We all have our childhood dreams about what we want to do and where we want to be at.

This is the stuff at which we laugh when we get older and supposedly more mature. We know that Mohammad Khalid Akhtar's ambition was to be a sea pirate, but we don't know whether or not he laughed at it later in life. By the looks of it, he didn't, because he had the fire still raging inside him even in his late teens.

For someone who had a touch of the old world about him and whose diffidence shared borders with introversion, it was a somewhat strange ambition which calls for some kind of analysis of the personality that Khalid had. But this was surely not the only contradiction in him.

His decision to opt for Urdu as his preferred medium of literary expression was also a strange choice against the backdrop of his extensive reading in English literature. It is not uncommon to find people in everyday life who think in the vernacular but try to express themselves in English for a variety of reasons. In Khalid's case, it was just the opposite.

In a letter to his friend Mohammad Kazim dated July 11, 1954 when Khalid was in his mid-30s, he explained his dilemma thus 'Urdu is my darling, but after so many years, I have yet to learn the craft of using it properly. My vocabulary is limited. Even today the thought comes in English and has to be delivered in Urdu. I have to make a conscious effort to convey an idea in Urdu. Every sentence is an effort, an agony.'

To the eyes of those not familiar with his style, Khalid's words may convey an impression of incapacity. However, the fact is that the letter only brings to fore the shy, self-deprecating traits of the man. The prose that Khalid wrote — and he wrote several volumes in several genres of literature — had a distinct style that, in the words of Mohammad Hasan Askari, was all his very own.

In the routine everyday sense of the term, it is not flowing or lucid. The sentence structure is so heavily Anglicised that one can even see semi-colons and colons in the mind of the writer.

Having said that, Khalid's writings are not repulsive by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, they have a flair of their own which is so captivating that he was read and enjoyed across the country and beyond even when he was sitting in the southern Punjab backwaters of Bahawalpur. The fact that his novel, Chakiwara Mein Visaal, was described as the best piece of satire in Urdu literature by the legendary Faiz Ahmed Faiz (Suratgar Kuch Khawabon Kay by Tahir Masood, 1985) is a testimony to his craft and to the fact that he was read and taken seriously by people across the literary divide that existed at the time.

Besides, when Makateeb-i-Khizr came out in 1989 it proved beyond doubt that Khalid could write in whatever style he chose. A compilation of 'open letters' to prominent figures, mostly literary, on the pattern of the inimitable diction of Ghalibian letter-writing, Makateeb displays in chaste Urdu the wonderful sense of humour of a learned soul.

But it is basically satire, not humour, for which Khalid will be remembered in the history of Urdu literature. Even in Makateeb the undercurrent of satire is unmistakable. Like, for instance, in his note addressed to Mukhtar Masood, who is known for his highly stylised prose, he writes 'While going through your essay on Minar-i-Pakistan, I could visualise a lofty, well-dressed official going atop for public exposure while still worried about the crease of his trousers and the bow of his tie. It's a pity that you wrote a soulless essay on the minaret instead of employing the perspective of any of the hundreds of labourers who worked hard to put this symbol of our collective independence without getting their own independence from poverty and injustice.'

Talking about his streak of satire, Khalid told his interviewer Tahir Masood in 1983 that as a human being he was distressed to see the prevailing social injustice in Pakistani society and it was something that had always influenced his capacity as a writer. He also wondered how other writers could be so out of step with the social reality.

Though none of his 12 volumes contain proper critique, his Makateeb and Rait Par Lakeerain, the compilation of his scattered writings that he did for various literary magazines, are enough proof that had he tried, Khalid would have been a rare critic in modern Urdu literature with a personal exposure to creative talent. Keeping a conscious distance from literary politics and the so-called tea house gossip, Mohammad Khalid Akhtar could afford to be honest in his pronouncements, and he was.