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While post-nuclear explosion Pakistan is singing accolades for its atomic scientists, the work of a scientist of a totally different kind is recognised internationally as having the potential to affect life and living in a more constructive atmosphere. "Recognised globally as one of the outstanding social scientists of our age," is how Arif Hasan opens an article about Akhtar Hameed Khan. More of a phenomenon than a person, Akhtar Hameed Khan is a development genius who put Orangi on the map. Recognition, fame, age and health are no deterrent for Khan Sahib (as he is respectfully known) who is not one for resting on laurels won in the past. At the ripe age of 86, he maintains a strict work discipline and still spends a considerable amount of time in the Orangi area of Karachi. It was at the simply and effectively designed office of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) that Asif Farrukhi spoke to Akhtar Hameed Khan and fell under the spell of his fascinating and oracular conversation, and realised that a social conscience and charisma can co-exist in one person.

Akhtar Hameed Khan stands tall and talks straight. He minces no words and on a number of occasions he has held audiences spell-bound with his analytical and hard-hitting speeches, delivered with such clarity and precision, almost as if he was reading a paper. Clad in simple khaddar clothes, he sits in an airy room at OPP, which serves as an office of sorts, and there he holds court like a sage, discussing and planning but more than anything else, he brainstorms. He quotes from the Holy Quran, Shaikh Saadi, other Persian poets and Western philosophers and applies his in-depth study of Indo-Muslim history to the state of affairs in this country today. His conversation is that of a cultured man and full of an incisive wit, sharp and to the point. "Arrogance" describes the actions of a national leader, he says as if pronouncing a final diagnosis. "The cup in the head is full. There is no room for a drop more," is how he describes a social activist who refuses to learn from her experience. Conversation is an art that he excels and relishes in, it is interviews which give him a sense of misgiving. "I am an old man now," he says using age to his advantage. "I have said all these things a number of times," as he refers to a collection of his papers and articles published by the Oxford University Press, Karachi, a few years ago. Age provides a vantage point for him. "After years of work in Orangi I realised that I was then a solitary old man, but there was another blessing which I wrote about. A kind fate has not yet taken away from me, even in my dotage, the improvising ability of Robinson Crusoe and the benevolent fantasy of Don Quixote."

"An old man’s tales," is how he describes his personal reminiscences of social change, "claiming no more validity for them than a novelist does for his story." No work of imagination, Akhtar Hameed Khan’s life-story is a description of transformations in social phenomenon. In an easy, conversational manner, Khan Sahib talks of his antecedents and cultural roots and it is only then that one can appreciate the close link between his background and the upbringing and the values that his development work promotes and supports. He defines himself as belonging to the post Sir Syed Ahmed Khan generation of the Muslim shurfa in India. The most precious legacy of this background was the philosophy of Sufism. He was later to term it "perennial and profound" and names it as the source for the values of restraint, forbearance and compassion. "I learnt from my father the value of integrity and its benefit: freedom from fear and anxiety." Of his mother, he says "she made me a lover of books, a believer in simple living and high thinking." Parental virtues provided the firm bedrock against which his own development occurred.

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