In that play, is there room for a divine force?
Those Sufi poets always had an intimate relationship with the divine, and always tried to find the divine in themselves, and in their beloved, whether that was a human being or an abstract divine force called God.

What about in your own life, is there a guiding or protective force?
I wish there was. But no, there isn’t…

Did you always feel that way?
I grew up in Okara, about 80km outside of Lahore, in a small, oppressed, fairly religious village of farmers, where nobody ever went to college. Education was for the sissies.

Growing up, my father wanted me to learn the Koran by heart. And I became quite a religious zealot. One day, one of the teachers decided to test me. He gave me a big bowl of milk to drink. I used to hate milk, so I only finished half of it. He said “he’ll never finish doing what he is doing”. And it seemed indeed like a prophecy!
So later on, I went on another path, as a part of my family was into Sufism. I went from shrine to shrine, hanging out with those people.

What triggered the change?
It was too literal, too dull of a teaching. And you could not question anything. So in fact, I wasn’t zealous enough. And I was always distracted by things that teenagers get distracted by.
Basically, it was one of those things when you know that life is more complex than adult people are trying to make it sound like. They are not telling you the whole truth, and even scarier, they don’t know the whole truth. So you have to find it for yourself. You may very well not find it either. But you have to do it for yourself.

... contd.