I went to see Mehboob Ali Shah sahib in the morning. We sat down. I shared the drawings and animatic for my project “Risalo”. He had asked me to bring by these things to share at the end of our last meeting, so I made sure to do so. He took time to understand what I was trying to do, and asked questions for clarification, then shared some suggestions. Seeing the photos of puppets, he thought of a verse related to the story of Moomal Rano, which seemed to fit. It was a verse about how things that don’t speak can tell you more than words sometimes. He started to share some interesting insights into the story of Moomal Rano as told by Shah Latif in his poetry.At one point in the story, Rano has been away from his love Moomal for a while and returns in the night to see that behind the curtain of her bed there were two figures sleeping in the bed.He does not step closer to see who it is, thinking it best to accept that she was with another man, and let her be with her choice. There is no violent reaction either. He simply places his walking stick or staff beside the bed, and leaves, as he came, quietly in the night.Moomal wakes up the next morning and sees the staff and realizes that Rano had come in the night and left. The other figure in her bed, had just been her sister. It was all a big mix up and now Rano had gone far away to where he was from, and Moomal had no chance to reconnect. In typical melodramatic style, they never meet again, so goes the popular folk tale.Shah Latif, the great Sindhi sufi poet used this as a vehicle to say something more and that is what Mehboob Ali Shah sahib was explaining to me. When I had read it, I just felt that Rano was a bit dramatic and stubborn. Moomal had not done anything wrong and so I did not understand why in later verses she was thanking him for the lesson he taught her.She said that he taught her more with his silence and that gesture of leaving the walking stick by her bed than he could have with words. Mehboob sahib shared the Sindhi verses and translated word for word to share some of the rich beauty of Latif’s words with me. I had read the Urdu translation by Sheikh Ayaz, which is beautiful, but as I began to learn, had omitted quite a bit.Mehboob sahib went into a few stories to illustrate another aspect of what was going on in this story as told in the poetry. Just as only a single sword fits in a scabbard, so only one can live in your heart. The idea, was that the one in your heart needed to be God. The story in affect, was illustrating that point. The story of Moomal Rano was just a vehicle for Shah Latif to express this thought. In the Islamic tradition, God’s aspects are mostly in service to creation, be it compassion, beneficent etc. God asks for only one thing, and that is to be unassociated with any other. This is the lesson she is thankful for here.This wasn’t about a man and a woman meeting, but about a human being’s relationship with God. Mehboob sahib further gave example of a story of Hazrat Ali who had vanquished a warrior in battle and was about to take his life, when the man kneeling before him spit in his mouth. The story goes that Hazrat Ali stopped his sword and told the man to stand. The man stood. He asked why he had done that. The man replied that he wanted to anger Hazrat Ali so that he would bring down his sword faster and without any doubt and end it all.Instead, the story goes, that Hazrat Ali tells him that he is free to go. The man is shocked and asks why. The response is that to kill him now would be to satisfy his own ego, out of personal anger, rather than as the will of God. These kinds of examples are interesting. While not quite in tune with my feelings on how to do things. I am getting interesting perspectives and stories from a Sufi Islamic perspective as well as from a few other friends who are communists. It is fascinating to see the range of what people pick out and own in this beautiful poetry, and which stories they link the work to.The story goes on, that the man is so taken aback by Hazrat Ali’s honor and fear of God, that he stops and asks if he can become a Muslim. Hazrat Ali says sure, but why? Both fierce combatants, he says that he did not think Hazrat Ali would fear anything, but that he feared God and had such honor that it inspired him to join. All religions have such stories of obedience and violence. They are also a product of the cultural norms of their times, but in this case the story was told by Mehboob sahib to illustrate the commitment to God, that even one’s ego or in urdu khudi was not to occupy that place of most importance in ones heart.I enjoy the way Mehboob sahib tells several stories to explain the ideas behind each verse of poetry. Another story he shared was of a famous Pakistani singer, who facing a sad illness and failing at all treatments, mentioned in an interview that if she was given time in her life, she would devote herself to sing only praises of the Prophet Muhammed. This is a pretty natural response when facing ones mortality to seek the help or favor of God. However, the point in the poetry was that the place of the creator should always be paramount in your heart, not just when you need help.So in the end, the idea was that Moomal and Rano were representing the relationship between created and creator. When God was out of her mind, Moomal allowed her sister to take that place where God belonged, and then suffered that separation from her beloved, God. It was certainly an interesting point of view and from a structural point of view, gave the story more sense.At that point, our time was up as Mehboob sahib had let me know before hand that he had to attend to other tasks at that time. Yet he did not rush me to go. Like a true teacher, he stopped and shared another thought. He told me of a conversation his mother and father had when he was much younger. She was reassured by four of her sons and the good jobs they had, but she worried about the one son, who seemed not to have figured out what he was going to do. I asked, “Which son might that be?” with a smile. Mehboob sahib smiled then told of how his father told his mother not to worry about him, for to him he would give his knowledge and a river would flow and provide for him. So it was that he continued his father’s tradition of imparting the deep wisdom of Shah Latif to people as well as the verse of his father.He continued by connecting the story to me by reassuring me that though I may not know what immediate gains or successes may or may not come of the work I do, that as I continue, it would certainly bring benefits that I may not even fathom right now. I had not mentioned my concerns or tribulations of this project, beyond that I needed help finding the Sindhi verses. Yet, I thought it so kind of him to think of me and what I might face as challenges in what I am doing, and to say something kind and reassuring, even encouraging to me.I really appreciate the vote of confidence. In fact he even suggested that I take a verse of his father’s and put it to puppetry, which is a very sweet endorsement of what I am trying to do. All of these deeply knowledgable people, including Javed Solangi and Shafqat Qadri sahib as well are pouring out the gifts of their knowledge to help me.Lastly, Mehboob sahib related another verse of Shah Latif’s regarding serving the ocean, for the tiniest of treasures gleaned from it would be enough to satisfy ones needs forever. There are many ways to look upon each verse. He shared that the ocean which certainly feels without limit, represented the limitlessness of God and that once you served God with love and humility, that God too would take care of you.Afterwards, I visited Zulfikar Ali Gopang sahib who had encouraged me to meet Mehboob sahib to begin with and we chatted for a while about his own connections starting with his father and Mehboob sahib’s connection going back, and how generous they had always been with their knowledge.I spent the rest of the day digesting knowledge and working on the design for the Sohni puppet. In the evening I did a bit of tutoring in English reading to Naveed Mohammed, who works at the corner store. He had stopped his schooling at grade 5 years ago, and was interested in learning.Afterwards, I went down the street to meet Solangi sahib and Moeeb sahib. Moeeb sahib was the Shah Latif expert we had been waiting for. Solangi sahib and several other friends had kept saying that he was the one to meet and work on this whole reverse engineering translated Urdu verses to Sindhi verses for the “Risalo” script. He had been gone for a couple of weeks, and had just returned. It was good to meet. We discussed a few pieces of poetry, and he shared many beautiful verses with detailed on the spot translations for my benefit. Such is the love that people have for this wonderful poet, Shah Latif.There was more talk of how the Urdu translation so heavily veered away from the source material, which really worried me as I am running out of time. This step of the process had taken way too long already. It was good to know people’s thoughts and they were right, but I also shared my ground realities and limitations. I needed to move on and get this project actually going so that one day I could go home to my family and life and also actually create this film rather than abandon it.The friends reassured me that they would help me make this happen, then I got dropped back at the hostel and called it a night.