On Seeking Sufis, Soundscapes, and The Self (Ch. 17)
Welcome fellow seekers, adab.
Yesterday, Tony and I had the pleasure and privilege of attending a qawwali music performance by the arguably greatest-living maestros of the dying art. What was meant to be a simple jaunt down the East Coast for some Friday night symphonic shenanigans morphed into what can best be described as a socio-cultural, trans-historical, poly-lingual, psycho-spiritual, meta-physical journey? Join me in this editon of Ink-uilab, where I recount and reflect on our journey into the depths of the notes of qawwali strains, the tenets of mystical Sufism, and the South Asian diaspora of Long Island.
In lieu of the usual lengthy preface where I wax poetic about the struggles of writing a few thousand words every month for an arbitrary deadline, here are some prefatory disclaimers: I am neither a scholar of Sufism nor would I consider myself a Sufi per se (if only because it is an ambiguous label such that any ‘seeker of truth’ could consider themselves an adherent of Sufism). These reflections are rather an attempt at synthesizing, photographing - and potentially deciphering - my adulations for yesterday’s performers and my personal experiences with soul-stirring quest that is qawwali.
The Journey
Before one can explain what qawwali is, where it arises from, who the performers are, and what the art form entails, we must make our way to the mehfil (performance).
We set off on a sleepy Friday afternoon from New Haven in our rented and dented silver Nissan. What was initially meant to be a motley crew of fellow undergraduates had been chipped away - due to prior commitments, seasonal flu, a hefty ticket price, and an inexplicable aversion for Long Island - until just two of us remained. As Tony and I sped down the I-95, we felt we had a relative familiarity with the basics of the genre. I’d encountered qawwali through my father who’d encountered it from his father, while Tony - my suitemate and a student of classical Persian - had stumbled across qawwali through my incessant habit of playing The Sabri Brothers in our shared common room at godforsaken hours. We quickly weaved through the East Coast, making stops (in order) for second-hand bookstores, comic stores, diner soft serves, and an espresso. Our final detour led us to a marshy coastal ‘beach’ as the October sun set over the still, inky waters of the Great South Bay. An Urdu couplet by Iqbal came to mind: Khuda tujhey kisee toofan se ashna kar dey / Keh terey bahar ki maujon me iztirab nahin.
May God bring the wildest storm into your life;
For the sea of your life is placid, its waves devoid of tumult.
Seemingly, this premonitory storm did enter our lives within a few minutes of us arriving at the concert venue. We found ourselves face-to-face with Ustad Fareed Ayaz, the revered qawwal (singer of qawwalis) and one of the two ‘frontmen’ of the night’s performance. He sat perched, leaning against the arm of the sofa, deep in conversation with some members of the audience. He wore a white kurta, draped with a harlequin shawl, with a grey collegiate sweater wrapped around his neck. His head was capped with an ornate taqiyah hat, beaded with faux diamonds, and cut with a window to expose his forehead (purportedly to accommodate the protruding bump of his zebibah - prayer callus - when he prostrated during namaz). His eyes were wizened, large, and lachrymose. Two large agate rings adorned a finger on each of his hands, with his right clasping a neatly wrapped parcel of paan.
I’d spent many hours watching Fareed Ayaz and his company online, noting his eccentric mannerisms and ritualistic gestures over the multitude of videos that peppered the Internet since his debut in the 1970s. Over many interviews and conversations recorded by documentarians and ethnographers, Ayaz had attempted to explicate his devotion to bhakti and sufi. He’d liberally quote from Hafez and Rumi, interlacing his Persian with Punjabi rhymes, Braj witticisms, and Arabic Hadīth. He’d allegedly learned of Kabir’s transcendent verses from a donkey cart man. Wary of internet rumors and trained with a social-scientist’s skepticism, I wondered if it was all an act. Surely, he ‘looked the part’ but were his musings in interviews and his philosophizing as a Sufi wanderer just a gifted musician playing a character? I wanted it all to be true. But then again, how could anybody truly embody such fakiri (ascetism) and be so graceful and tranquil, especially in this fluorescent, crowded, (surprisingly) boozy hallway in a Long Island hall in 2023? Then, he gestured at us to approach him.
We introduced ourselves. A brief snippet of what followed, paraphrased, translated, and stripped of the Urdu lyricism:
B: How are your travels going?
FA: My journey is going fine, thank God. I’ve almost reached my destination. Do you know where?
B: ….
FA: It’s not in the U.S., or France, or Germany. The destination is [pointing to the ceiling] up there. That is my destination, and I hope to reach there.
B: What do you call this destination?
FA: Truth. God. That is my destination.
As such, our conversation continued. He spoke to us - through an analogy of school uniforms - about one’s preparedness for mortality, sprinkling his meditations with Quranic verses, jovial humor, and an insistence that I translate every line for Tony. Ever so often, his owl-like eyes would enlarge with emotion, and he’d react to something we’d say by throwing back his arms, declaring “allah!”
The Travellers
Well, now that we have a destination in mind, who are our fellow travelers? Our qawwals for the night were Ustad Fareed Ayaz and Abu Mohammad, descendants of Mian Samat bin Ibrahim, the qawwal bachha trained by Hazrat Amir Khusrau. Born in Hyderabad, India but residing in Karachi, Pakistan, they belonged to the 700-year-old 'Qawwal Bachchon Ka Gharana' of Delhi. Doing the math, that would make them the 26th generation of the family performing qawwali.
Accompanying them was a bradris of 10 musicians, whom we reckon make up the 27th and 28th generation of this illustrious family of savants. As Regula Qureshi (1986), the foremost scholar of qawwali ethnomusicology writes: “Qawwals are organized into bradris (literally, bradri is a community of brothers), endogamous patrilineal communities defined in accordance with a common local origin and subject to a governing body of elders (panch). All male members call each other bhay (brother) and women normally do not seclude themselves from male bradri members, though otherwise female seclusion is standard practice among Qawwals, in accordance with Islamic tradition. Also linked with Islamic practice is a preference for marriage within the kin group, including cross and parallel cousin marriage. Kinship ties are thus continually reinforced and extended bilaterally, in the manner of a kindred”
At present, the Ayaz and Abu Mohammad duo might just be the greatest classical qawwals alive. Until a few years ago, it might have been Amjad Sabri, but he was tragically killed in 2016, aged 45 by the dogmatic Pakistani Taliban that accused him of promoting Sufism, and hence “blasphemy”. His obituary in the Economist gloomily noted that “[Sabri’s] last song on TV included the refrain ‘When I shudder in my dark tomb, dear Prophet, look after me.”
Behind the Curtain
This might be as good a time as any to ask, what is Sufism? Who is a Sufi? Broadly, Sufism is a philosophy, a way of life, and a form of thinking and worshiping. It is a series of interpretations that highlight an “interior path of mystical love and knowledge of God.” Importantly, as historian Rana Safvi argues in In Search of the Divine (2022), “Sufism is neither a sect of Islam, nor is it different from the religion. While mystical impulses and a spiritual essence is present in all major religions, the concept of tasawwuf, the Arabic term from which the word Sufism is derived and is used interchangeably with, is rooted in Islam.” Putting aside, for now, the theoretical and doctrinal debates around Sufism, what does tasawwuf entail? According to Ustad Ayaz himself (from an interview in 2006):
"When a person makes spiritual progress, he tries to find himself. After a long journey when he comes to face that curtain from where he came...
And when he parts that veil or curtain ... what does he find behind the curtain? Himself."
This spiritual progress, particularly in the Indian Subcontinent, takes the form of qawwali. These lyrical performances extend beyond the realm of the auditory - even material - and transcend space and time. Historic patterns, migratory populations, and the rise and fall of empires have all tinged qawwali, with the modern art form encompassing Persian, Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi, bubbling with Bengali baul tongues, and digesting Saraiki and north-Indian dialects like Braj Bhasha and Awadhi. In the foreword of Beloved Delhi (2018), Saif Mahmood traces the lineage of Indo-Persian qawwali: “The qawwali had its beginnings as the Qaul (which translates as ‘the word’, or ‘saying’) recited in the khanqah of the Chishtiya Sufi Khwaja Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaaki in Delhi in the early thirteenth century. The Qaul travelled with Bakhtiyar Kaaki’s successor, Baba Fareed, to Punjab and changed in shape and content under the influence of the vibrant music of Punjab. Khusrau is credited with bringing the form back to Delhi and turning it into a vehicle for communicating his love for his pir, Nizamuddin Auliya.” He goes on to add:
“Qawwali democratized faith and spirituality, diluting the power of purists, priests and clerics, and breaking down some of the barriers between communities, religions and cultures.”
At the beginning of the concert, as Ustad Fareed Ayaz and Ustad Abu Mohammad took the stage, they made a stern declaration:
This is not a mehfil-e-Qawaali. This is a mahfil-e-sama'
What then is sama'? Derived from the Arabic for listening, “Sama is the glue which binds diverse people, diverse practices and diverse beliefs and invites them to enter a shared space [the shrine] and in fact in that shared space it becomes the vehicle of deliverance.” (Safvi 2022, quoting qawwal Dhruv Sangari) The great scholar Ghazali (1058 –1111) recorded his thoughts on the sama' [quoted here]:
What causes mystical states to appear in the heart when listening to music (Sama) is a divine mystery found within the concordant relationship of measured tones (of music) to the (human) spirits and in the spirits becoming overwhelmed by the strains of these melodies and stirred by them - whether to experience longing, joy, grief, expansion or constriction. But knowledge of the cause as to why spirits are affected through sound is one of the mystical subtleties of the science of visionary experience.
Some Sufi qawwals, such as the Chishti Sabiris believe that it's the amalgamation of makan (place), zaman (time), and ikhwan (companions) which elevates a mere musical gathering into a sanctified realm (Rozehnal 2007) Rozehnal further emphasizes the contrast between the intimate sama‘ and the more commercialized renditions of Qawwali. The disciples' criticism is evident, suggesting that popular Qawwali often diminishes the essence of the music, turning it into a mere commercialized entertainment, devoid of its Sufi roots. Hence, sama' serves as a context for the Sufi's encounter with mystical experience through listening to music. Our Ustads, rather than speaking and playing, wanted us to listen. Hence, their clarification that the night would be a mahfil-e-sama', “a carefully choreographed technology for the enrichment of a Sufi’s inner, spiritual development.” (Rozehnal 2007).
Intoxication
Regula Qureshi, in Sufi Music of India and Pakistan (1986), writes: “To the Sufi participant, Qawwali is 'a method of worship' and 'a means of spiritual advancement'; it is also 'a feast for the soul'. To the performer it is mainly a musical genre 'with its distinct character for worship'. To the observer, finally, Qawwali is above all music performed very obviously with continual reference to its context; it is 'music in context' par excellence.”
A qawwali performance is as much a spiritual journey for the performers themselves as it is for the listeners. Historian Rana Safvi (2022) had an opportunity to listen to the Ayaz and Mohammad duo at a Delhi college in 2015. She recounts that “they sang from their hearts and seemed to intuitively know how to touch the heart of the listener. They not only transported the listener to another world but they seemed to have reached there too.”
The band, seated cross-legged in disciplined rows with harmonium players holding the vanguard and the percussionists forming the rearguard, becomes a sanctum of melody, where each beat of the tabla, each stroke of the harmonium, and each echo of the claps intertwines with the verses of love and devotion, elevating the psyche to a realm ethereal. No musicians sit idle - when not playing an instrument or vocalizing, they clap along with the beat, giving rise to a thundering energy that reverberates through the room. A young vocalist, barely pubescent, holds a high note in the far right corner of the stage. The facade of the earthly realm seems to blur as the lead singer, with a voice rich with the timbre of longing appears almost as a saint with his ability to induce trance becoming the vehicle for spiritual rapture. His face contorted with every note, enraptured in a divine intoxication. The Ustad operate as conductors without batons, whisking their hands around to command their orchestra and reaching out to the audience to draw them in deeper. As the qawwali reaches a mid-point, the qawwals seemingly become mere vessels of the divine melody, rolling back their eyes, moving, swaying, and shaking, mirroring the inner euphoria in a cosmic dance. The scene is surreal. The intense, almost otherworldly expressions of the qawwals—grimacing, bellowing deeply, their heads turning and twisting in a state of divine intoxication—paint a vivid picture of devotion that is raw, unbridled, and profound.
The surreal scene evokes a reflection of the symmetry of Sharaab (or the dualism of drunkenness) within the Qawwali canon. The metaphor of Sharaab manifests in two forms: the earthly ‘sharaab’ or wine, and the celestial Sharaab-e-tahoor, the mythical river of wine that flows in heaven. This symbolism, deeply rooted in Persian and Urdu poetry, alludes to the all-encompassing love and devotion to the Divine, akin to the oblivion sought in earthly inebriation. As the earthly drunkard loses himself in the transient ecstasy of wine, the true worshipper seeks the boundless realms of divine love, where the soul becomes inebriated far beyond the ephemeral. So important is the symbolism of sharaab that it stars in the revered rivalry of verses between the illustrious Aziz Mian and the Sabri Brothers—a rivalry that has etched itself into the annals of qawwali history. Aziz Mian was known for his unique ability to pen down his own lyrics. His guttural raspy voice coupled with a style immersed in divine devotion, was highly conducive in inducing a haal (a trance) amongst his audience. His famed rendition, “Main Sharabi (I’m a drunkard)” was a veiled narrative equating worldly intoxication with a love for the divine. This qawwali stirred a response from the celebrity Sabri Brothers, who through their rendition, “Sharab chod di maine (I have left wine)” questioned Aziz Mian’s devotion and spurred a ‘cassette-war’ between the giants. Mian retorted with “Hai kambakht, tu ne pii hi nahin (O unlucky one, you have never drunk)” and goes on to juxtapose the wine of truth with the water of grapes, urging the seeker (i.e. the listener) to look beyond the superficial, to become intoxicated in the boundless love and trust (sabr and tawakkul) in the divine, and to transcend earthly misconceptions.
Decorum be damned
The qawwali performance is not merely a passive consumption of music, but an active engagement, a dialogue imbued with philosophical inquiries, evoking a form of edification akin to the twisters of ulanbasti [see ch. 6]. The hall resonated with a certain camaraderie, where each soul present is here for a quest far beyond the mere appreciation of music. Upon each encounter with a new face, the customary exchange veers towards the profound— what led you to qawwali? This question, laced with an undertone of destiny, implies a journey, a path that has led each one to this very moment of musical communion. On the drive back, we joked that such interrogatory constructs would be alien in other musical settings (i.e. What led you to seek the path of Ed Sheeran? What was your journey to Vivaldi?)
The spirit of inquiry, be it semi, pseudo, or genuine spiritualism, was a ubiquitous undercurrent among the mosaic of the audience. Their reasons for being there were manifold — familial, societal, gastronomical, musical. Yet, the act of ‘seeking’ was a constant that played through the conversations, binding strangers in a delicate camaraderie. So what led people to qawwali? We heard many answers: South Asian immigrants in search of their roots, souls on a quest for “magic”, or the elusive truth.
As the night deepened, the hall, became oblivious to the passage of earthly time. I’d assume it was the audience’s dedication, coupled with the hypnotic performances, that made none of us notice that we’d spent nearly six hours in the hall subsisting on zaika, chai, paan, and the energies of the performers. Take, for instance, this qawwali by Bulleh Shah, graciously translated by the Ajab Shahar:
Decorum be damned
I'll dance in the streets!
I'll dance with abandon
For my beloved, I'll dance
Truly, decorum be damned, as the night unfolds in the bright hall, the mundane formalities of the worldly realm gradually blur into irrelevance [See figure above.]
Making it rain
Qawwali also entails an act of benefaction, characterized by showering the musician with money. This act veils within it a deeper essence than mere worldly transaction; it embodies a sacred obligation and a solemn ritual enacted in the sacred halls where the celestial music resonates.
The nucleus of this tradition of patronage lies in the principle of 'noblesse oblige,' a tacit obligation borne by the patrons to partake in supporting the hymnists who serenade the heavens with their melodious renderings. This duty transcends the mundane, morphing into a solemn offering that guests at the royal court—whether of king or saint—are enjoined to present to the presiding personage as a token of deference. The realm of qawwali isn't untouched by this revered tradition; as the opening song unfurls its melody, a flurry of offerings often finds its way to the leader, a spectacle reminiscent of devout hearts rushing towards a celestial embrace (Qureshi 1986). The leader, by accepting these offerings, isn't merely partaking in a worldly transaction but is embodying the highest spiritual authority he represents in the assembly. This act of acceptance metamorphoses the material offering into a spiritual conduit, articulating a sacred relationship. Once accepted, the monetary offerings shed their worldly guise, aligning with the Islamic tradition of transmuting religious tributes into charity, thereby remunerating the performers for their divine service (Qureshi 1986).
Yesterday’s traditions of patronage were significantly different from those that I’d experienced. In the Memon Bhendi-Bazaar tradition from Bombay, the ritual unfolds in a circulatory dance of benevolence, where the money, akin to a ritualistic serpent, slithers through hands, making its journey to the host seated upon a pile of money—a symbol of both earthly wealth and divine blessings, which is eventually given down to the band. Contrastingly, in Hyderabad's Nizami tradition, the proceedings a member of the audience respectfully approaches the stage and slides the money under the mat of the performer in a subtle yet profound gesture. Yesetrday’s patronage mirrored itself in the Hyderabadi performance albeit with two critical variations — the currency of reverence metamorphosed from the Rupee (INR or PKR) into Long Island Dollar (i.e. stacks of 1 USD Bills), and the method of bestowal became a ceremonial showering of money upon the musicians. This act of 'making it rain,' (if I may) transforms an act of patronage into a ritualized part of the performance and also a display of affluence. Here, the mundane act of monetary donation metamorphoses into a ceremonious display of wealth. There is an irony to post-material music, rewarded through a ritual that engenders money as a material token of status. akin to a peacock unfurling its vibrant plumes in a courtship dance. Yet, in this modern-day rendition, the peacock assumes the guise of a 45-year-old Pakistani-American real estate agent, and the feathers morph into crisp dollar banknotes.
Performance: The Poetry
The essence of Qawwali is encapsulated in its poetic narrative, a narrative that is rooted in three foundational premises that define its transcendental impact on the souls of those who lend their ears. At the core of these premises lies the belief in the power of the word, a belief steeped in the sanctity of God's decree as enshrined in the Quran. The second premise heralds the potency of repetition, particularly the rhythmic repetition embodied in the sacred practice of zikr, where the ceaseless utterance of divine names or phrases engenders a state of spiritual ecstasy. The third premise heralds the celestial chord struck by the musical rendering of these divine words. The melodious cadence of ghind (song) and the enchanting echo of achchhi awaz (pleasing sound, voice) are believed to possess the divine alchemy to stir the soul (takrik-e-qalb), igniting the flames of divine love to a point of ecstatic reverie (Qureshi 1986).
The embodiment of these premises is vividly illustrated in the opening qawwali of the performance, Mun kunto maula ('Whomever I am his master'), a poem attributed to the venerated poet Amir Khusrau, which encapsulates a reverence and admiration for Ali.
The lyrical realm of qawwali is a delicate interplay between the overt and the covert, the exoteric and the esoteric. Its poetic idiom is imbued with symbolic images, metaphors, and phrases curated, nurtured, and repeated through time. It thus unfolds a realm where a single word or phrase, plucked from this cherished idiom, unfurls palimpsests of meaning, resonating with a profound associational and connotational power. A quintessential illustration of this lyrical nuance is found in the narrative of “Aadam.” The story of Aadam symbolizes the union of the ethereal spirit with the earthly clay, embodying the eternal dance of light and darkness, the quest of the delicate spirit reluctant to descend into the abyss of earthly existence, yearning instead for a realm beyond the ephemeral (Coke Studio).
Scholars Syed Akbar Hyder and Carla Petievich (2010) underscore the inclusive, accessible nature of qawwali, a hallmark of Sufi writings in the Indian subcontinent. The vernacular language of qawwali, enriched with literary tropes reflective of the local milieu, resonates with a universal appeal, often blurring the theological demarcations between Islam and the popular Indic devotional tradition of Bhakti. At the heart of the philosophy is the realization that anyone can seek the truth. Fareed Ayaz quoted Bulleh Shah, reminding us: pad pad ilm hazaar kitaba / kade apne aapnu padhiya nahi:
Yes, yes, you have read thousands of books;
but you have never tried to read your own self
According to Ustad Ayaz, anybody can embark on the journey inward:
Scholars and professors can’t help you know Kabir. For that you’ll have to go close to Kabir himself. You’ll have to break free of your shackles and go! To enter his country, you need Kabir’s visa. And you’ll get it when he decides to give it to you. No Pakistani or Indian government can. Kabir is beyond them. Some people inhabit a land beyond, and when they want to enter that land which has no borders, can a silly government stop them? Do birds need visas?
Personally, I’m enamored by the aesthetics of ambiguity that binds the qawwali with its poetic sibling, the ghazal. The ghazal's form serves as an “ideal vehicle for mystical experience,” where the repetitive monorhyme, akin to the zikr principle, reiterates a central theme, allowing for a free associational play in each couplet without a stringent thematic sequence (Qureshi 1986). Though the lyrics may often dance to the tune of the secular, or flirt with hedonistic allure, at their core, they resonate with the ageless spiritual yearnings—love, devotion, and an insatiable longing for the divine. There's a captivating evolution within the Sufi and Bhakti movements, where the divine transforms into the beloved and the devotee into a lover. Thus, the qawwali highlights the attributes of love, kindness, and mercy, portraying God as a being of approachable, sensuous reality, contrasting the vengeful, unforgiving deity. Such transcendental love is the essence that qawwalis and Urdu poetry, along with Bhakti and Sufi poetry, strive to elucidate, making God a tangible, intimate presence (Mahmood 2018).
In qawwali, the lover emerges as a drunk wanderer, with the essence of longing echoing both material and spiritual beauty. This duality encapsulates the boundless universe, embodying both secular and sectarian nuances. Take Khusrao’s portrayal of the paradoxical nature of divine love:
Khusro says, the river of love
Flows in strange ways
One who escapes, drowns
One who drowns, is saved!
Similarly, Bulleh Shah’s couplet encapsulates the eternal struggle and longing inherent in the quest for divine love. Ishq jab had se guzar jaaye to beemaari hai / Aur agar had se na guzre to adaakaari hai:
When love crosses limits, it’s a disease
And if it doesn’t, it's a charade
The realm of qawwali extends beyond the religious, embracing a form of “spiritual cosmopolitanism” (Qureshi 1999). Its appeal transcends religious bounds, upsetting rigid social hierarchies, and making it immensely popular even among non-Muslim circles.
The intricacies of Indian love poetry often blur the divine and human, enveloping the narrative in an ethereal cloak of eroticized devotion. In such a realm, God as the (male) Beloved and the feminine narrator becomes an enduring trope in Indian poetry, a metaphor that resonated through the corridors of Sufism. The language of virahini, the woman pining for separation from her beloved, lends the qawwali a quintessentially Indian ethos, while simultaneously intertwining the Indian devotional poetry within the Islamic cultural milieu (Hyder and Petievich 2010). As Safvi (2022) argues: “In the Indian milieu, there is ample imagery of a bride and her ornamentation. Her bangles symbolize her married state, and there are many qawwalis that talk of green bangles on the bride’s arms. The quest for the beloved, the longing, separation, and the union were mostly conveyed through such metaphors in the feminine voice. Maternal bonding and love was another popular metaphor.” For example, take the verses of “Chaap Tilak.” Composed by Amir Khusrau in a heart-warming cadence of Braj Bhasha, a popular Western Indian language, amalgamating the Indic vocabulary and setting with the boundless realms of love and devotion. Here’s Raza Mir’s translation:
My looks, my self
My looks, my self, you have stolen them
Merely by locking eyes with me.
That love potion you made me drink
Has me teetering on the brink
Merely by locking eyes with me.
You clasped the fair hands of your queen
Those hands encased in bangles green
Merely by locking eyes with me.
I offer myself to my prince
Let me in your colour rinse
Merely by locking eyes with me.
Khusrau, I give myself up to
My dear Nizaam with such pride
He has turned me with his love
Into a radiant, blushing bride
In Closing
There is a lot left unsaid, but maybe another qawwali themed ink-uilab is in order. In closing, I’d like to briefly touch upon the most stark paradox of Sufism, the individual's solitary voyage amidst a sea of communal ecstasy. The essence of qawwali lies in this very duality—the melding of the self into the collective, whilst embarking on an introspective solo journey into the divine. This journey, akin to a meditative trance, is an exercise in asceticism, a delving into the abyss of self to unearth the divine that resides within.
As the show came to an end, this paradox found a poignant illustration in the visage of Ustad Ayaz. As the crescendo of the final performance enveloped the room in a torrent of dance, Ustad Ayaz was seated in a quiet corner, his head swaying gently to the rhythm of the divine melody, his being drenched in the sharab (wine) of self-introspection. To end with some Zaheen Shah Taji Ay dosto Zaheen ko pehechanta hu main / Sabse alag, jo sab mein hai shaamil, woh hi to hai
Oh friends, I recognize Zaheen
Standing apart yet mingling with all, that's him!
khuda hafiz
BM
(All errors are my own and a by-product of editing this on four hours of sleep)
Beautifully written. I had the luck of being introduced to Ustad Fareed Ayaz in an equally beautiful documentary called Had-Anhad. If you get the time, do check it out. You can find it on YouTube.