A Maverick I know

I met him the first time when I was in fifth class. His mother-in-law had passed away. My female family members wanted to visit their place for condolences. Every able man in my family was busy to accompany them. So they took me along with them for this visit. I guess at that age, you don’t have any choice.

Once we got there, I paid my condolences to a close relative for passing away of their family member. As we were waiting for my family members, we were informed about ‘his’ arrival. I was taken to meet with him. When I was introduced to him about who I was, I remember his words. He said, “I know him.” I was stunned. I thought to myself, how could he possibly know me? I have met him the first time in my life and I am hardly ten years old. Anyways, after spending a few more minutes with him, we departed their place.

The next time I met him was on my wedding day. In fact, I was marrying his daughter. As mentioned above, we had only one meeting in my life. But he still took this bold decision to trust his instincts. And this time when someone asked him, “have you known him before?” He said, “Yes. I know him quite well.” 

He is no other than Makhdoom Javed Hashmi. To begin with, we both are Qureshi Hashmi, so we are both connected there. But more recently, there have been very close marriages between our families. But in our culture, people do take keen interest in people and families where their daughters are getting married. Like all his daring political decisions and moves, and practically living on the edge, he didn’t even try to do his ‘research’. Now that I have known him for a while, I know for sure that he couldn’t have researched even if anybody would have asked him to conduct one. Once he makes up his mind, he does not go back on his words, no matter what. 

Second, he is a very straight-faced and forward person. He does not mince his words to put a rosy picture. He will tell you in direct words to make you aware of the situation. I remember that when I was thinking of moving back to Pakistan, I thought of discussing with him too. He told me that the decision would not be an easy one. I would have to make some sacrifices. May be life would not be exactly like the U.S. There will be a few difficulties on the way too. And your lifestyle graph will be zero, maybe negative, before you get somewhere. But once you make that leap and come out of the adjustment period, you will come out of that cycle with flying colors. 

And so far things have been exactly how he predicted. There were many individuals who told me otherwise and showed me gloomy and depressing picture that nothing works in Pakistan and all is bad here.

I don’t write politically-motivated articles in my blogs, and this one is no different. But I am guilty by association this time. And Makhdoom sahab has joined Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaaf officially recently. So more on this in the coming days. Stay tuned.