It was love at first socks for poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Writer Mulk Raj Anand played the matchmaker. He helped Alys, whom he knew very well, choose a pair of socks for a friend who was preparing to go to England. She carried them with her to Amritsar. The friend turned out to be Faiz. The rest, as they say, is history. In this case, life-long mohabbat with arguably the most famous modern poet of the subcontinent who wrote passionately, memorably and tenderly about love, and not just revolution. “She had come to look after her sister, who had been sick after confinement with the second baby,” says Salima Hashmi, daughter of Faiz and Alys, from her home in Lahore over Zoom. A yellow kilim hangs behind her; the bookcase is crammed with paints and brushes, her hand is stacked with bangles and h

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