O Khalid! my Khalid!

By Zahoorul Haq Danish

Shakespeare said, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Khalid Bin Wali had all the three attributes to his credit, plus a fourth one that by virtue of his indiscriminate love and carefree humility he commanded greatness in the hearts of people he met.

Khalid was not born for this world: his good nature and accomplished character were too much for this finite world to sustain and cherish. My limited vocabulary, random thoughts and broken feelings cannot duly describe him and the beauty of character he possessed.

Khalid bin Wali, 34, died in a road traffic accident on Oct 20, 208.

He was an asset, a true son of the soil, a gem, a true gem of a person. It will take hundreds of years and tens of generations on this soil to have a gem like him around. One could never see him stressed, frustrated and bored even for a single moment. His temperament was permanently mild and extraordinarily cool in all situations.

One would believe that Shakespeare described Khalid’s temperament when, in his famous sonnet, he said:
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”

Khalid’s was a transcendental attitude: he could see and relish the beauty of life and existence beyond the boundaries of stresses, fears, tensions and difficulties. If one were his friend, one would truly feel an overarching and caring existence all around, as if his friendship and his signature laughter could heal all ills of one’s life.

He was a sense of security, an embodiment of delight, an epitome of transcending love. His focused eye contact and iconic smile would wash away all worries from one’s heart, and all stresses from one’s mind. He was a healer: a healer with his iconic smile and signature laughter.
He had a signature laughter.

He would laugh, and laugh whole heartedly, as if he is laughing for the last time; and he would laugh with the same relish every time. His laughter was a prolonging one. One could literally see and feel his laughter creeping all the way up from his soul through his heart; pour forth from his lips like a distinctive fragrance; and echo in one’s soul to heal one’s stress.

Khalid was an intellectual, a reader – a voracious reader. He had profound questions in his mind. And in search of answers to those questions he had read hundreds of books on religion, philosophy, literature and history.

He read all those books to ultimately find that his questions remained unanswered. Surprisingly enough, far from stressing him his questions would delight him. Perhaps, God had answers to all those questions, that is why He called him to Heaven so early. While talking about intellectual topics, he would enlighten you to an extraordinary extent, and, in a few minutes, would teach you more than scores of books and teachers could in years.

Khalid was a man of achievements. By virtue of his character, his humility, his accomplished artistic faculty as a poet and his extraordinary intellectual capabilities he carved a good name and a respectable niche for himself in society, in Judiciary, in Management Service, as well as in the hearts of people at a tender age – a fame one could only dream of in life. But pride or arrogance could never approach him. Never.

He was indiscriminately courteous, polite, humble and amicable with everyone. The profound love in his heart for people surpassed the baser sentiments of pride, arrogance and egoism of human nature.He could look beyond them and the milestones of achievements, and get delighted in being a common man.

He was a man of Faith. A man of faith he was, not by chance but by choice and devout consciousness. He would converse with God, and converse about God, Faith and existence. His love for God manifested itself in his love for His creation, and in being good to them. He loved God’s creation in all forms and shapes, and tried his best to love, respect and serve them by all great and tiny means available to him.

He was a poet, a poet endowed with accomplished poetic faculty. As a poet he had a rich, powerful and exactly controlled poetic style that ranks him with great lyrical poets of the world like John Keats and William Shakespeare. Khalid was Khowar’s John Keats: our Keats.

Like Keats he sought to create poetry in the world devoid of mythic grandeur, poetry that sought its wonder in the desires and sufferings of the human heart. Like Keats he left the world too early, at a tender age. John Keats, who died at the age of 25, had expressed the wish that on his gravestone no name or date should be written. The tombstone, he wished, should only bear the one-line inscription, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” Khalid too, I am sure, might have wished to have one of his own famous lines inscribed on his tombstone, and that line would be:
ای بس جُو بس بیرائے نغمہ سرائی، ہتے سوم عمرا پت درونگار جدائی