meeting with a one-armed sufi yogi philisopher

Like Mr Shakil from the brilliant first page of Shame, I too admit to deserving to be consigned to some border outpost of Jahannum, in my case for failing to write about the various topics that deserve coverage, and then compounding the error by succumbing to lazy recountings of ordinary matters.

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Attending one of those otherwise pointless tax courses in london (the train was at 6:23, and i only woke up at 6:00 am when the taxi driver called to say he was downstairs), i had an enjoyable conversation about urdu poetry and other miscellany with a heavily accented one-armed pakistani gentleman.

He disliked Faiz, thought Sahir was difficult to understand, Ghalib easier, Iqbal at least wrote about worthwhile topics, but used too much persian, but it was okay when Hafeez Jalandhari used it for the anthem. With the standard Pakistani analysis, he highlighted the period
of one pakistan military dictator as a time of prosperity, in contrast to the low days of democracy. The only exception was that the dictator he was crediting was the rather universally condemned Zia-ul-Haq, instead of say 'Kemal' Musharraf, or the popular evergreen even in his
tomb Ayub Khan, he of the democracy is not suited for the genius of the Pakistani people.

The one armed man rejected the idea that there is such a thing as a 'sufi tradition' (a sufi is against all traditions apparently), sought to distinguish happiness from satisfaction, and explained the common identity of yogis and sufis, counting himself as one of the group, after explaining that no sufi would call himself as one. There was no point in writing for the people, because they had short-term memories, and were perhaps consequently beyond redemption. Poetry should be about philosophy and religion, not about revolution or the nation or freedom. Freedom was overrated anyway. One would be better off writing about say Darwin and criticise the theory of evolution, instead of criticising the likes of Zia-ul-Haq. After all, Darwin is more popular, and his theory causes much more damage. At this point in time I started dreaming I was Gibreel Farishta sitting next to the American preacher in Satanic
Verses, who said something to this effect: "Why are the youth of our nation depressed? You'd be depressed too if you thought your grand-daddy was a monkey!"