At first Suhail Ahmad Khan was just a name I sometimes heard in the Tea House or the Coffee House or Cheney's Lunch Home, and a face that was vaguely familiar. The only thing I knew for certain about him was that he had done his Masters in Urdu and joined the teaching staff of the Oriental College, Lahore, at a relatively young age. Formal education, whatever it may be worth in purely worldly terms, often seemed to me a sheer waste of time. So teachers meant little to me. Some of the conclusions I arrived at four decades ago seem rather ill-conceived now. Teachers do matter if they are any good. But good teachers, alas, are fast becoming a rare breed.

Anyhow, all this underwent a sea change one day, perhaps in late 1969 or early 1970. I received a new issue of Funoon. While leafing through it, I came across six or seven short poems by Suhail. I liked what I read and said to myself: here is someone I should keep an eye on from now onwards. The poems, their brevity notwithstanding, had an aura of freshness about them.

Almost providentially, a few days later, as Riaz Ahmad, my friend and one of the editors of Savera, and I were on our way from the Tea House to Anarkali, we ran into Suhail. I was uncommonly pleased to see him because I wanted to compliment him on his poems. Riaz also had read his contribution to Funoon and both of us said how happy we were to find someone with genuine promise. We also said that had he shown his poems to us we would have published them, without any hesitation, in Savera.

Naturally, Suhail was moved by our effusiveness and suggested that we should go into Cheney's Lunch Home for a pot of tea and a chat. After all, it seemed the right thing to do. During our brief conversation I realized that I have met someone who was definitely not a run-of-the-mill lecturer in Urdu. As was to be expected, his knowledge of Urdu literature was up-to-date and incisive but he had read western poets, writers and critics also, and what was more to the point, read them perceptively and enthusiastically. I decided there and then that here was a person after my own heart. A strange certainty pervaded my mind. It is the beginning of a friendship, I told myself, which is going to last a life-time. And so it did.

After we had taken each other's leave, I asked Riaz about our encounter and he said: "Nothing chancy about this. There is a scheme of things which we have no inkling of. Right now we have gained a new friend." Sure enough, the rapport between us grew stronger as the years went by. There were so many interests we shared – literature, music, films, paintings, mythology, cricket. During the twentieth century, the dastans in Urdu had generally been looked down upon or simply ignored in a climate fostered by an insistence on the utilitarian or ideological element in literature. But Suhail saw the reviled dastans as a distinct, even distinctive, genre, a view with which I was in total agreement. His doctoral dissertation on the symbolic dimensions of dastans would remain a seminal work for quite a while.

As a literary critic, he was deeply influenced by Muhammad Hasan Askari and Muzaffar Ali Syed, both extremely knowledgeable. Askari combined clarity with flair. Muzaffar was more sedate and circumspect. Suhail learned a great deal from them but emulated neither. He had his own precise style, shorn of superfluity. It is a pity that he wrote so little and in his later days preferred to extemporise rather than write. He was a gifted speaker, undoubtedly the outcome of having taught post-graduate classes for many a year. He wore his learning lightly and was adept at making unusually and illuminating connections, the hallmark of an accomplished teacher.

As a poet his output, quantitively speaking, is slight: two slim volumes of poems in all. A third volume, whenever it is published, would also include his ghazals. His poems are generally short and put one in mind of Housman or Walter de la Mare. But the comparison would not do justice to Suhail. There are no irritating circumlocutions or deep-seated bitterness one comes across in Housman. Nor can we find the softness, cushioned by euphony and whimsy, so peculiar to da la Mare. Instead, there is a tone of sadness, of quiet reflection, valedictory in its inevitability, as the world with all its good and bad, slips through our fingers, fading out. Birds, which figure so prominently in many of his poems, symbolise vagrancy, dislocations and a near mystical sense of freedom. What the birds actually feel we would never know but Suhail reads into the visible our own joys and fears and a sense of the invisible, the phenomenal world mirroring our discontent or, to see it differently, our composure. Some of his poems would certainly press for inclusion in any representative anthology of Urdu poems.

His ability to see a problem in its totality and come up with a quick and sensible solution to it was remarkable. He could have been an excellent administrator but he disliked management and in particular the unending paperwork which it invariably entails. He could have done wonders had he been put in charge of a purely literary institution or a big publishing house. It is easy to imagine what he could achieve as an editor by going through Mehrab, a literary magazine he jointly brought out with Ahmad Mushtaq, the well-known poet. The six or maybe seven issues of Mehrab which they published can now be rated as collector's items and had more substance in them than many bulky Urdu literary journals which appear nowadays. However, there was one thing he was very keen on doing but never managed to, i.e. to bring out a magazine in Urdu carrying only well-written and cogent book reviews. "I would do it off my own bat, no matter what it may eventually cost," he often said. I admit I did not share his enthusiasm. I knew that we would rarely get any help from others and would have to write the reviews ourselves. The whole idea made me nervous.

The years he spent in Japan on a teaching assignment can be regarded as a defining period in his life. While there was more time for him to read and think it also afforded him an opportunity to cope with loneliness. He came back with heaps of books, a veritable treasure trove, and was rightly proud of his collection. Books were the only riches that mattered to him. But, after his return from Japan, one could also discern in him a streak of disengagement which gradually became more pronounced. He confessed again and again that he felt out of sorts with the intellectual temper of Pakistan. The increasing intolerance, the meaningless authoritarianism and the botched educational system did not bode well for the future.

To add to his disenchantment fate dealt him a cruel blow. The sudden and inexplicable death of his young son-in-law left behind an emotional scar, harder to put up with than mere loneliness. Cesar Vallejo, one of the great poets of the twentieth century, says in one of his unforgettable poems, "Black Messengers" (Los heraldos negros) that "That there are blows in life so strong … they are few, but they are… the open dark pits in the fiercest face and the stoutest back." Yes, there are blows in life which shatter one's soul. Suhail did not share his anguish with others, maintaining his privacy like a hidden wound, but the will to live may have drained away. It is only a conjecture. The bare facts are that he died after a brief but devastating illness.

There are no replacements in life. We must learn to notice and appreciate each person's, each thing's uniqueness. To be unique is to be insoluble and therefore, on its own terms, an enduring mystery. There are only openings and closures. Forty years of companionship draw to a close. During those four decades, not counting the time Suhail spent abroad, such weeks were a rarity when we did not meet, once at least. There was so much to share: books, poets, ideas, plans. There were times when our minds lit up. There were times when we groped in the dark. The unending enigma of life and human relationship. It was indeed a privilege to know Suhail. And that's something I can say about very few persons.

Predominantly an English books outlet, Readings, at Main Boulevard, Gulberg was inaugurated in September 2006.

Established and run on "family Book shop" concept, it took off majestically, selling over a million books to date, categorically antagonising the widely believed misperception that our society was no more book-friendly. Anwar Nasir, the co-owner of the project and a promising poet, talks to TNS.

The News on Sunday: You are a medical graduate. Tell us how did such a great departure take place and you chose bookselling as a profession?

Anwar Nasir: That was a long time ago. Besides, medical profession could never become my passion the way reading and writing were. I am happy I ended up dong something I believe I can make a difference in, something directly related to my personal aspirations.

TNS: What were your aims and objectives while moving into this project of establishing a phenomenal updated bookshop?

AN: Actually, I had so much in mind. I wanted that we should be able to provide a huge variety of books in all subject areas at incredibly low prices and that too in the most reading friendly atmosphere. You can say that I wanted to treat my customers the way the book readers are treated in the civilized world, the way I wished I had been treated in a bookshop in my own country too. Hopefully, we succeeded. At Readings, you find a blend of new and old books to suit needs. Even if you don't want to buy anything, you can sit and read at will all day long in an air-conditioned ambience.

TNS: Readings was launched at a time when our society was visibly averse to reading. Don't you think a huge risk was involved here?

AN: To be honest, there was. Though I could hardly ever believe this aversion, there were strong indicators in the society in its support: Local bookstores were always deserted (and still are): Publishers published only a handful of titles a year in small print runs. But when we dug deep, we found out that bookstores scarcely had any valuable books other than bestsellers to offer and/or the prices were sky high. Publishers too had restricted themselves to a few and secure subject areas and in many cases to some secure authors. So there was scope and the idea was worth a hearty try. Once we were open, the social aversion proved only to be a myth.

TNS: I believe M. Salim-ur-rahman, the distinguished scholar, played a key role to help you fulfil this mammoth task?

AN: M. Salim-ur-rahman, as I put it, is the essence of Readings. Not only does he always share with us his visionary views of book trade around the globe but also shows us the way to methodically achieve this goal in Pakistan. He practically worked long hours with us when we were opening. Besides him, my friend and partner Saeed and other friends and my family have been great help.

TNS: At Readings, one finds an overwhelming display of books in English language whereas Urdu books have been relegated to a very small space. Do you intend to expand Urdu section as well?

AN: It is easy to understand. English over years has become the language of choice in bigger towns across Pakistan. Syllabi are in English, the official language is English, we want our children to communicate in English, and so on. Besides, English compared to Urdu has limitless offerings in all subjects.

Therefore, English will continue to dominate our bookstores until we do something serious about Urdu and other local languages. Yet, I believe we can offer a lot more than our current inventory in Urdu and we are working in that direction. Soon, you will find all essential Urdu writings at Readings. Also, we have plans to build an 'other local languages' section too.

TNS: You have reserved a nook at Readings as a coffee shop for authors and buyers. Keeping in view the acute shortage of such sitting places in town, do you have any plans to increase its size?

AN: Yes, we do. In fact, it is only the beginning of what we have in mind. In addition to a proper coffee shop, we want to slot in a lobby for authors, intellectuals and social scholars, a place where they can chitchat, sign their books and share their experiences and views with their readers. I hope it won't take us long.

TNS: What social strata do you visitors/buyers generally belong to?

AN: Readings is a unique place that offers a blend of new and old books at a time. You can buy an old children book starting at rupees ten, a novel at twenty-five, a serious read at hundred and even latest books way below their cover price. So you see there the readers from all social classes and all age groups. There are such visitors too, who don't afford to buy a thing and still can read at leisure every latest book or magazine they lay their hands on.

TNS: Now that you have succeeded in establishing a name of book trade, what are your future plans?

AN: As I said earlier, it is only the beginning. We are about to launch our website. Soon, we will open huge outlets in other big cities to begin with and will reach out to smaller towns too with the passage of time. We are also keen to open many smaller outlets in Lahore, a few of them in low income areas with abundant supply of inexpensive books. But we won't limit to outlets only; we will earmark a portion of our supplies for donations too.

TNS: Do you intend to establish a Publishing House? If so, what kind of books will you publish?

AN: That is very much the idea. Our work is incomplete without it. We want to model our publication house after our western counterparts. Starting with children stuff in English and Urdu, we intend to establish separate divisions for children, everyday trade subjects and research-oriented work. In addition to a publication centre, we are keen to establish a distribution house too. It will help improve the book trade across Pakistan and will relieve publishers of the additional burden of selling their merchandise.

TNS: You are a poet and a writer. Drawing on your twofold experience of writing and bookselling, how do you see the ongoing literary decline in the country? Is there hope?

AN: Writing could never become a true profession in Pakistan and that too for obvious reason. Writing can't earn you a living. Writers, you included, have different basic professions and turn to writing only when they can spare time. I believe that Dickens, Dostoyevsky and the likes of them may not have produced what they have if it were not their primary field of work. Give your writer a chance to make a living out of his art and you will witness a reversal of the existing scene. Pay him his work's worth as the publishers do in the West and you will see a good new breed of literati in no time. I believe there is no dearth of potential.

Iftikhar Arif absorbed all that the cultural city of Lucknow had to offer during the middle yeas of the twentieth century. He says the Lucknow of those days had lost its position of being the heart of the Indo-Muslim culture, but traces of its past glory are very much there. Poetry is still in vogue and poets are widely respected in Lucknow.

Iftikhar Arif, now the country's foremost poet, had a flair for poetry from his school days. His first ghazal was published in his school magazine and carried his name as Iftikhar Hussain Arif, class VII.

Madarassa Nazamia Farangi Mahal was his first school, which was noted as the custodian of the Muslim educational tradition. He completed his education from Lucknow University that stood for modern Indian intellectual values.

Iftikhar Arif has learnt many things from various classic Urdu poets, more from Anis, Aatish and Yagana Changezi than Mir, Faiz and Rashid. They too have been a considerable influence on his poetry and worldview but only professional critics and teachers can detect the traces of their influence. In its totality, however, Iftikhar Arif's poetry is unique and very much his own.

The late Sajjad Baqar Rizvi was my friend. We were together at Punjab University, New Campus, in Lahore for many years and often spent our evenings together. He used to say Iftikhar Arif had overwhelmed himself with the subject of South Asian Muslim civilization. His wonderful achievement, however, was that despite this awesome burden, he did not let his individuality wane.

Arif derived inspiration from the tragic events of Karbala. He did not use the great tragedy merely as a symbol of oppression and unfairness existing in society but also as a symbol of resistance to oppression.

This resistance has given his poetry a touch of cultured protest. Likewise his faith in God and humanity has endowed him with many hopes and dreams. Mehr-e-Do Neem was Iftikhar Arif's first collection of poetry and was published in 1989. Harf-e-Baryab, his second, appeared in 1994, and was followed by Jahan-e-Maloom in 2004. A number of ghazals and poems included in these volumes have been translated into English, Hindi, Persian, Russian and German.

Top singers, including Malika-e-Moseeqi Roshan Ara Begum, Malika-e-Taranum Madam Noor Jehan and Iqbal Bano have sung his ghazals.

The Maktaba-e-Danyal -- famous for publishing quality literary books -- has now brought out in one volume, the complete collection of Iftikhar Arif's poetry titled Kitab-e-Dil-o-Dunya which was launched at the Arts Council, Karachi past fortnight. Mushtaq Ahmad Yousufi presided over the event while Mazhar Jameel, Mubin Mirza, Ahfazur Rehman, Fazil Jamili and Ambareen Haseeb Amber were among the speakers.

After refusing to speak to the press for many years, the Czech-born novelist Milan Kundera was recently forced to hold a present conference in Prague, in order to refute the claims of some local historians, regarding the discovery of a police report which said Kundera reported a young pilot Miroslav Dvoracek to communist police in 1950 when he deserted to become a US-backed intelligence agent.

The young pilot was arrested on the basis of information provided to the police by Kundera. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison in September 1950. However, he was released in 1963 and now lives in Sweden.

The Prague's Institute has published the 1950 police report for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes.

Kundera denies the charges. A newspaper quoted him saying, "I am absolutely taken aback by something that I'd never expect, that I didn't even know about yesterday, and that never happened. I didn't know the man at all. "Dvoracek's wife says that the discovery of the police report has not surprised them: "Kundera is a good writer but I am under no illusions about him as a human being."