Love meant something quite different to my father. Once he told me: ‘Son, make love your only companion. It is love that maintains the universe. All that you see in the world is a different manifestation of love. Fire is the heat of love, earth its foundation, air its restlessness, night its dream-state, day its wakefulness.’ At the time his words made no sense to me. However, all unknowing, the quest of love was enjoined upon me from my infancy and became the guiding star of my life. Unfortunately it was neither the kind of love that consumed Chacha Amanullah nor the sort my father spoke of that became my abiding passion but the type that envelopes a man when he loses his head and his heart to one woman.

My father married twice. From his first wife, the sister of the well-known poet Aarzoo of Delhi, he had a son, Hafiz Mohammed. My mother, who was his second wife, bore him three children of whom I was the eldest. My step-brother had no love for his father, his step-mother or her children. Most of all he hated me. My father was well aware of this and thought it best to divide whatever he owned between us in his lifetime. One summer afternoon, when the sun was at is zenith and hot winds blew, he went to Agra to see some ailing disciple. When he returned, he had a heat stroke. He smelled the breeze of paradise in his nostrils and sent for Hafiz Mohammed and me. He spoke to us: ‘Sons, I am a fakeer. I have no money, land or property. All I have are some three hundred books. I also owe about three hundred rupees to creditors. Before I shut my eyes to the world I would like to divide my books and debts equally between you.’ At this my step-brother replied, ‘Abba Jan, you know perfectly well that I am the scholar of the family and the only one who can profit from the study of books. What will Taqi do with them except make kites of their pages and fly them?’ My father was very upset with him but being close to death only admonished him weakly, ‘Hafiz Mohammed, mark my words! The flame of learning will never illumine your home but that of Taqi.’ He turned to me and said, ‘Beta, do not bury my body till you have paid off my creditors. Do not worry. Money will come to you.’