Third: Sanai, and his beautiful statements. People like Sanai don’t argue, they only state. They need not argue, their very existence is the proof; no other argument is needed. Come, look into my eyes, and you will know that there is no argument, only a statement. A statement is always true. An argument can be clever but is rarely true.

Sanai is one of my love affairs. I cannot, even though I would like to, exaggerate him. It is impossible. Sanai is the very essence of Sufism.

Sufism is an English word for tasawuf. Tasawuf means “pure love.” Sufism comes from suf, meaning wool, and a Sufi means a person wearing a woolen robe. Sanai used to wear a black cap – a white robe and a black cap. No logic, no reason, just a mad person like me. But what can you do, these people have to be accepted as they are. Either you love them or hate them. Love or hate, they don’t give you any alternative. You can be for them or against them, but you cannot be indifferent to them. That’s the miracle of mystics. Being close to me you know perfectly well that one who comes to me becomes either a friend or a foe. Nobody can come to me and go without becoming a friend or a foe. Look! I can also compose poetry sometimes. A madman is capable of doing anything.

Sanai only states without arguing about it. He simply says it is so. You cannot ask why; he will say, “Shut up! There is no why!”

You don’t ask a roseflower, “Why?”

You don’t ask the snow, “Why?”

You don’t ask the stars, “Why?”

Then why do you ask people like Sanai?

They are of the world of stars, flowers, snow.

They don’t argue.

I love Sanai. I had not forgotten him; I was not going to mention him just because I wanted to keep him only for myself, in my heart. But in a postscript you can even pour out your heart.

That is the way my father used to write me letters. The letter would be very short – there was nothing much to write – then he would write a P.S. Again I would wonder what he had left out of the letter, and he would say something really significant. Then the P.S. would not be enough. There would be another P.P.S. “My God,” I would think, “what has he forgotten?” Again there would be something really beautiful that could not have been written in the letter. A P.S. is a more intimate phenomenon, and a P.P.S. even more so.

My father is no more, but I remember him in such moments, when I suddenly see that I am behaving just like him. When I see his picture, I know that when I too am seventy-five, God willing, then I will look just like him. And it is so good to feel that I will not betray him, that I will represent him even to my very last breath.