Dear 2012 me,

You’re nineteen, furious, and certain. God is a crutch. Religion is theatre. You’ve read Dawkins, watched Hitchens debates on YouTube, and feel smarter than everyone who still bows their head during morning prayer.

But here’s the thing you can’t explain: you keep listening to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Allah Hoo on loop. Tum Ek Gorakh Dhanda Ho. You tell yourself it’s the music - the tabla, the harmonium, the way his voice cracks at the peak. Just aesthetics. Nothing spiritual.

Liar.

I’m writing this because I found a poem. Or it found me.

It’s 2018. Delhi Metro. You’ll be commuting to college, headphones in, and stumble onto Iqbal’s Shikwa and Jawab-e-Shikwa - The Complaint, and The Answer. You’ll read the lyrics at Hauz Khas station and stand there, stunned, missing your train. A Muslim poet from 1911 yelling at God, and God yelling back. You’ll think: this is allowed?

That’s when Iqbal enters. And years later, you’ll find Sarguzisht-e-Adam - The Story of Adam.1 Adam narrating humanity’s entire history in first person. Not a human. THE human. The restless spirit that left Paradise because awareness made it itch.

The poem goes something like:

I couldn’t settle in Paradise - awareness burned.
I cleared the Kaaba of idols, then put statues back in.
I climbed Sinai for Moses. I hung on the cross.
I hid in Hira for years. I sang the Gita in India.
I captured lightning. I discovered gravity.
And still - I didn’t find the secret of existence.
Until I looked down and found it in my own heart.

Adam is everyone. Every prophet. Every scientist. Every seeker. One spirit, countless masks.2

This is Tawheed, but not the way the maulvis taught you. Not “my God is the only God.” More like: there’s one thing being sought, and we’ve called it a thousand names. The Om Jai Jagdish playing faintly from the mandir across from your convent school?3 Same search. The Allah Hoo you can’t stop playing? Same search.

You don’t know this yet, but you’ll fall in love with a girl whose name means glitter. A theist. The same quiet faith you’re busy rejecting in Mummy, in Nani ammi, in Meena taiji, in your own heart.

Afshan won’t argue you into faith. She’ll just be. And you’ll start writing poetry.4

Here’s the thing about the poetry: it won’t feel like yours. Lines will arrive. You’ll sit on the stairs at Maujpur Metro - lockdown, 2020, empty station - and this will come:

दिल में ग़म, ज़ुबां पर लतीफे लिए
खोखली खुशियां बांटता हुआ
बस चल रहा हूं मैं

And later:

खोए हुए घर की तलाश में
अपने रब से रूठा हुआ
बस चल रहा हूं

Upset with my Lord. Still walking.

That’s when you’ll know. Not because someone convinced you. Because you’ll feel the channel. Something flowing through you. Call it inspiration, call it the subconscious, call it God - same thing, different masks.

Now, here’s where I disagree with Iqbal.

He ends the poem saying he served the world its “last cup” - meaning Islam. The final revelation.5 I get it. He was writing in 1908, reasserting Muslim identity against colonial erasure. But I can’t sign that line.

The mystics kept seeking after that “last cup.” The Sufis flowed into the Bhakti saints, into Kabir, into Nanak.6 The seeking didn’t stop. Now, I could be wrong - I don’t know enough about these threads to pull at them properly. But here’s what I do know: every message feels final to its believers. And yet:

ये काएनात अभी ना-तमाम है शायद
कि आ रही है दमादम सदा-ए-कुन-फ़यकूँ7

The universe is still incomplete, perhaps.
For the call of “Be, and it is” - keeps coming, again and again.

Kabir said “na main Hindu na Musalman” - I’m neither Hindu nor Muslim. But he was a seeker. Like Harry Potter, honestly - a literal Seeker, chasing the golden snitch of truth.8 He belongs in my camp.

I heard Om Jai Jagdish before I heard the Azaan. Meena taiji’s hands folding mine in front of Ganesh Ji - that’s as sacred to me as anything. The differences between religions? Superficial. The architecture varies. The foundation is one.9

दिल के आईने में है तस्वीर-ए-यार
जब ज़रा गर्दन झुकाई देख ली10

The beloved’s image is in the mirror of the heart.
I bowed my head a little - and saw it.

Here’s something that will blow your mind: Khud. Khudi. Khuda.

Self. Selfhood. God.

How are these words so close? Iqbal built an entire philosophy around Khudi - the development of the self. But look at the etymology. To know the self (khud) deeply (khudi) is to approach the divine (khuda). The mystics knew. The Sufis you pretend to only appreciate “aesthetically”? They knew.

This letter is Khud Kalami - talking to myself. Parveen Shakir’s word for it. But it’s also what Iqbal’s poem is. Adam talking to Adam across ten thousand years. The self, recognizing itself.

One more thing.

During your drop year, your parents will take your computer away. Your first breakup, honestly. But you’ll buy a book on Number Theory and start solving Project Euler problems anyway - working them out on a register during metro rides to coaching, begging for computer time to code the solutions.11

Later, at Jamia, you’ll read The Music of the Primes and something will shift. You’ll see that math isn’t just calculation - it’s search. Riemann wandering through the complex plane, looking for zeros that might not exist. The same restlessness. The same itch.

That same spirit - Adam’s spirit - moved through mathematicians too. Iqbal covered the prophets and scientists. Someone had to cover the mathematicians.

So I wrote an extension. Same meter. Same style. Call it fan fiction. Call it blasphemy. I call it continuation.

Here it is - figure out who’s who:12

किसी शहर-ए-नदी के सात पुलों की गिरह थी
उसे रेख़-ओ-गिरह में ढाल के खोला मैं ने

रक़म किया कि कोई हल नहीं तग़य्युर-ए-दर्जों का
मगर दलील को सदियों तलक छुपाया मैं ने

अदद की रात में चमकाया क़ानून-ए-बाक़ी का दियाँ
परकार से खिलाया सत्रह-गुल का नक़्श-ए-नगीं मैं ने

अदद की राह में बाँटी रविश-ए-बुर्हान मैं ने
अदब के नाम पे लिखा “मिरी मआज़रत” मैं ने

रातों के ख़्वाब में आई नामगिरी, दिखा गई रक़म का राज़
काग़ज़ पे उतरती गईं अनंत शृंखलाएँ, लिख दीं बे-हिसाब मैं ने

बनाई ऐसी ज़बाँ कि ख़ुद बताए अपनी हद भी
कहा: “हर सच न होगा साबित” - ये हुक्म-ए-ना-तमाम मैं ने

हाफ़िज़े में ही बसा दी तहरीर-ए-अमल की सूरत मैं ने
कम-से-कम दाँव से तौला मुकाबिले का हर उसूल मैं ने

किया रम्ज़-ए-एनीग्मा को बे-असर, सुकून-ए-जंग में मैं ने
ख़मोशियों में पढ़ा हर्फ़-ए-दुश्मन जुनून-ए-रंग में मैं ने

क़लम से की रविश-ए-अक़्ल की हिफ़ाज़त मैं ने
अदब में पाया नोबेल पुरस्कार, कमाया ए’तिबार मैं ने

That’s nine couplets. Nine seekers. All Adam.

Same spirit that couldn’t sit still in Paradise. Same spirit that burned idols and then built new ones. Same spirit that hung on the cross and hid in Hira and captured lightning.

The restlessness is the point.

We’re all sons and daughters of Adam. We serve one Lord. By different names, through different paths, with different tools - compass and proof and code and qawwali.

You’ll get here, 2012 me. It’ll take a decade and a half. A girl named glitter. A metro station poem. A Nusrat qawwali you finally stop lying about. A diagnosis that made faith feel like weather.13

बस चल रहा हूं मैं।

Still walking.

Oh, one last thing. You know how physicists chase a Theory of Everything? You’ll want to write the religious version. One framework that connects all faiths, and proves there’s no war between science and the sacred. You won’t finish it. But you’ll keep walking toward it.

If you’ve read this far: thanks. I owe you one.

  1. The full text with translation is here. I can’t read Nastaliq script (sad, I know), but AadhiBaat’s video explainer with images is stunning. For a deeper dive with Quranic references, Munira Sozer’s line-by-line breakdown is excellent. ↩

  2. Nazeer Akbarabadi’s Aadmi Nama does the same thing horizontally: kings and beggars, saints and shoe-thieves at the mosque-“सो है वो भी आदमी” (he too is a man). Iqbal does it vertically across time. Same insight, different axis. ↩

  3. Assisi Convent, BHEL Colony, Noida. A Christian school named after St. Francis, a Hindu temple next door, and a Muslim kid in between. Tawheed in a satellite image. ↩

  4. You’ll hate this. You, the rationalist. Writing shers. But it’ll happen. ↩

  5. The Six Kalmas don’t actually say Muhammad is the “last” messenger - just “His messenger.” The finality doctrine comes from “Khatam an-Nabiyyin” (Seal of the Prophets) in Quran 33:40. But “seal” is interpretable - Ibn Arabi’s Khatam al-Awliya tradition reads it as “authenticator” or “perfecter.” Prophethood may be sealed, but guidance through saints (awliya), teachers (murshid), and poets continues. ↩

  6. Baba Farid’s poetry is in the Guru Granth Sahib. The Sufi-Sikh connection runs deep. I spent a peaceful few hours at Gurudwara Bangla Sahib with Afshan once - that silence felt as sacred as any mosque or mandir. ↩

  7. Iqbal himself. Even he knew finality was suspect. ↩

  8. Yes, I’m a Potterhead. Sue me. ↩

  9. Dara Shukoh wrote the same thing in 1655 - Majma-ul-Bahrain, “The Mingling of Two Oceans.” He spent nine years studying the Quran and the Vedas, concluded they pointed to the same truth, and was beheaded by his brother Aurangzeb for it. Some ideas are dangerous. ↩

  10. Lala Mauji Ram Mauji. A Hindu poet writing in Urdu about finding the beloved in the heart. The irony isn’t lost on me. ↩

  11. I wish I still had that register. Lost it somewhere between all the house moves. Still bugs me. The code survived on GitHub though - Lua solutions, plus a BigNum library I wrote from scratch. ↩

  12. Hint: there are nine mathematicians. Some obvious, some less so. Consider it an exercise. ↩

  13. I wrote about bipolar and faith here. The highs bring prayer. The lows take it away. The cycle continues. ↩