Boston: Even at age 16,Benazir Bhutto was unafraid to express herself, a lesson one Harvard classmate learned when she invited Bhutto home for Thanksgiving during their freshman year. Linda Mottow-Lippa, who lived in Bhutto's dormitory, had a Romanian cousin who was a staunch anti-Communist.

During dinner, he and Bhutto had a loud argument about politics. "I thought World War III was going to break out right then and there," Mottow-Lippa recalled. Bhutto s intensity never faded during her time at Harvard, which she later recalled as some of the best years of her life. The former Pakistani prime minister, who was assassinated Thursday during a campaign rally in her homeland, was remembered by classmates as a woman with a tragic destiny.

Bhutto "knew she had a fate and knew she needed to move forward with it," classmate Marion Dry said. Bhutto was younger than most of her classmates when she entered Harvard in 1969,but she had a poise that made her seem older, recalled Mottow-Lippa. She had been sheltered by her wealthy and powerful father, who had also been prime minister.

But she seemed eager to experience things for herself. Before Harvard, the story went, the privileged Bhutto had never answered a ringing phone. At Harvard, she volunteered to answer the dorm s common phone on dreaded "bells duty." "We were happy to let her do it," Mottow-Lippa said. Bhutto's class at Harvard s Radcliffe College for women had about 400 students, many of whom knew each other by sight as they passed through a common area toward Harvard Yard.

Source : PTI