The first time I met him, he was giving a presentation to a crowd of avid onlookers on how to construct an amateur telescope. He had and still has a beard which I think even he doesnt remember when he last trimmed. He is one of those people about whom you later find out how wrong you were in your initial perception and unlike most bearded people in Pakistan, he always dons a trouser and a shirt.
Months later and I find myself mesmerized with his simple persona and open heartedness. He tells me that he has kept a beard from the time his relative passed away. because he couldn't look at the corpse of the deceased (the person died of face burns) and he decided to never shave the beard off his face again.
Having studied in unarguably the best school in Lahore, he now has a humble home, a steady job, is a divorcee, and has no children. He does not try to hide or lie about the fact that much of his time is spent watching TV in his room and that he considers TV to be his close friend. His only love is his motorbike whom he takes great care of. He tells me his motorbike is a model from the year 1986 and I tell him that also happens to be my birth year. Lastly he has a hobby due to which we met and I subsequently write this here, the sheer love of astronomy.
There is something very honest and humble about him. He is awed by the universe with a childlike curiosity. His facebook statuses are about the most usual and ordinary of things that we all experience but never bring ourselves about to expressing them. He has an air of serenity and peace around him, and when he cracks a joke, his eyes sparkle so bright, that a type 1A supernovae would appear dim in comparison.
I haven't met him for 8 months now, and I wonder why only now I thought I should write about him. Maybe because I recently read he is grinding glass to make a bigger and more efficient telescope to gaze into the heavens. I hope he is successful in doing that.
