I went to Lahore for studies, three years after Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s demise in 1983. The first book I bought was Faiz’s, “Nuskha-e-Hae-e-Wafa”. My mother used to pay me Rupee 1200 as a monthly stipend—good old days. Faiz's book cost Rupees 280 in those days. But I purchased it through Reader’s Book Club—a subsidiary of the National Book Foundation, which used to facilitate students buying expensive books with a 50 percent discount. So, the book cost me Rupees 140, which still was a major chunk of my monthly stipend. Holding the book with a black cover and Faiz’s poetry printed on fine paper was a feeling of ecstasy. Starting from 1986 till the late 1990s I didn’t go to sleep without reading “Nuskha-e-Hae-e-Wafa” on any night in my life. If I say that Faiz’s poetry made me into what I am right now at the emotional level, it would not be an exaggeration. However, I am still confused whether it would be correct to claim that Faiz narrates my story—or the story of my generation—in his poetry and whether I have tailored or made up my story in the light of the lessons I learned from Faiz’s poetry.

I think it is difficult to say with definite clarity which would be the correct statement. But I can say with certainty that I have internalized Faiz’s poetry. I fell in love as a young man, I still flirt with the idea of radical political change in Pakistani society, I started treating my opponents or rivals (I would not use the word enemy here) as someone very close to my heart, I still strongly believe in social and economic egalitarianism as a political ideal, I think that my young age love (ashiq) for a particular person has softened my feeling toward downtrodden and I feel a very painful guilt if my instincts force me to look down upon a hapless poor person.

I think no sensitive person, after reading Faiz’s poetry, can continue to look down upon the downtrodden in his social dealings. Faiz just romanticised the poor—not in the sense that it is something good, after all, he was a Marxist—but in the sense of the revolutionary........

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