Forty years later my hero is past his prime. He can easily pass on the street for an ordinary mosque-going believer, old and diminutive, his face plastered with grey and black beard, his head covered with traditional white Muslim cap. But his face and eyes would make you wonder how the ravages of age failed to spoil the iridescent glow of a magnificent soul.

In his own words, he was still very hardy and healthy, all his vital signs looking normal except for the wheezing sound in his chest that comes and goes like a silent storm. He smokes two packs a day, the cigarette held between his index and middle finger, flipped from time to time to form a straight line with the swollen blue vein running like a groundswell in the middle of his pistachio-coloured hand, twitching to flick ash.

He spoke with eloquence, mostly in English, going back and forth in time, resenting that the Muslim intellectuals had abandoned the path of Islam in the temptation of western values. He talked about how he fought with the Mujahidin in Afghanistan to drive out the Russians. Then he argued that Muslims had miserably failed to grow in military power, which is why the Jihadi is left with no choice but to wear the strap to blow up himself as a "rational response to an irrational world." My hero looked more heroic when he said that Islam would rise again, this time from South Asia. His dream is to see one country stretching from Afghanistan to Teknaf.

Norman Mailer writes in The Presidential Papers that ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the Gods, and so awaken devils to contest his vision. My hero reconciled with God at the age of thirty when his father died, but made many enemies as he tried to argue in favour of religion. He used to drink heavily and gave it up a few months before he went to war. Then he started a campaign to ban drinking in the Air Force, which set him on a collision course with many of his senior officers.

He was disappointed to see the disintegration of Pakistan in 1971. He was disgusted with the Punjabi elite which refused to hand over power to the Bengalis. For a while, he wasn't allowed to fly due to his Bengali background. He would face even more resistance in the latter days for his vocal stance.

He was an Air Commodore, when he confronted his Air Chief, some say over the injustice done to his friend Sekander Mahmud, some say over some corruption in the Air Force. In 1982, he was slammed with forced retirement, and my hero uttered "Allahu Akbar" in response. He had lived his useful time in the Air Force, and God wished him to move on.

He said that justice is critical for any society and Pakistan disintegrated for lack of it. Jinnah's arrogance to make Urdu the state language of Pakistan was the beginning and then the plundering of East Pakistan to develop West Pakistan was atrocious.

He personally witnessed how funds were siphoned off from the Ganges-Kobadak project in East Pakistan to build the splendours of Islamabad. Zulfikhar Ali Bhutto was intellectually corrupt, which eventually brought his downfall.

He claimed that he was still a Bengali at heart. I asked him how he could expect anyone to believe him since he had opted for Pakistan after 1971 and couldn't even speak the language. He looked unfazed as he readily replied that he didn't have to justify it to anyone because he knew he is a Bengali in his heart.

Air Vice-Marshall (Retd.) Azim Daudpota, former Chairman of PIA and former Governor of Sindh, said that "Peanut" (a sobriquet my hero had earned in the Pakistan Air Force for his small stature) was indeed a Bengali at heart because he was depressed for several months after 1971. He was training the Syrian pilots in those days and refused to take his salary for those months because he didn't go to work. "Peanut" had a strict sense of ethics, said Mr. Daudpota, who recalled that some of the Air Force officers had submitted excessive personal claims from the Syrian government and "Peanut" had them court-martialed.

My hero is under ISI surveillance, because he brutally criticizes the leaders of Pakistan. He is worried that Pakistan is going to become weak and slip under the Indian hegemony. He regularly follows the events in Bangladesh, and would like to request the two leaders to sit down and have dialogues between them. He believes Sheikh Hasina would return to power for a historic reason. There must be strategic alliance between Bangladesh and Pakistan.

He never got married since it fell on him to raise five brothers and six sisters after the death of his father, the last of the sisters being married off in 1982. He feels lonely at times as old age takes its toll on him, buried in his books and the heavy silence of Flat 201 in Falcon II Air Force mess on Shar-e-Faisal in Karachi. He would like to remind you that more than love and sex, marriage is a functional necessity of life.

He was born in West Bengal in 1935 and his family settled in East Bengal after the partition. He studied in Narinda Government High School in Dhaka and then joined the Pakistan Air Force. He shot down 11 Indian fighter planes during the 1965 war, five of them in 30-40 seconds, a heroic feat that remains unmatched in the history of aerial warfare in the world. According to Mr. Azim Daudpota, this heroic act smashed the backbone of the Indian Air Force in favour of Pakistan. In Sargoda, when Ayub Khan was introduced to the hero who had saved Pakistan, Mr. Daudpota vouched that he saw tears in the eyes of the President.

I asked my hero what went through his mind when he was shooting down those planes. He looked at me and lowered his head to show how he bowed before Allah sitting in his cockpit. He was merely an instrument in the hands his Maker who put him to use for a worthy cause. He claims to have established connection with the other world and it opens before him like a three-dimensional TV in his meditation.

M M Alam is the name of my hero for those who might still remember him. He is a national hero in Pakistan and there is a road named after him in Lahore. He is a legend to the young Air Force officers in Pakistan and a household name. Children read about him in the textbooks. I asked him how it felt to be a living legend and what should children learn from his example. He said they must never give up hope and always take the path of Islam.

Tolstoy wrote in Sevastopol in May that the hero of his tale -- whom he loved with all the power of his soul, who he has tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful -- is Truth. M M Alam never invested his heroic act in earthly gains such as political office, license, permit, publicity, women, houses, and cash. He never claimed the house given him by the Dhaka Municipal Corporation after the 1965 war. He has chosen to live a life invested in truth.

His heroic life started after he had become a hero.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.