I have been writing these essays (I like to call them stories)

for a long time, the earliest being in 1984, and publishing some

in Pakistani newspapers and some on blogs.

Several times, I toyed with the idea of compiling these

stories in a book form but was not sure of the usefulness of such

an endeavor. One difficulty was the diversity of the subjects -

from reminiscences to anecdotal history to folklore to so much

else. It was not possible to assign a genre to the collection.

It was only recently when a pen friend, Ejaz Rahim, who

has also written one of the two generous forewords to this

volume, prodded me in an email, saying, "The fact is humans

die; the fiction is books continue to live." I fell for the fiction,

and hence this slim volume of mostly reminiscences about the

people I came across or worked with and events I was part of.

In short, it is about the world I left behind.

I plan to publish the other essays in a second volume.