You do not need a special occasion to call on and be treated by Allama Muhammad Iqbal. The master is present everywhere, mostly authoritatively advising you just how to go about proudly discovering your true self, as a human being and as a Muslim and sometimes when you are tuned in to Indian channels, as an inhabitant of the Indian subcontinent. But there were a couple of (contrasting?) instances last week that just made me wonder about our association with the great poet-philosopher.

First there was this Facebook message sent by a friend, which contrary to his claim, didn't somehow appear to be from amongst Dr Iqbal's sayings. It called on the faithful to not wait for their bodies to get weak and weary before they bowed before the Creator. The diction didn't seem to be Iqbal's and while my friend had the reason, the rhyme was badly missing. It didn't seem to be Iqbal. I wrote back, which opened a small window for a trickle of beautifully crafted bona fide Iqbal lines on Facebook with the subject more or less remaining the same.

The second instance that made me wonder about Iqbal was when, while channel surfing during a dull moment in the office, I ran into Rahat Fateh Ali Khan presenting the national poet of Pakistan in tones I for one had never come across in the past. Normally, the office decorum doesn't allow you to run music on a television set that is principally there to make sure its gazers didn't escape any news. But this was serious; this was Hakeem-ul-Ummat Allama Iqbal, in popular qawwali form. Diversion permissible, I thought.

As I looked a bit more keenly I recognised the setting the all-black Rahat Fatah Ali group was performing in. It was the famous haveli of Mian Yusuf Salahuddin in the walled city the elite flyers of Pakistan would recognise from the basant outings of a lost past. Yusuf Salahuddin, who is fondly recognised as some kind of a cultural guru, was very much there, aided by his entranced co-host for the evening. Iqbal's heirs were present in full force. There was Justice Javed Iqbal and his wife Justice Nasira Javed Iqbal and the Allama's grandchildren.

Yusuf Salahuddin, himself a relative of Allama Iqbal, joining forces with the much in demand Rahat Fateh Ali in an obvious bid to popularise kalaam-i-Iqbal: if I am not mistaken, this was an attempt at fighting the current oppression using Iqbal as universally acceptable antidote. The poet has in the past been used to convey different messages during different governments in Pakistan. Observers have called it expediency and exploitation and I have had my own favourite moments with Iqbal courtesy of the verses that have been flashed on PTV. But to have 'sitaron say aagay jahan aur bhi hain' as a qawwali was, well, something unique.

Yusuf Salahauddin has in recent times made sure that most, if not all, of the tunes that come out of his haveli are his own. So, with that part of the job taken care of and with the sanction of the family, the Yusuf-Rahat duo set about popularising Iqbal.

I must admit I was a bit taken aback. I have been brought up in a tradition where respecting the Allama takes precedence over understanding and befriending him. Much like the friend who had asked us all to not waste our youth in the message I have cited above, our teachers have used Iqbal to advise us, reprimand us and set us on our solemn and sombre course to the stars and beyond. Iqbal has seldom been allowed to degenerate into fun, as a vehicle to land us into a state of ecstasy, as a dhamal rhythm.

We have been trained to react to his beat as would soldiers to the beats of war and he is the blood-warming tonic for the proverbial shaheens destined to scale the heights. My one-on-one meetings with Iqbal have been broken into and those who tasked with simplifying him for us have intervened to quickly restore his political and social weight and put severe restrictions on how I must comprehend the great philosopher. No melas are to be held in Iqbal's name. He has to be absorbed with our hands folded, and our gaze either lowered to the ground or fixed on the skies, in accordance with the poet's mood.

I must admit I don't know when the haveli programme was recorded or when it was first telecast. All I can confirm is that what it offered was something new for me. For the first few seconds I failed to come to terms with what I was hearing. Iqbal composed to catchy tunes sung by Rahat Fateh Ali. Familiarised and into the second qawwali, I did have a few layman's reservations: It was all Maqbool Sabri while Iqbal's tone and tenor, or how we have understood these to be, had room for a Ghulam Farid Sabri to intervene with a few high-pitched lines here and there.

Maybe this was because of the hold the old Iqbal has on me. Even as Rahat Fateh sought to reintroduce, me to him, I was too loyal to the old regime through which I have known the poet I am otherwise so eager to befriend.

The writer is Dawn's resident editor in Lahore.