A Kashmiri Scholar’s Letter to a Western Mystic

Salaam!

This, my dearest mentor, is the greeting you would make whenever we met. Peace is what salaam means. It was this peace that drew me to you, dearest ATP.

The peaceful radiance that emanated from your visage, the dignified demeanour, and the graceful gait with which you walked all meshed together in an elegance that gave you presence.

I still remember that you mispronounced my name when I introduced myself. You called me Wahajat. But within a day or two, you got my name right.

Only the love of my life, Daniella, pronounced my name as it should be. Everyone else in Australia got it wrong.

The terms of endearment used by you and Daniella were almost the same. She called me Wiju, and you referred to me as Wuji.

Dearest ATP, ah, those days in Australia. I was a broken man on a quest, seeking something. Anchorless and unmoored, I could have gone anywhere.

Maybe wanton hedonism would have wrapped me in its tentacles. The titillations of illusory pleasure, which may have given me some relief, would have gripped me in a vise-like grip. Or the ethereal and elusive balm of consumerism would have become both my quest and me.

But you, dear ATP, put my self on a pedestal. You told me that the West, to which you belonged, was not about hedonism, the mere quest for pleasure, which is actually a surrogate for what the great sociologist Émile Durkheim would have called “anomie.”

You taught me that when the larger and nobler quests of life become occluded by this, the human quest either dissipates into suicide or unhinged hedonism.

When I say this, dearest ATP, I speak inferentially.

My dearest mentor, when you walked, you glided. When you smiled, your face became nobler. When you spoke, it was like a Welsh poet pouring forth poetry. Your demeanour oozed contentment and peace.

When I first drove with you in your battered old SAAB motorcar, I suppressed my laughter. When I saw you wearing sunglasses held together by glue, I suppressed my laughter yet again. How could this eminent Westerner be so poor, I thought?

But little did I realise then that poverty was the way of life you had chosen. You were the man who had made real choices, dearest ATP. You refused to allow yourself, your authenticity, and your dignity to be swamped by the miasma of false choices and false quests.

Noble Australian!

I now realize how difficult this path is. Even the choices I have are only half-choices. You had it all, dearest ATP, as the vulgar would say, yet you chose nourishment of the soul and a fuller efflorescence of the self.

This, I now realise, is a very difficult path to choose.

Dear mentor, when you talked of contentment as the existential locus of a human being, I would suppress giggles. I thought that because you were “poor,” that was why you said such things. Because you did not have money, or a BMW, or the latest designer clothes, I believed your constant reference to contentment was the ultimate rationalization.

But, my dearest, you had made a choice. You could, if you chose, have overshadowed that “rich” man of Australia, the late Kerry Packer. You could, if you so desired, have become the real power behind many thrones.

In short, dearest ATP, you could have become anyone you chose to be. But you chose to be you, my dearest.

What a choice, but how difficult!

Your son, who had taken after you in terms of looks, grace, equipoise, and elan, dearest ATP, would be embarrassed at school.

You would drive an old SAAB. Your sunglasses, you would mend with glue or wire, and your clothes, while always defined by dignity, would at times be torn.

In my endless arguments with you, and through the litany of questions I would ask, you never lost patience. While I was enrolled at a university, its utilitarian grid never sated me. It was you who employed the Socratic method, teaching me and imparting instruction to me.

But, dearest, it never felt like that. Talking to you was like a seamless, poetic conversation, a dialogue with a poet-philosopher.

Dear ATP, you had a vision for Australia, a great and noble one. I am sorry I could not understand it then, but I do now.

Elements of that vision were, I daresay, with both humility and trepidation, flawed. But the overall vision was permeated with nobility.

You, not through mere words or mere rhetoric, but through actual practice, demonstrated to me that the West was not, to repeat, merely about hedonism. Pared to its essence, it was about dignity, genuine and real selfhood, and the “rights of man (and woman),” understood in the most expansive rather than the vulgar sense.

Ah, those quarrels I had with you. The equanimity with which you dealt with them and engaged with me like a poet-philosopher, yet a man of the world at the same time, leaves me squirming in embarrassment whenever I recall them.

Dearest mentor, allow me the use of what many would think of as an oxymoron. You were the “Western faqeer,” a “poor” mystic who chose the spiritual quest over vulgar materiality and performed marvels.

You, the ‘Western faqeer,’ had made this choice in a context that forced other choices upon people, making them believe ‘shit’ about themselves: delusions of grandeur, illusions of momentary happiness, money as the ultimate quest, and so on.

You, dearest ATP, sought to make “princes” out of ordinary mortals. Except in my case, you were successful.

Your “princes” rule, and the world is their ken.

Dearest ATP, all this is a walk down memory lane, a reminiscence. I am sorry I failed you, then and now. Then, because I failed to understand you in your entirety. Now, because I did not become the “prince” you wanted me to become.

I am a man of humble capacities and capabilities. A station in life that corresponds to these is what I am and what I have.

But, dearest, I may never have become a “prince,” yet I have become a contented man. Contentment, peace, and joy are the only riches I seek, much like you. 

If that is your influence on me, then I embrace it with gratitude.

I was a shattered man when I arrived in Australia in the roaring nineties. A disconnect of mind, body, and soul defined me. My heart did not speak to my mind.

You, dearest ATP, connected them seamlessly. And Daniella, my abiding love, imbued them with layers of love and sensitivity. Only a woman of worth, depth, and gravitas could have done that.

While both of you are far, far away physically, you and Daniella have a permanent presence in the niches of my heart.

Now, dearest ATP, regarding the heart. In your profound, somewhat cryptic way, yet in a moment of great clarity, you once told me, “A good heart is better than a good mind.”

I also recollect when you said, “Power lies within, not without.” Coming from you, a veritable genius with a brilliant, dazzling mind, this meant a great deal. This is my quest too, and it is the gravamen of my faith as well.

Qalb, as the heart is called in Arabic, is the seat of everything. Ritual, goodness, faith, and the other great imperatives of my faith, essential as they are, are meant to elevate the spirit by working upon the heart.

This is what it is, my dearest ATP. But I say this not as one whose mind is defined by dazzling brilliance like yours, but as a very ordinary mortal with prosaic and pedestrian capacities.

I, to repeat, may not have become a prince, dearest ATP, but I realise that the heart is everything. This is your singular achievement and success.

Thank you for this.

But, my dear ATP, this is not why I wrote this letter. The real purpose of writing it is to offer an apology.

I did not understand you entirely when I was in Australia. I was rude, abrasive, and argumentative with you. How embarrassing it is when I think of it. I may also not have turned out to be what you thought I would become. But that is the least of my concerns.

I am squirming as I write this. But, given the great man you are, you will understand.

You know, dearest, there are two things that are my prized material possessions. One is the old family heirloom you gave me when I left Australia: your father’s old, rusted, empty tin tobacco box. The other is a few locks of Daniella’s hair that I clipped.

These are my most valued possessions. But they are cold comfort, I guess, given my attitude towards you in Oz, and even at times later.

If you can, my dearest mentor, please forgive me. It is late where I am. Tears are welling in my eyes.

I will close this letter by writing that, for you, sans ideological and political connotations, the Tao may have been the quest. For me, now, it is the path. Both, my dearest, are universals.

Salaam, my dearest. I am sure that wherever you are, your pure soul and self will be radiating with joy.

Alhamdulillah. Praise be to God.