Level school for me. He was convinced Aitchison College was the place, until by chance he met Aunty Sonnu at an event. He returned, eyes alight, saying: “I’ve met the most charming Pakhtun lady who teaches history nearby—you must go there.” The next morning, I understood exactly what had swayed him. At the front door of LACAS, Mrs Rahman’s radiant smile and warm Pashto greeting dissolved every trace of nervousness. She took me by the hand, led me to the principal, and with that simple gesture, charted the course of my education.
For me LACAS was Aunty Sonnu and Aunty Sonnu, LACAS. She embodied what made that school so charming, personal and supportive. Her smile melted even the coldest of hearts, and her wit put one in fits of laughter. Her perception met everyone at their level, and her encouragement made us want to excel.
At LACAS I was quickly called ‘Aunty Sonnu’s pet.’ This was because our love for history made us talk for hours about different events and personalities, often to the chagrin of others in our small history class, as it kept making the curriculum longer and longer! Where most teachers could not even imagine giving students any say in how the curriculum shaped up, Aunty Sonnu responded to our interests (and even obsessions!).
With the A Level history curriculum being so broad-based, we had a number of choices and Aunty Sonnu worked with us to select those parts of history which we liked to study the most. ‘You should study what you enjoy,’ she said, ‘else what’s the point in doing something you dislike.’ I still recall that when in July 1998 the bones of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family were found and interred in St Petersburg, I got obsessed with Russian history and requested Aunty Sonnu if we could study that period. ‘But I’ve never studied or taught that period,’ she said. ‘Well, you have your work cut out then,’ I replied. ‘Ok, you rascal,’ she retorted with a beaming face.
Aunty Sonnu was not just a teacher to her students, and therefore soon the formal ‘Mrs Rahman’ became ‘Aunty Sonnu’ for almost all
Aunty Sonnu’s style of teaching was so good that we did not even feel that we were in a class. It was as if we were sitting around our grandmother’s feet listening to amazing stories of the past, discussing and understanding them. Making difficult concepts simple and clear, ensuring that everyone in the class understood the subject matter, and all the time preparing us for exams—without us even realising—shows the remarkable manner in which she taught us.
Enjoyment and passion were the two pillars which formed the basis of Aunty Sonnu’s teaching philosophy. She was not a professional teacher, in that she only came to it later after her husband died and she decided to set aside her purdah life and teach. Hence, rather than bringing training and method to the subject, she brought sheer passion and joy, which really ignited the love of history in her students. I simply do not recall a single time when reading for a class was a chore, or when we finished class on time!
Of course, some part of her innate ability to teach must have come from her family, where her father was the famed G.D. Sondhi, the first Indian Principal of Government College Lahore, her sister, Professor Urmila Sirajuddin who taught scores at Lahore College for Women (and also incidentally my mother at Kinnaird when their English teacher left after the Partition), and her niece, Professor Shiasta Sonnu Sirajuddin, who taught for decades at Punjab University and also taught me English Literature at LACAS.
Aunty Sonnu was not just a teacher to her students, and therefore soon the formal ‘Mrs Rahman’ became ‘Aunty Sonnu’ for almost all. Her interest in how we were doing in other classes, in life, and our future plans made me, then a fourteen-year-old, feel very comfortable that someone was looking out for me. At a time when there were no official guidance counsellors, Aunty Sonnu was certainly my unofficial one, who was always present to talk about academics, and life in general. I still have the handwritten recommendation she wrote for me for Cambridge, and when I eventually went to Oxford to read for a DPhil in history she remarked, ‘Oh, that will also do!’—her wicked sense of humour always made one laugh.
Very few people have such a varied life. Born in a mixed family—her father was a Hindu while her mother, Enid Lila, a Christian—she married for love and also converted to Islam
Throughout school I was always a shy kid, and it was only in A Levels that I got the confidence to indulge and excel in extracurricular activities. Here too the imprint of Aunty Sonnu was patent as she pushed me to join the debate team despite my stammer. Participation in the parliamentary style debates—of which Aunty Sonnu was a pioneer in Pakistan—simply opened my mind as I thought, researched and argued creatively and cogently. I recall that she was always present at each of the sessions, cheering us on and either celebrating or consoling us afterwards, giving us the confidence and strength to keep going. Thousands of debating enthusiasts in Pakistan owe a great debt to the incredible energy and zeal of Aunty Sonnu, which has now made the parliamentary style of debating so popular and omnipresent in Pakistani schools.
Engaging her students with what we call ‘public history’ was also one of the fortes of Aunty Sonnu. She regularly took her students, and even former students, on trips to historical sites so that we could appreciate and engage with our past. These trips made us more aware of our surroundings, enabled us to appreciate the thought and architecture of the past, and to respect and protect it. And she could outwalk any one of us, making us often wonder if we’d got her age wrong!
Aunty Sonnu taught history, but her life is also one for the history books. Very few people have such a varied life. Born in a mixed family—her father was a Hindu while her mother, Enid Lila, a Christian—she married for love and also converted to Islam. Then despite her very modern upbringing, she decided to live in purdah in Mardan, the hometown of her husband Abdul Rahman.
Despite her elite upbringing, such independence and strength of character were still rare for women in that age. Her husband’s untimely death unleashed a new passion and rigour of life, leading her to embark on a long career of teaching history in various schools, leaving a unique imprint on the lives, both professional and personal, of the students she taught. Just her lived experience—from growing up in a very diverse milieu of pre-1947 Lahore, to experiencing first-hand the horrors of Partition—I still recall her narration of the ‘fires of Lahore’ which she saw from her rooftop, to transforming herself into the ‘Pakhtun lady’ in Mardan, as my father remarked, and finally the beloved teacher and mentor of generations—we read all the books of A.J.P. Taylor together, makes her an example of courage, grit, perseverance, and zeal.
But, for me, the lasting legacy of dear Aunty Sonnu is her ever-present smile, which was there through thick or thin, good and bad days, for the longue durée of her nearly a hundred years, and to her last moment. I just hope we keep that smile going. Farewell, Aunty Sonnu!