Born in Lahore, my childhood is shaped by the history of the city, both pre-colonial and post- colonial. The Mughal architecture stands majestic amidst the dusty horizons of the modern day Lahore, once the city of gardens, now my poetic Eden.   In 2007 my first poem ‘A Farewell to Czeslaw Miloz’ appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review commemorating the polish poet who witnessed and depicted horrors of European theatre of two acts of war and chose exile for his poetic life. Poetry made me learn to empathize with the homeless and exiles. How often exile is a mental displacement, an excommunication of soul, an imaginary eviction from one’s own home, a state of vacancy, and a journey that does not end. Bearing the burden of colonial history, a religious nationalism, and a political culture breeding violence in my younger years I imbibed Urdu and Persian literature and been ever reluctant to become a faddish postcolonial exponent, a defender of the indigenous, rather I went to poetry for the sheer pleasure of language. Lahore, I Am Coming (2017) is my first collection of poems shot through the double lens of writer-wanderer and writer-settler. Lahore calls me back for its history, art, and literature but finding my city beleaguered by terrorism saddens me. Suicide bombings killed people; markets, shrines, and children in parks were bombed. Poetry also responded to this hiatus of insanity. Let us agree that charity is one thing which all exiles deserve. To this end, the chanting of qawwali couplets by the classical Persian poet Amir Khusro sung by an ever-affable Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan, a Pavarotti of East, only enhances the pain of those who are exilic by birth. Vouloir, c’est pouvoir – a pet’s will be all he has.