In 1995, it was an unusually cold winter in London with overcast days. One could cut the gloom in the air. There were no cell phones and the land line never rang. I heard a loud knock at the door of my flat.

The late Rahat Saeed, a cultural and political campaigner and then one of the editors of the journal Irtiqa, had arrived with a gentleman whose sartorial elegance and beaming smile immediately caught my eye. In a moment, the two of them filled the room with warmth and affection. The gentleman Saeed had brought along was Prof Mohammed Amin Mughal.

Saeed went back to Pakistan after a couple of days but Mughal and I became as thick as thieves from the first meeting. When my parents visited London in the autumn of 1999, Mughal and my father — who knew each other from before — decided to meet every single day and either sit together from breakfast time until dinner at my place to discuss everything under the sun, or sometimes visit places of interest in the city. Once in a while, my mother and my maternal uncle would also join them.

After I moved away from London, whenever I was in the city, Mughal and I would spend every other evening together. Often we would visit the homes of his or my friends, who all became mutual friends over the years. This continued to happen for three decades, until only a year ago. Due to his fast-deteriorating health, the number of our in-person meetings reduced. However, we would call each other and speak about all and sundry — our mutual acquaintances or his old friends and comrades I had never met — and the books he was reading or fresh ideas that kept popping up in his mind even after reaching a ripe-old age.

Prof Amin Mughal, who passed away in London on August 12, was a journalist, academic and Marxist. Why was........

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