By Dr. K. Sohail                                                

My dear cousin Nauroz Arif!
 
There were many times I started writing you a letter but I never finished it. I had so much to say, so much to share and so much to ask that I could not articulate all my feelings and thoughts in one letter. Finally I thought why don't I start the process and open up the creative dialogue and like any creative process, it will find its own way. I am gradually realizing that you are more than a cousin to me. You are not only a member of my blood family, but also a member of a family of friends with whom I can share anything and everything. I felt honored when you invited me to attend the special occasion in New York in memory of your dad, my Uncle Arif Abdul Mateen.
Whenever I think of you, I remember those years when I used to come to your home to visit your dad, and I delightedly saw you playing around as a child. You were such a charming little boy. Everybody loved your big beautiful bright eyes. As you grew older you got interested in my serious discussions with your dad. As I lived in Peshawar with my family hundred of miles away from Lahore, I could only come to visit my extended family every couple of years. I remember once when I was leaving your home, you had commented, “Sohail bhai! You get more out my dad in a couple of hours than we get in a couple of years.” I sometimes ponder over your innocent comment and wonder what was it that attracted me to your dad. Was it his love and affection or was it his knowledge and wisdom?  He was like a fountain and everyone who was thirsty for knowledge and wisdom was attracted to him. In many ways, I was closer to my uncle than my own dad. Even my dad realized it. He used to say, “You are more like your uncle than like me.” I was glad he always supported and appreciated that special bond. He was never jealous of it. He realized it was a bond of creativity, a relationship of art, a fascination with philosophy.
 My uncle had made me aware that I had creative potential. He helped me nurture it, nourish it. He played a major role in my growth as an artist, as a writer, as an intellectual. He was my role model when I was a teenager. He used to read my poetry with great interest and give me valuable feedback.
As you are aware, my father, your uncle Abdul Basit, was also a free thinker as a young man. After doing his masters in Mathematics he had moved to Kohat to teach in the Government College. I was only two at that time. Moving to Kohat, hundreds of miles away from home was a mixed blessing for my parents. On one hand it gave them an opportunity for the first time to live together without the extended family, but on the other hand it forced them to find ways to adjust to each other and to a new culture. Neither of my parents knew Pushto and they were unable to communicate with the local people. My mom was scared and nervous seeing tribal people carrying guns. My dad went to the college and my mom stayed with me, and after I started school, she stayed home alone, all day long, every day. She had no friends, no relatives and no neighbors with whom to socialize.
When I take out pictures of my dad from that period, it is amazing to see him clean shaven wearing expensive suit and a silk necktie. He spoke fluent English. He had a dream to go to England and do his Ph.D. He was in love with Mathematics. He enjoyed numbers as other people like poetry. He read statistics books like people read novels. He was an affectionate father. He used to take me for bicycle rides, which I loved. Our family experienced a nightmare when my dad had a nervous breakdown. I was only ten at that time.
 It was the winter of 1962. My dad used to go for long walks after dinner every night. Because of the cold weather he used to wrap himself up in a thick blanket. After an hour's walk when he returned, he used to knock on the door lightly and call out “Sohail” in an affectionate voice and my mom would open the door for him. We never had a doorbell in that house.
On that cursed night when the nightmare of our family life started, my dad returned from the walk earlier than expected, knocked on the door harshly and shouted, “Aisha! Open the door!” My mom, who had never heard her name being called, especially in such a harsh way, was alarmed. Her sixth sense told her there was something terribly wrong.
My mom put her ear to the door. She could hear his heavy breathing, which confirmed her suspicion that something was not right. When she nervously opened the door she found my dad staring into space. He looked quite different than the man who had left half an hour ago. Without acknowledging my mom he rushed to the living room, threw the blanket on the chair and started pacing back and forth in the living room in front of a dressing mirror. My mom followed him and her pupils dilated when she saw him pacing.
  “Basit! Are you OK?” She was concerned but also afraid.
“Paralysis, paralysis,” he mumbled and started to examine his left arm and leg in front of the mirror.
 “What happened?”
 “I am paralyzed. Paralyzed on the left side.”
 “But you look O.K.” Mom tried to reassure him.
“You don't understand. I am paralyzed.” He sounded irritated. Mom did not respond. She did not want to aggravate him further.
Dad paced back and forth all night long like a lion in a cage and kept on mumbling, “Paralyzed. I am paralyzed.” Mom could see he was losing his mind but did not know what to say or do. Living in a foreign land she felt helpless. Her closest relative was three hundred miles away in a different city with no phone available on either side. She could not communicate with her neighbors who spoke Pushto while she spoke Punjabi. The only family friend was Maqbool Sahib who lived three miles away, but there was no taxi available at that hour of the night. Mom started to pray under her breath.
Mom shared with me later on that she was extremely worried about her two young children sleeping soundly in the next room, unaware of their dad's condition. “What if he lost control and hurt the children?” That thought sent a cold shiver down her spine.
 Mom stayed awake all night long, a night that must have felt like a century watching her husband, a masters in Mathematics, pacing back and forth trying to convince her that he was paralyzed on the left side of his body.
At dawn she made one more attempt. She said, “Basit! you must be tired. Have a little rest.” She held his arm gently and guided him to his bed. He did not resist. After helping him lie down, she came to our room, woke me up from deep sleep and said, “Sohail! Your dad is not feeling well. I am going to get Maqbool Sahib so that we can take him to the hospital. Why don’t you sit close to him and keep an eye on him. I will come back as soon as possible.” I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up, not comprehending what she was saying and went to my dad’s room. He was tossing and turning in his bed. He was obviously restless. Mom put on her burqa (veil) and rushed outside the door. I had never seen my mom go out of the house alone. Her worried looks and bloodshot eyes made me realize that something was seriously wrong.
After an hour that felt like a decade, Mom returned with Maqbool Sahib and Babaji, the security officer of our neighbourhood. Dad was still tossing and turning like a fish out of water. Mom told me they were lucky to get a tonga (horse carriage) at that early hour in the morning. Maqbool Sahib asked dad to go with him to the hospital but Dad resisted. After some struggle they got him in the tonga and took him to the hospital. When I arrived at the hospital, the nurses had tied him down in bed. The doctor was struggling to give him an injection to calm him down and he was shouting, “Don’t tie me. I am not hurting anyone.” Mom had arranged for a private room. She took me to the side room, made me sit in the window facing the garden and asked me to pray. I remember crying and praying for my dad that I loved very much. Whenever I wanted to see my dad, the nurse refused to let me into his room. She told me he was dangerous. I did not believe her but I remained quiet. The next day my maternal uncle and grandmother flew into town after receiving a telegram and took the whole family to Lahore to look after my dad.
 In Lahore we stayed at my grandmother’s home for a few months. My grandmother, my grandfather, three maternal aunts and one uncle, all lived on the second floor of the house. That floor had one living room, two bedrooms, two kitchens and one washroom. There was another family that lived on the first floor. The third floor was a roof where both families slept in the summer time. To accommodate my sick father and all the relatives and friends who came to see him, my uncle transformed the living room into a bedroom. The first week the whole family was excited to look after my dad. None of them slept. But when they got tired and exhausted and drained, they realized that their care plan was not realistic. So they set up four-hour shifts. In that way the nursing care of my dad was divided into six daily shifts. That family nursing care plan stayed in place for a few months. During those few months a number of experts were consulted.
 The first consultation sought was of a medical doctor who was also a family friend. After interviewing Dad he suggested that we take him to the mental hospital. Mom refused. She said as long as she was alive she would look after him at home. She believed mental hospitals were for those people who had no hope of recovery and whose families had given up on them. She had heard of people who, once admitted to the asylum, never came back. She wanted to look after him as an Eastern devoted and dedicated wife.
 Some relatives suggested consulting spiritual healers, peers and faqeers. Mom even met with a couple of them. They listened to the story and gave her plates with holy verses from Quran written on them. Mom washed those plates and asked my dad to drink the holy water. My dad did not believe in spiritual healers but he drank the holy water to please my mother. Rather than getting better, his physical and emotional health kept on deteriorating.
 As my dad’s condition worsened, he started eating less and less and drinking water more and more. As he drank excessive amounts of water he had to go to the washroom more frequently. When an internist was consulted he told my uncle that my dad suffered from Diabetes Insipidus, a condition in which the Pituitary gland does not function properly and does not produce enough A.D.H. (Anti-diuretic Hormone). So the person drinks a lot of water and passes a lot of urine. The internist prescribed some expensive injections that were not available in Pakistan. My uncle had to spend a lot of money to get them imported from England. Even those injections did not make my dad any better.
 During those weeks of my dad’s illness, my sister and I were not allowed to see my dad. The whole family was scared, scared of the unknown. In spite of their discouragement, there were many times I sneaked into his room a few times. My dad hugged and kissed me affectionately and mumbled a few words that I did not comprehend. I was not scared of him at all. I even encouraged my sister to sneak into his room but she was scared of getting caught.
 There were times when my dad exhibited some strange and bizarre behaviors. At times he stood on one spot for hours. At other times he stared into the space and talked to himself. One night when he was going upstairs to go to bed, I followed him. He stopped on the last step and started to mumble. I realized he was talking to the stars. I listened to him for a couple of minutes and then said affectionately, “Go ahead, Dad. Let’s go to our beds.” Without saying a word to me he moved on. Even at that time I was not scared of him. Throughout his illness he was never verbally abusive or physically violent. There were times when he shouted and screamed for no obvious reason but he never hurt anyone. The biggest worry the family had was that he might jump from the third floor in the middle of the night.
  During his illness, he had a long talk with my mom one evening. He told her that he had done a lot of soul-searching and had come to the conclusion that he should resign from his teaching job in the college, as he did not deserve it.
“Why do you want to do that?” Mom was puzzled.
“There is one thing I never shared with you. While I was appearing in my Masters examination, the night before the last paper some friends came to my house and showed me the paper. So I knew it before I appeared in it. The more I think of that situation, the guiltier I feel. The only way for me to resolve the conflict is to resign. I am quite aware that it will hurt you and the children, that is why I do not want to take that step without your blessing.”
 Mom got up and left the room, thinking that it was part of his bizarre thinking. She could never imagine that he was serious.
 As my dad’s frequency of drinking and making water increased, as if to cleanse his soul, it was suggested that he should see a psychiatrist. My uncle took him to see one. The psychiatrist suggested electro-convulsive therapy, also known as shock treatment. My dad even went once to receive the treatment but then refused. He said it made him feel worse. I remember once my uncle and the tonga driver waited for four hours to take him for his appointment, but he would not agree to go. He insisted his problem was spiritual not emotional.
 When every traditional and non-traditional mode of treatment failed, the whole family became frustrated and desperate. There was a sense of resignation. I could feel a dead silence in the home. It felt like a hospital, even a morgue. As a ten-year-old boy I did not understand but I could feel that the whole family was experiencing a nightmare, a nightmare with no end in sight.
 And when every treatment failed and everybody had given up, something happened unexpectedly and mysteriously. One afternoon Aunt Lali showed up. She was always very fond of my dad although they never saw each other very often. Her father was an intellectual who was a close friend of Rabindranath Tagore. After listening to the tragic story from my mom and seeing my dad suffer, Aunt Lali suggested to Mom that she should consult Mr. Shamsi, a hydrotherapist that Aunt Lali had a lot of respect for. He had helped a number of difficult patients  with his non-traditional method of treatment. Out of courtesy my mom kept quiet. She did not disagree but she did not agree either. At the end of the visit Aunt Lali asked once again enthusiastically,
 “Can you take Basit to see Mr. Shamsi?”
“It is very hard to take him anywhere” Mom looked tired and exhausted. She was at the brink of giving up.
 OK, then I will make a special request and see if Mr. Shamsi will kindly make a home visit.”
 And to everybody’s surprise, a couple of days later Aunt Lali showed up with Mr. Shamsi, a tall middle aged, grey haired man, gracefully dressed in white. Luckily dad was in the good mood that day. After the formalities, Mr. Shamsi approached my dad,
 “Lali told me you are not feeling well.”
 “I have been having a lot of pain in my back.” He touched the area of the kidneys. “I drink nearly a hundred glasses of water a day and go to the washroom every half an hour.”
Mr. Shamsi opened his brief case and took out a blue bottle. He asked my dad to lie down and asked my mom to give him a light massage on his back for a few minutes. Everybody was surprised to see my dad cooperating. They were more surprised to see my dad feeling better. Within a few minutes the pain was relieved. Dad thanked Mr. Shamsi and asked him about his method of treatment. Shamsi Sahib explained that his treatment was based on the theory that all human illnesses were due to the deficiency of one or the other color of the sunrays. Since there were seven colors in the rainbow, all illnesses were divided into seven categories. Shamsi Sahib shared with my dad that his illness was due to the lack of light blue color. He asked my dad to get a couple of blue bottles or white bottles with blue covers and after filling them with water, keep them in the sunlight from sunrise to sunset for a couple of weeks and then drink two tea spoonfuls three times a day for a few weeks. Dad readily agreed, which surprised the whole family. Dad seemed connected with Mr. Shamsi.
 During that time Dad requested Mom once again to give him the blessing to resign from the college job to relieve his guilt and become a school teacher. My mom, knowing very well that it meant saying goodbye to a lifestyle that included a big house and a good education for us children, finally agreed, hoping that it would make my dad better. Dad was really excited that he could start a new life with a clear conscience.
 In the next few weeks, while he was drinking water from those blue bottles regularly, he started to feel better. His regular water consumption decreased, his food intake increased and his bizarre behavior faded into the background. While he was recovering there was also a personality transformation. The young college lecturer, who enjoyed wearing expensive suits and ties, adopted a simple lifestyle. He never wore a suit or a tie after that. He ate simple food and wore simple clothes. He read Quran for the first time in his life and studied the spiritual traditions of other religions. A materialistic person had been transformed into a religious and spiritual person in one year. He resigned from the college and became a high school teacher. He was very well respected by his colleagues, students and their parents. They all held him in high esteem and he became a role-model for many.

 Once when I was in medical school and going through an intellectual nightmare trying to reconcile my readings of Quran with medicine and science, Uncle Arif came to visit us in Peshawar. Alongside his marathon discussions with my father about God and Islam and Science, he took me out one evening to have a heart to heart talk with me. That meeting was a turning point in my intellectual and philosophical journey. In one of my interviews I described that experience in these words:
 “In those days I used to live with my parents in Peshawar and my uncle lived in Lahore. By that time he knew that I had been studying his books of poetry and was writing poems and short stories myself. He came to visit us for a few days and one day he took me out to have a cup of tea and talk to me. I was surprised because in those days there was no tradition of taking people out, especially children and teenagers. We went to the Greens, a posh hotel in the cantonment and he ordered tea and snacks. We had a heart to heart talk. It was a special meeting for me. My uncle was very affectionate and thoughtful. He treated me like a young adult rather than a child. That day I opened my heart to him and shared all my doubts and fears, dilemmas and dreams. I shared with him all the conflicts I was experiencing between the scientific knowledge I was gaining at the university and the religious traditions I had grown up with. I also shared with him that whenever I discuss my doubts with people around me, I was asked to have blind faith.
 “My uncle listened to my story patiently and then said, “Sohail! You have to accept that you are a member of a family who has always chosen a non-traditional path. Your grandfather left the highway of tradition when he was sixty; I left it when I was forty and I feel pleased and proud that you are leaving it when you are twenty. Try to discover the trail of your heart. There is no need of being rebellious and confrontative and trying to convince others. That will alienate you from your family. You are still a student and you need to live with them until you finish your education. After that you can do whatever your heart desires. At this stage don’t worry about right and wrong. It is not the destination that is important, it is the journey that matters. It is the process that is significant.’
 “After that meeting I felt as though a big weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I felt light. I could fly like a bird. He told me that in every community there have been poets and mystics and philosophers who have chosen the trail rather than the highway and they have suffered for it. It has always taken people a long time to appreciate their worth.
 “Years later when I heard that Uncle Arif had accepted Islam and was writing religious poetry, my dad was thrilled, thinking that his long passionate letters had born some fruits, but I was shocked. It was a great disappointment for many of his students and disciples who were socialists and atheists and were part of the progressive movement in Pakistan. For years I pondered why my Uncle Arif became a believer in God and accepted Islam as his religion. I often wondered whether the following factors played a significant role in that major metamorphosis.
a. Chronic illness. Uncle Arif had a number of physical illnesses including high blood pressure for a long time. He never complained but he suffered a lot.
b. Depressive episodes. Alongside his physical illnesses he also suffered from episodes of depression. He was a very sensitive man and had high expectations from himself and others. He used to get disappointed in life. And it is not uncommon for such people to have depressive episodes. There were times he used to get suicidal. He never attempted suicide but he shared with me many times the famous quotation of philosopher Schopenhaeur “When horrors of life outweigh the horrors of death, people commit suicide.”
c. Political Climate. It is also interesting that after Zia-ul-Haq took over the government he declared Pakistan as Islamic Republic of Pakistan. After that declaration the whole society changed. There was an Islamization process of the whole country including the educational, social and political organizations. Even the names of the streets and neighborhoods were changed. Krishan Nagar where Uncle Arif used to live became Islam Pura. Uncle Arif was not the only one, there were many other left wing intellectuals in Pakistan who embraced Islam for different reasons. It is also interesting that such transition also coincided with the fall of Communist party in Russia. All those intellectuals in Pakistan who had considered Moscow as their Mecca became ideological orphans after the death of Russian Empire. Many of those fell back in the lap of Islam. I sometimes wondered how much all those social and political changes had played the role in the religious transformation of Uncle Arif.
 I was really amazed when I heard that Uncle Arif had published his collection of Naats, poems in praise of Prophet Mohammad. Finally I could not resist. I had to talk to him. So on my next visit to Pakistan I interviewed him in detail and asked him all those questions that his students and disciples were too nervous or afraid to ask him. When I gently and respectful confronted him, he started to cry. He said, “He had never thought his own nephew would ask him such pointed questions”. When he stopped crying I asked him why he discarded Marx and Lenin and Mao and chose Mohammad as his role model, his answer was, “Once Mohammad said to his disciples, “You should help the oppressed as well the oppressors. Disciples asked, “We can understand the notion of helping the oppressed, but how do we help the oppressors?” Mohammad responded, “You help the oppressed by rescuing them, and you help the oppressors by stopping them. Oppressors do not realize that they hurt themselves by hurting others” If you think about it seriously, Mohammad had a compassionate attitude even towards the oppressors. Such a philosophy is not based on class hatred rather it tries to reform the whole society, the oppressed as well as the oppressors. I adopted such a humanistic philosophy of Mohammad and Islam. By accepting Islam I did not reject my progressive ideas I just expanded them to include the whole humanity and not just the poor and weak and down trodden.”
When Uncle Arif visited Toronto he met two different groups of admirers. One group consisted on left wing intellectuals and writers. They were the ones who admired his writings of 1940s and 1950s when he was a committed socialist. The second group consisted of right wing religious people who saw him as a Muslim intellectual. His personality seemed to be the bridge that brought the leftists and rightists together.
While Uncle Arif was meeting writers and intellectuals I discovered a number of things about his life and personality that I did not know before. One female writer asked him, “Are you the same Arif Abdul Mateen, against whom a death Fatwa was issued by the clergy in 1948?” He smiled and said “Yes”. Later on when I asked him the details he said, “After Pakistan and India got their independence in 1947, I was really upset to find out that nearly quarter of million people lost their lives in the ethnic and religious fights. I wrote a poem criticizing the Muslim League and Indian Congress. I believed they were irresponsible. That poem was interpreted as if I was against Pakistan and Islam. Religious Imams in the Friday prayers ordered that Arif Abdul Mateen should be killed. There were posters all over the country. Finally five men found me on the street in Lahore one day. They were ready to kill me, when I asked them, “Have you read the poem?” They said “No”. Luckily I had the poem in my pocket, and I asked them to read it. When they read the poem they became aware that they had been misguided by the Imams. They realized that criticizing the political party was different than criticizing the country or the religion. If I had not had the poem that day, I might have been killed because of the major misunderstanding of my poem by the religious fanatics. I always believed in human rights and freedom of speech. I always believed that writers should be free to question and criticize political parties and national policies. It should be an integral part of a democratic society.”
 During his stay in Toronto, we had lengthy discussions through which I finally resolved a few issues. I realized that in spite of my differences with my uncle, we had quite a bit in common. He was a believer in God and Islam while I was not, but both of us were Humanists. He was a Spiritual Humanist while I was a Secular Humanist. Uncle Arif had followed the mystic tradition that did not believe in judging and condemning people. He accepted people for who they were and respected them as human beings. I realized that Uncle Arif and I wished our tomorrows would be better than our yesterdays. We hoped that one day all the prejudices and injustices in the world would end and we all would live in a peaceful world. We shared such dreams for humanity. Those dreams brought us together in spite of our ideological differences. We had the same destination in mind, although the roads we took to get to that destination were different.

Dear Nauroz! I believe that you and I are blessed to be born in such a family. Although our fathers are not with us physically, we can still learn so much from their lives and philosophies. They suffered a lot but they were lucky to transform their breakdowns into breakthroughs.
affectionately,
sohail
 
  
 

For years I have been wondering whether in our family, creativity as well as insanity has been passed on from one generation to the next. The first time I became aware of the intimate relationship between creativity and insanity was when I was attending an international conference in Brazil. I went to attend a seminar presented by a group of scientists and research scholars from Iceland.  They had extensively studied all of the men and women who had been admitted to the only psychiatric hospital on the island in the last fifty years because of their mental illness. After studying the patients, they studied their families and then compared them with the general population on the island. Their research data highlighted that the number of artists, scholars and intellectuals in the families of  the mentally ill were 2-3 times greater than the general population. Those scientists were of the opinion that not only were creativity and insanity inherited, they were also inherited through the same gene. They believed that if we studied such families we could see that those individuals who had strong personalities and nurturing environments experienced breakthroughs, while those individuals who could not cope with the environmental stresses and did not have support networks experienced breakdowns. After that conference not only did I start studying the lives of creative people with new interest, especially those who had experienced mental illness or committed suicide (for example, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway and Vincent van Gogh), but also started to wonder whether my own family was one of those families. My dad shared with me once that one of his uncles had a nervous breakdown. He never got married and used to wander aimlessly in the streets of Amratsar in India.
 I sometimes wonder whether my choice of becoming a psychiatrist might be unconsciously motivated by a wish to understand the family mystery. It remains a mystery for me why my father suffered from psychotic episode and my uncle suffered from depressive episodes which got worse in the last few years of his life when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and had to be treated with antidepressants like Prozac. How much of that condition was genetic, how much was it environmental and how much was it precipitated by living with traditional conservative and religious spouses? How did having children affect their mental health? I know for my uncle to lose his young son in his old age in a tragic accident was a major shock
  I am quite aware that my choice of not having children was partly influenced by the fear that I did not want my children to inherit that gene of mental illness.
 I am curious to know whether you ever thought about these issues seriously.

Dear Nauroz!

 After reviewing the relationship of creativity with insanity and spirituality, I also started wondering if creativity is also connected with sexuality and love and intimate relationships. I find it interesting that my dad, your dad, our grandfather and his brother, all four intellectuals and free thinkers in their youth agreed to have arranged marriages and lived with traditional, conservative and religious wives all their lives. They lived in the same house but worlds apart. They were never at the same wavelength with their wives from a philosophical and ideological point of view. Uncle Arif even wrote a poem called “Incomplete Companionship” in which he shares the dilemma that while his wife sleeps soundly next to him, he stays awake thinking about the poor children, suffering women and struggling men of the poor countries of the world. He felt it was ironic that he could never discuss those issues with his wife because she was always busy looking after the children and household responsibilities.
 I sometimes wonder whether living with such spouses partly contributed towards their episodes of depression and psychosis and later on adopting a religious philosophy and spiritual lifestyle. Living with a spouse with whom one cannot share one’s pains and sufferings and dilemmas and dreams can be quite stressful and tragic. All those men were idealists who were married to realists. It was a mixed blessing. Such spouses did provide a solid base for the family life but did not contribute towards their philosophical growth as they could never have an artistic dialogue with them. To satisfy their creative needs they relied on their friends which were at times resented by their spouses because such meetings took away from their family life.
 While reviewing my family life, I am quite amused to find out that our two aunts, Aunt Lali and Aunt Tahira had love marriages and married men of their liking. They were more liberal and adventurous than the men in the family. Aunt Lali chose to become the second wife of a handsome businessman Yousaf. Both wives lived in the same house in Anarkali Lahore. The first wife lived on the first floor while Aunt Lali, the second wife, lived on the second floor. Most of the family members were very skeptical of that relationship. They did not think it would last but they lived together for decades and Aunt Lali had four children from that relationship. Uncle Yousaf moved from one floor to the other, from one spouse to the other at 4pm after the afternoon tea. As a child I used to visit Aunt Lali, as she was very affectionate towards me. I loved playing chess with my cousin Zaryab.
 Our other Aunt Tahira fell in love with Uncle Nazir who was a close friend of my dad and wanted to marry him. The whole family tried to discourage her from marrying him as he had only a grade two education while Aunt Tahira had her BA. The more the family resisted, the more Aunt Tahira insisted and finally the family gave in and she married him. They even had a son together named Shahid. They lived together for a while but then Aunt Tahira realized Uncle Nazir was charming but not very responsible. So she decided to divorce him. The same family that did not want her to marry him now did not want her to divorce him. But she went ahead, followed her heart and left him.
 After a while she met a rich man and married him and moved out of town to live in a big house and travel in a chauffeur driven car. Aunt Tahira enjoyed the luxuries for a while but then started missing Uncle Nazir and the philosophical and creative dialogues she used to have with him. So she divorced the rich man as she thought she was wearing gold chains and living in a cage and remarried Uncle Nazir. The whole family was flabbergasted with her choices. She had realized that Uncle Nazir might have been poor but he was quite intellectually stimulating.  He used to travel all over the world, work on ships and come back home with lots of fascinating stories. He was quite an entertainer.
 I used to admire Aunt Tahira that in spite of being a woman and being brought up in a conservative society, she followed her passions and lead her life the way she wanted to lead disregarding all the family and social expectations. She took those steps that even most men are reluctant to take in that society. She sacrificed the stability of her marriage on the altar of philosophical and artistic growth. She remained a free thinker till the day she died. After Uncle Nazir's death, she used to live in a small room by herself. Whenever I went to see her she used to greet me affectionately and kiss me on my forehead.
 I vividly remember that the four walls of her room were like a library. After reading the books she used to write the verses from the poets of the East as well as the West on the walls. One could find couplets of Ghalib, Saadi, Khayyam, Wordsworth and Shakespeare side by side on the walls. In the last couple of years of her life she was losing her mind. It seemed as if she was tired of fighting the battle with the conservative, traditional system. She was a liberal woman who believed she was equal to men and had all the same rights and privileges as they had.
 Dear Nauroz! I believe that our aunts were more liberal than our uncles from a romantic point of view. They challenged the age-old traditions and led unconventional lives.
 In the last year I am realizing that I have inherited the philosophical values of my uncle and grandfather and the romantic values of my aunts. I always believed in love marriages rather than arranged marriages but I am also becoming aware that my creativity has been in conflict with my sexuality and my love for women. That is one reason I never wanted to have children and a family life. I strongly felt that the commitments and responsibilities of a family life would undermine my creative life. I have met so many writers and artists and intellectuals who could not maintain a balance between their creative and family lives. I have found the same dilemma in the biographies of many scientists, artists and mystics. When there was a conflict between their creativity and sexuality and love for families, some sacrificed their creative lives to enjoy stable family lives while there were others who sacrificed their sexuality and loving relationships to grow artistically, philosophically and spiritually.
A famous psychoanalyst Phyllis Greenacre who studied the lives of creative people believed that genuine creative people are emotionally more committed to their creativity and mission than their loved ones.
They belong more to humanity than their families and dear ones. Intimate lives of creative people have always been unconventional one way or another. They have challenged the social norms, taboos, customs and traditions through out history. Human psychology, even in the twenty- first century does not have a paradigm to fully understand, comprehend or appreciate the complexities of their lives. It is unfortunate that creative people have often been judged by the traditional morality and punished and penalized by the religious, political and social institutions who did not value the contributions of creative minds and people.
     affectionately  sohail