I have been writing these essays (I like to call them stories)
for a long time, the earliest being in 1984, and publishing some
in Pakistani newspapers and some on blogs.
Several times, I toyed with the idea of compiling these
stories in a book form but was not sure of the usefulness of such
an endeavor. One difficulty was the diversity of the subjects -
from reminiscences to anecdotal history to folklore to so much
else. It was not possible to assign a genre to the collection.
It was only recently when a pen friend, Ejaz Rahim, who
has also written one of the two generous forewords to this
volume, prodded me in an email, saying, "The fact is humans
die; the fiction is books continue to live." I fell for the fiction,
and hence this slim volume of mostly reminiscences about the
people I came across or worked with and events I was part of.
In short, it is about the world I left behind.
I plan to publish the other essays in a second volume.
