Dear Zahir
Anwar, You have asked me about the birth and growth of the
Family of the Heart. It has been an exciting experience for me to see the family
grow from ten to one hundred members in only three years. It all started when my
dear friend Dr. Dennis Isaac and his charming wife Maria moved from Pakistan to
Canada with their children and made Toronto their new home. I wanted to welcome
them and introduce them to some of my creative friends hoping that it would help
them integrate in the new country and culture. So I invited nearly ten poets, writers and
intellectuals for dinner and introduced them to Dennis and Maria. After dinner I
asked all of them to share their poetry. Most of my Canadian poet friends had
known Dennis as a playwright as they had enjoyed his plays on Pakistani
Television, but did not know that he also wrote poetry. It turned out to be a
wonderful evening far beyond my expectations. People enjoyed the meeting so much
that they wanted to do it again and Pervaiz Salahuddin suggested that we all
meet at his house the next month. I suggested that we ask Dennis to sing a few ghazals
as people did not know that he was also an accomplished musician and singer.
When we met at Pervaiz and Neelofer’s house it transformed into a mushaira
as well as a musical evening. Like the first meeting people thoroughly enjoyed
the informal atmosphere of sharing wonderful poems, songs and stories. That
evening was a great success. After the second meeting Fozia Butt and Mubarika
Shakoor, our enthusiastic female family members, suggested that we should meet
in a restaurant where there would be a buffet so that every member could pay for
their own meal. We did not want one member to shoulder the financial burden for
the whole group. We also realized that when the evening was arranged in
somebody’s house the hosts were so preoccupied with the arrangements that they
could not fully enjoy the evening. The other factor was that in the restaurant
people felt free to invite their friends and family members and pay for the
dinner without worrying about burdening the hosts. So the buffet arrangement in
a restaurant turned out to be a useful and practical suggestion. During the first poetry and musical evening in a
restaurant Pervaiz was approached by Rubina
and Faisal, a lovely couple, in the
restaurant who had come there to have dinner. When they heard the poetry and
music they wanted to be part of the group and come for future meetings. By this
time the number had increased from ten to thirty so Pervaiz prepared a list of
names and email addresses to inform members of the dates and times of the future
meetings. Since Pervaiz is an inter-net and website wizard, he
prepared a special section in my website of
Family of the Heart Clinic and
put the names and pictures of all the friends who regularly came to the
meetings. Since we did not have an identity for the group I suggested the name
Family of the Heart and everybody liked it. I suggested that name because it
reflected a personal, intimate and affectionate relationship between friends
rather than any reference to religious, linguistic or nationalistic affiliation. In the next few months in our regular meetings a
number of poets and writers presented their creations for an honest and sincere
feedback. I remember those evenings when Shakila
Rafiq, Rubina
Faisal, Faisal
Farani and Nasir Shah presented their stories,
Jawaid Danish presented his play,
Amrik Zirvi shared his essay and Afzaal
Naweed, Nasreen Syed,
Kaleem Zafar,
and Rafi Raza
shared his poetry while Rasheed Nadeem,
Atif Shikoh, Shahid Akhtar,
Dennis Isaac
and many others offered their critical reviews. During that time when Family of the Heart was growing
my book From Islam to Secular Humanism…A Philosophical Journey was
published. Pervaiz shared the book with a number of colleagues and friends.
After they read the book, Abbas Jaffery and many other friends invited me to
their homes for dinner and got engaged in an in-depth discussion about my book.
I was surprised to find out that there were a number of Muslims who had left
Islam in their hearts but were reluctant to share their truth publicly. They
were afraid of the social reaction. My book and my interviews on radio and
television gave them some encouragement and inspiration to express their views
openly and candidly. As those discussions became more intimate and passionate we
started meeting at Rafiq Sultan’s house every Sunday evening to share our
thoughts and discuss the books we had read. So weekly meetings became the
meetings of the Nuclear Family and the monthly meetings became the meetings of
the Extended Family of the Heart. We are always appreciative of Rafiq Sultan’s
family who welcome us with an open mind and an open heart. Over the months I gradually realized that in our
family there was a core group that enjoyed the serious discussions about the
ideological and philosophical issues. So when I started writing my book Prophets
of Violence and Peace in which I reviewed the biographies of reformers and
revolutionaries of 20th century, I shared the chapters of my book in
the meetings. When it was announced that I was going to review the biographies
of Gandhi,
Tagore,
Jinnah,
Iqbal and
Ataturk, a number of Indian intellectuals
like Khursheed
Ahmed, a peace activist and Subuhi
Ansari, a serious scholar of
the psychology of religion and politics, came to the meetings as they were
curious what would a Pakistani writer say about Indian leaders. Those meetings
were very productive and thought provoking. I encouraged friends to review my
articles and it created an atmosphere of a serious dialogue among the family. I
was impressed that we could have serious disagreements about religious and
political issues in a respectful way. Finally those meetings culminated in a seminar on the
subject of Islam, Muslims and 21st Century in which we asked
five friends to present their articles and asked other five members to review
those articles. It was thought provoking to listen to the passionate essays
written by Akber Chaudhry,
Javed
Chaudhry, Najib Qazmi,
Rashid Mughal and
Tahir
Qazi and equally passionate reviews by Subuhi Ansari,
Zia Uddin Ahmed,
Nasir Shah,
Khursheed Ahmed and
Masud Sheikh. We made sure that the believers and non-believers were equally
respected and given equal opportunity to express their views openly and
honestly. Some people were surprised to see that an atheist like me was
respectful of believers. I shared with them that being a Secular Humanist I
respect all faiths but I wish that believers be also respectful of
non-believers. I believe in not only freedom of religion but also freedom
from religion. That seminar provided an opportunity for friends to have a
genuine and sincere dialogue. We are all very indebted to Pervaiz as his dedication
to update the website on a regular basis, arrange the meetings and inform
everybody about the meetings has been a great help in the growth of the family.
Even those members who could not attend the seminar were able to read the papers
on the website and share with their friends. We were pleased to receive
complementary letters not only from other friends in North America, but also
from Europe and Asia. It seems Pervaiz has been able to connect with hundreds of
members all over the world. When we started sharing our thoughts in English we
enlarged the circle of the family, and those Canadian friends could also become
part of the meetings who did not understand Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi. We were
surprised last month when a friend Arif Razvi, who was visiting his family in
Toronto from USA expressed a desire to meet us during his Christmas Holidays. It
was a pleasant surprise and proved to us that Pervaiz’s efforts are reaching
friends in different parts of the world through our website. We also try to
arrange a special meeting if a creative friend is visiting from another country.
We had special meetings when Sain Sucha was visiting from Sweden,
Abrar Hasan
from France and Sohun Qadri
from Denmark.. We have encouraged not only poetry and music but also
other forms of art. In one meeting we had a painting exhibition of Youngo
Verma,
a well-respected artist from India, alongside our poetry recital and musical
evening. While we were having serious discussions about
politics, religion and philosophy, we met a number of journalists who were
courageous enough to publish some of the controversial and thought provoking
articles. Rafiq Sultan
translated some of the chapters of my book in Urdu and
Adnan Hashmi published them in his newspaper. It seems that in the last three years the family has
not only grown from ten to hundred but also touched friends all over the world.
Since there are no elections and no office bearers, there is a very friendly
atmosphere in the meetings, an atmosphere of cooperation rather than
confrontation, an atmosphere of acceptance rather than judgment and an
atmosphere of encouragement and inspiration rather than rivalry and jealousy. I
was so impressed by friends volunteering freely for different activities. They
are all so generous in sharing their time, energy and money when needed. In the last few months, different journalists, who
were curious about our members and meetings, approached us. A Canadian
journalist Gabrielle Bauer interviewed some of the members and listened to their
life stories as she was preparing for an article on Secular Muslims for a
Canadian magazine Saturday Night. One of our journalist friends Radhika was
asked by her colleague Ujjwal Bhatacharya to interview me for his Hindi Program
with German Radio. Ujjwal, a poet and a journalist, was quite impressed to know
that we have a group where people from different ethnic, religious and cultural
backgrounds get together and have a genuine dialogue about our philosophies and
lifestyles. During my interview I shared that in the world of intolerance,
prejudice and holy wars, we are lucky to have an island, where Family of the
Heart meets regularly and Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Agnostics and
Atheists share their art and creativity and have intellectually stimulating
discussions. When I look at our meetings and see more than hundred
people getting together and enjoying themselves, I feel good that the family
tree has taken roots and now giving fruits of creativity, friendship, tolerance,
dialogue and peace. Through the website those fruits reach others who cannot
attend the meetings. I feel especially thrilled when I see those friends sharing
their creative products who have never shared their poetry and songs in public.
They feel encouraged by the informal family atmosphere of the meetings. Having
dinners and discussions and dialogues the family provides the food not only for
the bodies but also for the minds and souls. Family of the heart has also
developed a wonderful sense of humour. When a small group goes out to have a
cigarette, they call themselves Family of the Lungs. Being a writer and a psychotherapist I always
believed that growth was a natural process. Creative gifts are like seeds of the
tree. If we provide them with fertile soil, fresh air and proper sunshine then
those seeds are inspired to grow and blossom. That is what we are seeing the
Family of the Heart. We are providing people an atmosphere where friends are
encouraged to share a new idea, a new poem, a new concept and a new point of
view. We encourage a genuine dialogue and following the tradition of Socrates we
realize that a genuine dialogue is one way of finding truth and also a
meaningful way to get to know each other. On 12th of March 2004, we are planning to
have another seminar on the subject of Women’s Liberation, Men and 21st
century in which speakers would discuss men/women relationships from a
religious, cultural, social and personal points of view, relating to the
dynamics of the contemporary world. There is already a lot of enthusiasm
expressed in that seminar and many friends are looking forward to the evening.
Azad Danish, a wonderful poet and musician had conducted our last meeting of
poetry and music, and our respected friend Zia
Uddin Ahmed, who has won people’s
hearts by his impressive English translations of Ghalib’s poetry, would
coordinate our next seminar. Dear Zahir, Although you live in Calcutta, India, thousands of
miles away from Toronto but we feel connected to you and many other friends
including Rafi Aamir and Nauroz Arif from America,
Dr. Saadat Saeed from Turkey,
Nasar Malik from Denmark, Ujjwal Bhatacharya from Germany and Naeem Sadiq from
Pakistan and many others as the Family of the Heart is gradually becoming a
tribe, a tribe of friends from different languages, religions and cultures, who
want to share their creative ideas and products and would like to join us in
breaking down walls of prejudice and intolerance and build bridges of
compassion, creativity, dialogue, peace and love. We hope that all friends from
other countries could come and join us in one of our meetings. Affectionately, January 2004
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