Unfinished – 2

“All I wanted was a wish fulfilled. Nothing much, just a small wish. Sometimes those unfulfilled wishes leave you broken forever. Perhaps, that’s what I deserved. But, wait. What did I do to deserve this betrayal? But I can’t even blame you for being natural. Your memories will remain with me forever. We hold onto memories for as long as we can, good and bad alike. Your memories sure comfort me and they let me roll down the lane to those times we have had together but it is like the scent of rose which will disappear after a few days leaving you with some dried petals to keep in its remembrance. Oh, you are that rose and you have done that to me again. Oh rose, let me live — I don’t want to dwell in your memories but live the time with you. I recognized your significance long ago then why do I deserve your be-dilli (half-heartedness). ”

Dried rose by blejs on DeviantArt

Bhittai: The visionary

The shrine of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai

Some people say that he fell in love, left home, became a phenomenon and came back to marry the woman who had been refused to him earlier. There is no way of knowing whether the career of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai of Sindh actually paralleled the Count of Monte Cristo so closely (and we need to be careful about apocryphal stories woven around the lives of great saints), but there are other testimonials to the warmth of the heart that throbbed in him.

The most astonishing is the way his work captured the spirit of a new age that was coming up not only in the Muslim world but also outside.

Bhittai was born in 1689 and died in 1752. This was when the Muslim world seemed to be awakening to the realisation that a universal ideal could be manifest in regional forms. Hence Abdul Wahhab in Hejaz set out to distinguish between the crux of Islam and historical accretion while Shah Waliullah of Delhi taught that the traditional model of Islam was an application of its ideals in the context of the seventh century Arabia and many other applications were possible in other contexts. Surprisingly, the new ideals that started developing in Europe around this time also converged on regional states.