Ibrahim woke up with a jolt. He rubbed his eyes as if trying to shed of the looming dream. After so many years of forgetting his past, he was in peace that he has locked up his bygones in a cage and bolted up with locks of prayers and chains of meditation and threw the keys in a bottom less pit.
At the beginning of his solitary days, he used to wake up every night, wet in fear. Guilty and weak. He was long way from home, he found his sanctuary on the stairs of Ajmer Sharif. The recitation of the holy verses sooth his disturbed soul, he ate food with the hoboes around the shrine, swept the floors and slept on the same bed with a broken pillow to steady the head and a mere sheet shielding from the open wind.
The time turned the pages of his life, he had made a permanent spot in the aficionados of the holy place. Baray Maulwi sahib, his mentor had said "You devote yourself here and the blessings of Khawaja will bestow upon you". He had knotted this advice to his brains. Day in and day out; he prayed, worked, meditated. His whole spiritual routine had made him a dear at the consecrated place. When he recited Quran, people from round the area would sit near him and engross the holiness. Women who couldn't conceive a child were taken to him from special dua. Still he found himself lesser then the people around him. Why wasn't he born a Muslim? Why couldn't he be a son of a maulwi instead of a sardar? Why was his name Rajveer not Ibrahim?
There was still time for Tahajud. As he splashed the cold water from the pound in order to purify himself, his mind ran to the dream he had earlier. Fragments was all he could remember now. He had seen the haunted haweli dressed in small Deepak. He remembered that it was raining and he was running to catch the train. He saw his aunt crying on a dead body and each time he used to wake up the very moment when the face of the corpse was being reveled. As usual he left his sorrows to the Al-mighty and he raised his palms to his ears. "ALLAH-HU-AKBAR".
