Informal sittings with Chaudhry Sahib were a wonderful experience. He used to converse with loving kindness. He talked about religious and spiritual matters, intellectual and scholarly topics and his personal anecdotes, that were very enlightening and light-hearted.
When narrating incidents, he gave full details with remarkable clarity—date and day, location, planes and the weather. How did he manage to remember all those details? It boggles my mind even to this day.
Some narratives he repeated in different meetings but with remarkable consistency of details with no contradictions. Another good quality that he had was that he was never offended by any question and happily gave a brief or detailed reply as the situation demanded.
One day, while the two of us were seated on the dining table, a strange question sprang up my mind, out of the blue. I asked him: “Chaudhry Sahib! Allah has blessed you abundantly. He has granted you knowledge of many sciences. I would like to find out what is it that you do not know about.” He smiled and said, “You have asked a very good question. Nobody has ever asked me such a question before.”
After a brief pause, he said: “You are right. By His Grace, Allah has indeed blessed this humble one abundantly. Every bit of my being is always in obeisance to Him with gratitude. However, there are a few things that I do not know about. One is driving and the other is typing.”
He added immediately, “It is my Lord’s benevolence towards me that lack of these skills has never caused any difficulty or hindrance in my work in the whole of my life.” He elaborated further: “I have spent my life in travels which are ongoing. Whenever I had to go anywhere, my Lord provided me not only with a car but also a driver as well. I never had a problem because of a lack of driving skill.”
He added: “Similarly, I have been occupied with writing throughout my life and that has been my most important engagement.”
“It was my Lord’s Grace that whenever I had to get a letter or a composition to be typed, I had the services of a typist and very often full office facilities were available and, by the Grace of Allah, all my needs were fulfilled without any problem. And such kind treatment of Allah the Exalted for me is continuing.”
I realized that while stating these things, he got emotional time and again, and tears welled up in his eyes as he was overcome by feelings of gratitude.