Sanity means a state of having a normal, healthy mind. But does that imply that those who are not seemingly sane don’t have a healthy mind and shouldn’t be a part of our society?
KHUDA Buksh has eventually ended up in the Diwan Giddumal Mental Hospital, Kotri. He narrowly escaped from being prosecuted for blasphemy. During his trial, we, his friends, feared he would be sentenced to die at the gallows.
Khuda Buksh hails from Ramaswami, a miserable old locality of Karachi. He was groomed, and brought up in ordinary educational institutions. Till his unfortunate predicament he was working as a social scientist with an international firm in Karachi, and was drawing handsome salary and loads of fringe benefits from his employers. He was tasked with conducting research oriented field surveys for the documentation of the changing patterns of the social and cultural trends in Pakistan. His analytical reports had earned him numerous trips abroad. Frequent foreign exposure turned him into an excellent communicator. To a group of friends he had once said, “Do not either nurture, or brood over the doubts. Banish if you can, else discuss your doubts with the learned. Doubts blur the thought process in you.”
Only a few of us muster up courage to grapple with our doubts, and finally overcome hesitation from journeying to attain emancipation of the soul. Field work helped Khuda Buksh a lot in removing social and cultural doubts that had been lurking within his system over the years. Eventually he broke loose from the invisible chains of conditioning we all are fastened to without knowing from our childhood. From intensive field work Khuda Buksh experienced that the social, cultural, and political pundits who had nothing substantial to offer spoke incessantly. The ones who genuinely contributed their share to society were men of a few words. They neither promised nor applauded their own achievements. They simply strove, and delivered.
To a compulsive talker, Khuda Buksh had once said, “Speak only when it is necessary. Do not speak unnecessarily. Incessant talking burns your brain.”
Prior to his incarceration in the mental asylum Khuda Buksh and I had spent Sunday afternoons together for years. We strolled on the beach near old Clifton for hours, sat and watched together the flow and ebb of the waves without conversing. From Khuda Buksh I have learnt that contemplation is a soundless experience. It gets nurtured in silence.
One day Khuda Buksh came to me, apparently for an evening walk. He looked perturbed. We strolled along the beach for more than two hours without talking. Suddenly Khuda Buksh turned around, and asked, “Why did they expel Khuda from television?” He puzzled me with his question. Dumbfounded, I looked at him.
“Why did they expel Khuda?” He repeated his question. His query was beyond my comprehension. He appeared disturbed. He held me by my arm, and asked, “Are you listening to me?”
“ Yes, I am.”
“Then, at least tell me who Khuda was?”
For the first time in my life I felt Khuda Buksh had drifted away from sanity. I drew him to a nearby wooden bench. He sat stiff, and without blinking his eyes he kept looking at the ocean. I fetched two mugs full of coffee, and settled by his side. I handed him a mug, and said, “Be careful. It is simmering hot.”
He sipped coffee from the mug, and said, “So, you do not know who Khuda was!”
I wondered why he was conversing in past tense. Instead of who Khuda was, he ought to have said who Khuda is. Would that make any difference? Do I know who Khuda is, or was? Isn’t He Omnipresent, who sustains the universes? Isn’t He the ultimate Truth? Isn’t He the One with multimillion names who overwhelms the inhabitants and the geophysical habitat of the cosmos, human beings, animals, birds, vegetation, oceans, earth, forests, and mountains?
Khuda Buksh abruptly asked, “Who expelled Khuda from Pakistan?”
There was no sense in arguing with a person who appeared agitated. I tried to appease him, and said, “Khuda Buksh, mortals can not expel the Immortal.”
“Don’t try to be a diplomat, Lala,” Khuda Buksh said and asked, “Do you still watch television programmes?”
“Yes, I do,” I replied.
“While closing a transmission do they still say, Khuda Hafiz?” He asked.
I became apologetic, and said, “No, they do not.”
Khuda Buksh rose to his feet, and said, “Come on, let us go.”
For the next few days Khuda Buksh became elusive. Nothing was heard about him for the next couple of weeks. I made frantic efforts to trace him, but to no avail. During the third week he was arrested for writing an obnoxious letter to the government and the Iqbal Academy. In the letter he wrote, “Since Khuda has been banished from Pakistan, the poems of Alama Iqbal containing the word Khuda need to be corrected, especially, Khuda bunday say khud poochay, bata teri raza kiya hai.”
