Aap sanwarain main milien main milyan sukh hoi

Farida, Je tu mera ho rahain sabh jag tera hoi

(Refine yourself and you will find me,

In finding me, you will find yourself.

O Fareed, if you would only be mine,

The whole world would be yours.)

— Baba Fareed Ganj Shakkar

When I was growing up, my mother was the chief consultant psychiatrist (later, executive director) at the Punjab Institute of Mental Health, Lahore. It was an unconventional childhood, since the hospital was a giant, sprawling beast with a population of thousands of patients, nurses, doctors and supporting staff: a city within a city, with a life and heartbeat of its own.

We lived in a doctors’ colony, just outside the hospital. My childhood memories and literary escapades carry the underpinnings of its ancient soul, its colonial architecture, and the silent screams and phantoms embedded in its walls and buried in the roots of its oak trees.

Our home, though it really felt like our home, would only be ours until my mother’s retirement. My father had always dreamed of a house of his own (as many Pakistanis do, of course). So, about a decade prior to my mother’s retirement, he embarked on the project. A leading architect - purist of Mughal/ Islamic architecture, Kamil Khan Mumtaz - was commissioned for the traditional-style house, with arches, cross walls, verandas, chobaras and other features, not dissimilar to the PIMH.

On the front façade of the house, inlaid in marble imported from Agra (at a time of somewhat more open borders and freer trade policies) and made by the descendants of the artisans who had worked on the Taj Mahal was the shalok by Baba Fareed that I have opened this article with.

The “me” in the shalok has been interpreted by many scholars to refer to the divine. In the Jungian sense, it can also refer to the higher self that can only be found once the ego has been transcended.

It can also be interpreted as true connection with another, a lover or a friend, or the world in a more general sense. At this juncture in my life (do we not encounter a different poem within the same poem every time we read it?) the idea of “sab jag tera hoye” (the whole world will be yours) imagines a world without borders, where we are all citizens of the world and not divided by race, ethnicity, class or nationality.

As a writer, you can work from anywhere. I was born and raised in Lahore, then moved back here after completing my bachelor’s at Boston University in 2014. In the 12 years since, I have lived and worked in Lahore, working all sorts of odd jobs from journalism and communications to academia and trying earnestly to build a life for myself here. Last year, I found myself at a dead-end, both in terms of my career and my musical journey. I had dedicated the three years prior to learning classical sitar and Indian classical music so fully, that my professional life had taken a back seat. It was not a dead end exactly, perhaps more of a crossroads — a juncture where a new beginning or boost is called for.

So I decided to apply for a post-graduate degree in writing (an MFA or MFA-style programme) after a year of doing mostly nothing and unsure of where to go next. In July of this year, most deadlines for 2026 had already passed and the only place that was still accepting applications was the Warwick writing programme in Coventry. I thought I’d just apply to this programme and if I don’t get in I can apply to more places for 2027. Three days later I got an offer letter. I took it as a sign that this is what I’m meant to do next. It feels to me, these days, that the ‘me’ that is to be found can only be found within. Sometimes you have to travel to find her.

With my travel date approaching and the anxiety of uprooting one’s life and settling down in a new place hovering over these slow, humid Lahore days, I’ve been thinking about how much I will miss the city that is my home.

When I was a teenager, it was already common to find that most people (particularly of student-age) were looking for a way out of Pakistan (for lack of a better word), in search of better opportunities, career and otherwise. The trend seems to have escalated. In my last decade or so teaching at various universities in Lahore, I have found that a growing number of students hope to leave the country at some point, due to an ever-narrowing job market and flagging economy.

When I went to America for my graduation, I was surprised to find how ghettoised the Diaspora there was. There was a tendency to avoid assimilation and to live there as we do here, engage (in the sense of community) with only other desis and to create a small Pakistan in whichever part of the world we were.

The Pakistani/ Indian Diaspora is so common in the West that Diaspora fiction has become a literary genre unto itself, a trend started at the time Mohsin Hamid’s book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, was published in the aftermath of 9/11.

Today, we live in an increasingly polarised world, with nationalism on the rise, not just in India and Pakistan but as a global trend. Anti-immigrant sentiment is at its peak in the West - not any less so in post-Brexit UK, where I am going. When I lived in America, I remember having a visceral reaction to anyone who called me an immigrant. I would correct them immediately: “I’m on a student visa,” intending fully to return to Pakistan upon completing my degree. This time around I am less sure.

I have not put much thought into who I will be or how my identity will be defined or how I will be perceived, here and in the UK. But oh Fareed, if only one could break through the confines of the ego and integrate with the true self, to belong fully to the world and have it fully belong to you.

Amar Alam is a writer and sitarist. She can be found on Instagram @amar.alam_literally