Prologue
To: Muqtadir@brutusmail.com Wed, Dec 12, 2007 at 3:42 PM
Subject: Congrats!
12/12/2007
Congratulations Muqtadir,
So, Mr. Muqtadir is now a Mr. Ravian. Congratulations chum, it’s a matter of great pride for anyone to be a Ravian.
But let me exact for myself a tingling innocent pride. After all, a Ravian asked for my help.
I know I know what you will say, “My apprenticeship with knowledge knows no boundaries, follows no morals” – your famous sentence, the most quoted, and the least resisted. The comment, which delighted everyone –seriously, everyone- even Sir Wajahat! I love the way you uttered these words in front of the whole class when you were caught in another teacher’s classroom. And believe me, if you hadn’t uttered these words you never have been so revered by us. Ha, well, you are not among us so you might not be interested in these “trivial” memories.
You asked me for Sir Wajahat’s lecture. I had it recorded in my recorder. These are the exact words which Sir said that day:
Once upon a time - somewhere on the earth’s most fertile soil - lived two friends. They enjoyed the happiest moments of the world’s history. Hatred, jealousy, identity never existed in their conscious purlieus. Together they gathered the fragrant fumes in the air. The air full of rain. The air - filled with the world’s sweetest aroma of the raindrops. The rain, full of bliss; the rain, the blessed rain of those times in which the two friends held each other’s hands and vowed to be one’s succors.
The life was smiling in its full bloom; no binaries, no polarities existed. Life was pure and as simple as it can ever be.
One day a ravage sliced among the polarities of thoughts - a Civilized – a Civilized Man stepped on that fertile soil, and made the two friends the foes.
One may write thousands of such stories just for that one moment of history, and keep on portraying vases made of thin weak straws- if you want to amuse you may keep on telling these stories, but if you want a serious occupation then you must be doing something more of a research work. If we will still make such sterile endeavours just to substantiate an opportunity to write another inane story then I must say that we are brutes and brutes in the extreme sense of the word. We act brute towards our duties, draping them with false words and intentions.
Our world is obscure to the other. We are left with no power to fight for the things dead and engraved; but we can still struggle to abate the shields of obscurity from our culture, the shields which are not opaque yet- the shields, which are hindering the world’s vision of our true-self; our true Pakistani nation!
The world is waiting for our Cultural exhibition, and we – we are just still thinking of the “delicacies” of frames and “frame-types” to frame our art.
We are what we are; there is nothing to think on it anymore! Just go and tell them that we are Pakistanis and we are proud of it. We know that our land is the beloved daughter of her mother, India. We accept that we have the streaks of the white-men too. We concede that we are moving away from the true purpose of Pakistan’s creation, that is to embrace the Arabic culture, the Islamic culture of the Holy City of our beloved Prophet Muhammad Peace be upon him. But remember one thing students, “accepting” or “conceding” things isn’t enough to flourish and prosper in future; no doubt, it is one of the primary virtues of a good nation.
Acceptance is Self-recognition. It would be better to say Introspection, than acceptance. In order to change something one has to know the true form of it, or else all the changes will be futile.
Now that, after years, we have realized our true form, we can work on it, smelter it, hammer it, and mould it into any shape we want. We just need to hold the right instruments and the conscious conscience, and that is it.
I think, I do not need to say this again and again that it is our time to snatch our identity from their hands - and confidently say that
Listen! White jerks!
We are not a-cultured or uncultured or ill-cultured – or whichever word you use for us. We are Pakistanis! The ultimate form of human existence! We will make them realize that we were just like any other nation on this earth, arbitrarily evolving with time and selectively dissolving others in it; we were not homogenous, but we were unique of our kind. We were not economically and morally flourishing, but we are today! At least, we are better than many.
Unfortunately, we have now become so negatively charged against our own culture that we cannot decide whether to own it with intimacy or reject it with derision. We are stretched powerfully towards these two poles whether to live this culture or to kill it; whether to encourage its followers or to perish them.
And guess what?
In our conscious hearts, instead of accepting the culture with love, we have started accepting the dangerous paradox itself. Instead of smothering this paradox to death, we are taking pains to kill the culture itself.
Don’t you understand?
This culture is the Truth we are living with; and the paradox is just a fanciful play of our minds. We ourselves are our culture. If you are killing your culture, you are killing yourselves!
Can’t you see?
Are you the same Muslims who once said, Pakistan ka matlab kia? La Ilaha Ilallah!
What has gone wrong with you?
This question I leave to you to think and answer. Question your Self to answer yourselves.
This is it, Muqtadir miyan. I am wondering why you didn’t take all those lectures from me before leaving the college. By the way, Sir Wajahat’s lectures are so clear, so unevanescently haunting that they stick to your mind forever and ever! You see, we do not even need to take notes. At least, I never do.
All right, I have been writing this email for too long, I need to go now. Take care, and be nice to your roommates. And for God’s sake, manage a contact with me.
Your,
Junaid
Junaid
With the hardcopy of this email in his hand, he spoke:
‘I never knew that this little man was such a genius, and perhaps I could never have known his genius until I retrieved his emails through his friend. The two were good mates, always used to sit in the front row - right in front of me. At that time I took them to be like all other studious nerds running after grades.
Everyone used to say the same thing about them by the way, “Muqtadir and Junaid? Nerds.”
‘But after reading an avalanche of emails, I have realized that he was not just a studious book worm. This boy, Muqtadir. He was a mystic. Not a mystic, but incomprehensible… a phenomena… a vacuum,’ professor gestured the word as if he is not ready to continue with what he just said, ‘as if ready to get stuffed with everything divine and universal.’
‘Today, the boy gave me something’ he suddenly remembered something, ‘let me show you… I placed it somewhere here this morning…’ his index finger feebly gestured, ‘just wait a…’
He leans forward - not disconnecting himself from the sofa - stretches down a little forward. On the table, with his one hand stiffly pressing his knee and the other unsteadily scattering papers beneath it, he searches.
His slow damp movements create an air of sluggishness in the room. Everything seems slowing down – the bright lights, the time, everything in the room contributes to his action. I can see a touch of weird brightness in the room – as if this brightness is part of the scheme; shining tube lights, white walls, heavy glossy brown table, sofas with warm and thick gleaming cloth – everything connects with him. Weird, extremely weird – the appearance of the room is both crust and core of his nature; it slightly conjures a gaudy image of wealth, and at the same time disconnects itself into simplicity and mediocrity.
He rummages all the scattered papers there - he hates searching things. It makes him anxious; something big and round starts bowling in stomach – he hates this. He knows his weaknesses. One of them is his slow movements while exploring and inspecting.
Lifting an A4 sized paper --- slowly and ponderously unfolding it – he scrutinizes the appearance of the words --- very slowly he continues
‘Just …a… sec-ond. Is this the one?
’ Yesh!’ He smiles.
Whenever, professor feels elated he celebrates his joy by pronouncing funny words like this one. He knows what he just did – these slow movements of inspection – he knows them. And why shouldn’t he know it, he is a master of introspection.
‘Here’ - professor presents it forth so that I may have a look at it too, ‘Junaid came over today at noon… and… and handed me thish page...’ The paper falls down – almost sinks – like dried leaves of autumn. He doesn’t notice the falling paper and takes out another copy for himself. His copy is whiter than mine.
‘Unlike his other private writings, Muqtadir did not hand this one over to Junaid.’- gaze suspending in the midair. ‘Instead he kept it hidden in his bag, untouched for weeks, and never tolerated anyone to even wander near his bag – not even his most intimate friend was allowed such a liberty.’- eyes now pointing me out.
He continues after a pause, ‘this is called fear, my friend. ’ And then starting off powerfully, ‘This is called fear of a child.’
‘Today Junaid told me that one day when Muqtadir wasn’t around his bag - probably, he was outside the class for water or something - I don’t know. He stealthily slipped this page’ professor slips his hands too, ‘out from Muqtadir’s chemistry book.’
He continues in his joyous story-telling pitch, ‘He always wondered what cryptic wordgze does Muqtadir confided to that chemishtry book that he never let anyone touch it. What wazge there in it? Shome arcane purple wordzge of magic? Or a diary of a… of a… of a myshtic? He wondered and wondered and one day he just stole it and kept it in his house and finally read it all.’
‘Not actually “read” it, but viewed it. He could not read it you know. There were words which can only be viewed by his eyes - not read!’
At first, the boy thought the book might be the answer to professor’s questions. He read each word on that page, but could not get the meanings. He had been reading some intelligible pieces of Mawlana Jallaluddin Rumi, Allama Iqbal, and other poets, and certainly knew how to read them. Little introductory philosophy booklets on Russell and Kant also nestled through his hands. But he had never encountered such a haphazard engagement of words on the white space. Junaid did not consider it haphazard, but rather immature. He understood what each word had said in its place, but could not figure out what connections made each word with the other. The meaning was not ready to come out of its hiding. It simply remained there with its simpering face ogling at his innocence. He wrote not poetry that he was sure.
He then made his almost hundredth attempt- a final one – and, like a detective he once again tried to make connections of the words on the page with the other words and signs drawn here there on the book - with the overwritings - with the grimaces and smiling faces on the sides and columns of the pages - with the pencil sketches of an old face.
The sketch - another mystery Junaid could not relate to anything.
Purposeless, as he would like to call it. But, this time he could see a purpose in Muqtadir’s work. First time he could see in the sketch a face wailing for ages, as if crying for the misery and helplessness of the mankind. His face - unplacated – uncouth - with all the life in exodus, leaving nothing animate on his countenance- leaving it dead, yet living; alive, yet engraved.
“Enough!” – Junaid sighed and slammed the book close, and at last, surrendering his will to all understanding and cogitation, he handed over the book to professor and let all his curious excitements simmered down like a thawing sun sinking down without bidding any farewell.
‘There is an incomplete letter in it… not actually a letter… a memoir… or whatever you may wish to call it,’ he continued by started reading aloud in the room:
'The horror of dark. The fear of the unknown. Such feelings are felt no more... with our heads falling back we are penetrating unconscious into our minds... making it hard to feel the ordinary emotion… we have created labyrinths… the transparent ones… through which we see these emotions sitting in our unconscious.. but we don’t allow ourselves to reach there. To feel fear is more necessary than knowing our fears - it is a necessity. We feel not the fear but the void in our minds… in which fear once nestled and kept bellowing at our wrongdoings, kept our hearts dreadfully rippling by its presence. The space is there.. the void I mean…. It is there…. but the feelings have abandoned… perhaps because we are cloyed with being afraid all the time.
And then he cried and cried for hours…. Because everything seems coming to its ultimate form, the dreadful and the horrid form. The fear and the horror are no more the great unknown. Everyone fester these within them. The fear. It is in you, it is in me, it is in him, it exists in the word ‘We’, it stalks the word ‘Forever’.
Every day, people die with this horror in their hearts. Newborns with their conscious eyes wide open lay unobservant of the world draped in the darkness.
I scream for help, I see more helpless around.
My world is shrinking with great speed, friends. It is not shrinking in the nights, but in the days too; in the dawns – in the drapery of scalding dim sunlight and in the dusks of twilight blue sky.
Even the sun appears dark and dull, my friend. I cannot fathom what are these binaries for?
What filth this Night is?
What trifle is this Day?
Which mark this Light fills?
Why this dark is?
Now, my days are my new nights. They are no more heavenly gleams of light. They are growing shadows; getting darker and darker, getting more unfamiliar as it comes nearer every second.
You dirty whore! You keep on melting and flowing away….
Time- for the very first time ever, you showed me your true flow, your real ruse, your maroon blooms. You are so dependent, you idiot! My teachers think that you are an independent entity, foolishly draw and represent you with a ‘T’ on the horizontal x-axis… Ha! They don’t know you cannot exist without matter! Nor even without mind!
Respected academy teachers and school masters…. There is no such thing as Time…. There are Times…. With an ‘s’ at the end…. there are multiple times….Let me tell you what is time….and kindly don’t link Time with God…. Because God is never dependent on anything…. time is…
Time is a duration required by a process to complete itself from one instance to another… Any process in the world has Matter as its pivot, around which it revolves... There is one process we all know… the continuous creation and destruction of the universe, and universes (if there exist any)
The first universe came from the first Big Bang….before that Big Bang there wasn’t any time… because there wasn’t any matter….or perhaps there might be matter… I don’t know exactly…. Because I wasn’t there… but it’s my conjecture that there wasn’t any matter at that time… but then there comes a question that if there wasn’t any matter then how come universe came into being? Because for the collision there must be something to collide! Otherwise the collision is impossible…. Well that is little confusing and unclear for me….
But anyhow…
What I was saying that when the very first matter came into a new existence, let’s put it like this – not just into existence but new existence, its time started…. Its time started on the instance when it came into being… and it’s time will stop when the thing will be totally annihilated into nonexistence. And that instance would be the last moment of the entire cosmos…. So there is one Time, a universal time – a time which is as speedily elapsing as the universe is moving towards its destruction.
But there is another time…. The time of an each individual entity which exists within the universe… every matter is in a process… and every process has its start and its ending… even if there is a football placed static on the ground before you, it’s still involved in some kind of a process…. You can’t identify that process, but there is... rather there are many different processes that a football is involved in… there are auras of time around it… the one beneath all others is the aura of time of its complete annihilation, then right after that comes an aura of time of its own destruction, then comes one aura of time of someone’s coming towards it and inflicting its impact on it by striking it right into the goal, then comes the other and then another and another…just lift one layer of aura you will see million others just around one football… and then imagine numerous balls placed together you will see time-layers mega-trillions in number … one after the other… waiting for the first one to be removed…. Every single thing has various times attached to it…
I always wonder what would happen with time in the black holes…. There exists no matter once it enters there… no matter how extensive its desire be – it cannot exist there – everything expands, dissipates and at the same time contracts and recreate…. Perhaps there isn’t any time… or time is totally reversed there… I don’t know.
One day I was reading Koran, and there I noticed that Allah Subhana-wa-Taala was using this phrase, ‘… according to your time….’ Then I thought that there is not any single ultimate time… there are many…
Even these tick-tock clocks we use… this is also a time… but a Time which is not revolving around any matter.. rather it has become a center of our Mind around which the matter revolves… in reality this time has no existence… it’s just an invention of our minds.. that is why the dial has no beginning and no ending, it’s a cycle…. Once ends, starts again.
These stars, the moons, the sun, the earth, the trees, and all the mighty mountains on earth and above do not know what is half-past five of post meridian, do they? The earth just knows the interchanging of days into nights and nights into days – and that’s it… there is nothing like 6 O’ clock or 7 O’ clock… it’s for own ease we created these numbers…. I wonder if our sweet little moon ever went to kindergarten to study numbers.
Time - savagely surging from one instance to million others - is stagnant in its motion - unabashed, imperviously still. Sidling unnoticed beneath my eyes, under my feet, inside my existence. Here in this dark world, human bodies appear hovering over the unseizable time.
We have no formation of time in our minds. This loose mass of time is too thick to penetrate. Too full of dark light. And by the way… Pakistan is the only country where things are so topsy turvy that even the distance is measured in time!
This is how we find people talking about distance in Pakistan: How far are you?
Ah, just Five minutes!
….. dark….. the dark sounds are louder than anything in the house, louder than our breaths, louder than our silences, louder than our minds. Louder than the heart beats.
No!
Actually the heart beats,
mine still beats.
It is the only thing still alive and audible in this dense commotion. We are afraid of it. I am afraid of it.
Seems like a drowning woman
In an ineffable reverence, hissing air through his rounded lips, professor folds the paper - not knowing the right tone to match his voice with the magnanimous scale of the note on which his letter ended - professor dangles his head in awe. ‘Seems like a drowning woman,’ shakes his head and exclaims, ‘Impressive’ and continues, ‘I have read this page almost seventh time since I received it. I am unable to even think to the extent he went in his imaginations to explore the world… I mean, when I was his age, I never gave my thoughts to such things - especially about time.’
‘I don’t know whether what he said is factually wrong or right, but these thoughts have made him what he is – these concocted stars are his universe…. All I am thinking is of what is there in him? What is coercing him to think! After all, he is just in his teens; he should be talking about girls and flirts and crushes, and new mobile phones and all the same internet stuff. And I bet, he is quite right in his fears, for if his teachers might have been handed over the paper to, they would surely have had given him a good lesson for being impertinent towards his so called ‘Asaatza’. And then… if he did not mean to be impertinent before, now his teachers would have given him the reason to be so in future -’ presses his eyes and forehead.
‘He left the last line unended.’ He continues while tossing the paper like a frisbee on the table.
‘Perhaps, his fear has still not ended yet just like this unended line. Or perhaps, he simply left for his other important chores and thought he would complete it some other time. May be.’
‘ And by the way, I am really impressed by his last sentence. It is incomplete, yet complete in its essence… the intensity of helplessness of the mankind that he showed! Definitely, humanity is at peril.’
‘Amazing.’
I wish you could meet him and ask him why he left it unfinished. I can feel the depths of hisgze fearsgze even in thish incomplete sentensh,’ assuming himself a philosopher, he smirks.
‘This memoir was more-than-enough for me to take deeper interest in his personality. The more I read his letters and diaries, the more my interest increases in him. His fears seem familiar. Like the extension of my own fears.’
‘Or perhaps, it isn’t the emotions themselves that are familiar rather their expression made them more familiar.’
‘Ages receded and I could not even identify what there is in me constantly gnawing on my spirits. Just a simple confession that could have been made in just a few moments! A simple confession that Farrah, I dread of losing you, all of you. But I am afraid of losing myself too. There are a lot of things one must consider to make oneself happy. One cannot simply be happy while having a family to take care of, can he? Practically speaking, No, he can’t! The ones outside your home always speak of things falling into their proper places at their specific Time, of things getting settled with time. Those idiots do not know that the ones living inside the house have no time. The time does not exist for them at all. They just live in a space – the rooms – and practice patience and tolerance to survive and live. Time only exists there where things move ahead – in the forward direction – or backwards, if needs to, but in my place, every day, all my endeavours fail me back to the point where I started yesterday. But of course!
,,,, families are never ready to hear such things from a money-making-dummies…. They feel insecure… unprotected… unsheltered… just because I smash truth right into their faces – this is what makes me self- centered.’
‘If finding a little happiness in your freedom is called self-centeredness, then I am a self-centered person. And by the way thinkers have no place in a family setup -- money-makers do. Money making is not that bad you know; you must be materialistic to survive. Gone are those days when ideals and virtues were the pivot of a contented life. If world runs on material, material must be gained, and there is nothing can be done about that. But to tell you the truth, the solace lies not in the material, but in the essence.’
‘I felt fear in my essence, my family felt content in the material. Their lives were immersed in the riches- mine drowned in the essence. I was always afraid of losing things; for essence, after a certain degree, seizes to hold things together, while money can, material can, space can- Time cannot.’
Professor seems exhaustively dried at his throat. I could hear his attenuated voice. I wish I could fetch him a glass of water. Why am I saying, “I”. Curses! Curses on introspection! I can’t hold it.
‘Muqtadir… what does the name mean?’
Pause.
‘Who cares?’
‘I bet, even his parents wouldn’t have bothered themselves with the meaning. I think of a more serious question: why he was afraid? And why he never gave this letter to Junaid? Besides, he left the college too. Well, that is something not very unusual. One might say. Yes I know that hundreds of students leave their current colleges during their sessions for better Colleges, or seemingly better Colleges. But the thing, which is constantly clicking me, is that his name has never been enrolled in the Government College’s enrollment list. There is no record of this child. They don’t know any Mohammad Muqtadir. How come he claims that he belongs to GC? Was he lying?’
“Well, that is weird. I do not have any idea about it, sir. I never visited his College to see him neither he told me any such thing,” Junaid informed him three hours ago. He wanted to tell him something that could lead to Muqtadir’s mystery, but he couldn’t, he didn’t have anything to tell. There was nothing to do or say or investigate or search about him. He was gone – without a trace. All they had the treasured moments of friendship and letters and words and diaries and his character. All they knew about him was a face, a voice and words. They could possibly visit his home and family but they all do not know where Muqtadir is.”
Till now, the most reliable thing they have is memories.
“One thing, which also strikes me quite often, Sir, that he was too quick. Everything happened just suddenly to him. He never told me that he had a mind to leave the college. And, Sir, the email I gave you, I received it four months after he disappeared.” Professor asked him whether he had Muqtadir’s any contact number or anything else, through which we can trace him. He quite suddenly replied with a smile of great surety on his face, “he is untraceable, sir,” he continued, “he has a cell phone but he doesn’t use it. He says it makes him ‘bound’. He has an email account though, about which, I don’t think, it should make him that kind of a bound person. He could have checked my emails whenever he wished, but since he never replied any of them, I surmise that he never have read them.” Professor could not understand a word he said. His mind was somewhere else.
“Sir,” continued as if figuring out something, “on December 12, he sent me one email and in that he mentioned a few casual things like he is at the moment studying in GC, and that he wants your recorded lecture, and he will someday meet me if Allah wished.”
‘Strange. They seemed to be the best of friends. Why did he keep a secret from Junaid? Friends don’t keep things secret from each other,’ he barely whispered, ‘until they are not truly friends.’
‘What this person is, anyway?’
‘At times, he completely wears out my mind. I do not know why I am too focused on this kid. I mean, I am not a man with no business. I have an academy to run; I do not have much time to think about him all day. Besides all this, why is he still the darker side of my dreams; coming every night in my class? The whole class blurs, fades and darkens out except him, with a vivid white heavenly light falling on him. Loaded with a bag on his back he is entering, and then he sits in front of me in the first row, takes out his pen, and gets himself busy in writing something - throughout my lecture- don’t know what he is writing, but constantly writing something – and writing even when he ought not to write. On the other instant, blurs around and twists the whole classroom and swirls into a corridor – echoes, voices jiggling my eardrums - standing outside Tahir Sahab’s class. I am watching him sitting in another teacher’s classroom whereas it was my class that officially he should be taking. And upon looking on his face, those two merciless enemies, the deadly somber eyes, gaze right into my soul - a little too harsh gaze, as if saying ‘that’s none of your business.’
Lecture’s over.
He comes out.
I ask, ‘what were you doing in there?’
‘Studying Chemistry, sir.’
‘And what the hell do I do in my class? Peddle Faalsay?’
‘Sir, my apprenticeship with knowledge knows no boundaries, follows no morals. Sir Tariq is as honorable a teacher for me as you are. Your knowledge of chemistry is limitless, his mastery on subject is matchless’
“Tahir is three grades junior to me – and he, a master?” I thought.
Indecent crumples and giggles on faces standing around us and his insolent stolid eyes gazing me.
‘Shut up!’ hitting the far-off walls my echo reaches back into my ears, ‘Get lost. Next time I do not see you in some other class when you are supposed to be in mine.’
‘He is a Nobody for me, still I admire him. He was my student; I mean teachers do admire their students with their true hearts, don’t they? I think they do not. They do not admire their successful students, they admire their success; they admire their own efforts behind the success – self-admiration.’
I try to make him clear that the problem is that he thinks too much. He should think less. He thinks therefore he admires him. Thinking….ah… what to say of thinking…. It is a gift from God to an individual… and the most subtle and the gravest menace to humanity. It makes you aware of things, and awareness hurts. But anyway, that boy is just a teen, and you are almost four-times his age. You should have admired someone of your age or at least someone mature! This is what we call conformism, isn’t it?
He blithely misses my actual point and overburdens the idea, ‘but this pointless thinking has made my life terrible. It has made me too introspective. The more introspective I become the more lost i am… I get lost in my own self. Outside there, they consider my frailty a failure and hence my failure my frailty... It’s not! These failures are my powers, with which I conquer the weak territories of my land. D’you know, personalities are like wet flowers with soft petals; the more you keep them away from people, the safer they are, the longer they live.’
But what an unlucky flower with soft petals and florescent smells and with no one to smell and watch!
‘No. The only thing I know that my flowers start stinking in solitude – they need company.’ I reply keeping tenacious adherence to my view.
But he is right. I mean, how can I refute him at all? After all, I am his imagination, and he is mine. He celebrates creating me and I cherish conjuring him. How can I refute him? I am one of professor’s imaginations. He imagines me. You may ask how imagination can talk. Well, imagination does talk, when there are no other ears to listen except your own. Then imagination whispers like a specter in your ear, and then you listen to your mind with your heart.
‘Every night, in every dream, some part of his enigma is there. He is a purple fluid flowing here and there in thick darkness. I have seen millions of students, taught thousands of them, but Muqtadir is of a different sort. He is not a superman, I regret, nor anything heroic in him. It is just that I could see in his face a longing, a daring, a story of imaginations being told through his life.’
‘Dreams are not always remembrances, not always prophecies, not always the projections of searing desires. They are, sometimes, parts of time, like past speaking to its present. It is a rotten union of times.’
‘At the night, I meet people who are there to tell me about myself. They are my friends, real friends. They don’t want anything from me. They just want me to listen to them. My friends prefer to remain in dark, unnoticed, and guide me. You see, I do not have so much worldly knowledge. And the funniest part is, I do not have the ‘not-worldly’ knowledge, either. I have no knowledge or information of any kind of anything, yet I have a kind of sense of things in me. I do not know how things work, but I know why they should work. And these friends of mine, they always try to teach me the ‘how’. They fail every time, I think. Because every night they introduce me my new side to me, the very next day I would be the same Professor Doctor Mohammad Razi. Perhaps, the new sides are all dreams… things exist as they are- the rest is an illusion – a perception, may be.
‘He has become one of my dream friends.’ His hands are drying, his throat is drying – mind squinting. I think we need a rest.
He rests his head back on the sofa and closes his eyes. And there he remains for days.
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