He also holds group therapy sessions in which he helps people develop leadership skills “you have to stop being the victim… I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. And but, and but, and but…” he mimics cruelly to emphasise that everyone can change and also change society, and here I take a breath and say “that you can’t buck the system and the system wears you down or or wipes you out. He doesn’t agree.

He likes to have a group of about thirty people with himself "as a pillar of strength." Much to my alarm, he offered to make me "a star at Social Pages, where everyone would soon be swooning at your feet and doing your bidding." As a matter of fact, I had just that morning of the interview been rushing around town the morning after the night before blowing six figure amounts, having myself groomed and having lunch with the kids for the first time in over six months and feeling particularly pleased that my boss was back after an absence of several days. So I was on an euphoric high.

I also have a good rapport with my boss and we are a small, closely knit team who work well together so I wasn't feeling much like a victim or anything else. I have, in my time also been jobless, starved, ridden around on motorbikes and generally seen a rough time so I do feel that I know what the have-nots go through.

 So why am I talking about myself and not Zia?

Because Zia is a behavioural guru (he is an advanced level instructor of The Breakthrough Programme), he understands body language, the ellisions of the spoken word, the concealment behind the verbiage and as a journalist he knows the tricks that an interviewer uses to elicit responses. He side-steps all my direct questions. So I try another tack and this article is the result.

“People have to change. They must challenge, question, change their attitudes. Begums must learn to communicate better. It is no use saying the airconditioning has broken down, kids don’t listen to me, the servants don't listen to me, the heat is unbearable and so forth…look at the maasis who go to work in the heat and the dust..they deserve some consideration too. Ordinary people can be very helpful…” and he cites the example of how he knocked at some stranger’s door and asked if he could use their phone to call up his mum in Quetta as he was feeling homesick and how he was warmly received. Forgive me for being cynical, but maasis have been conning me for years, and any stranger who finds a charming young man prefacing his every sentence with “sir” in a posh Brit accent would very probably not only allow him to use his phone, but also offer him the use of his e-mail facility, the mobile (and if he had a couple of nubile young daughters to marry off) insist on his staying to lunch and dinner and possibly even breakfast.

But Zia is also an unexpected man.

I admired his egalitarianism, or at least his desire to feel at one with what is generally referred to by that faceless term ‘the downtrodden masses.’

He is as eager as a child when the talk gets around to books and writing. His collection of short stories “In the Ruins of Solitude” was well received despite it being an introverted and sometimes harrowing account of the darker side of life "but I am more focussed now” he says “I am in the middle of planning and writing a novel.” He won’t discuss the theme or the style but muses that he may also write, in tandem, a handbook on his self-improvement programme.

He is very vocal about Salman Rushdie. He doesn’t like him. Arundhati Roy didn't deserve the Booker and he doubts if she will be able to sustain her writing ability.

 He is articulate, refreshingly honest “I never ever follow trends. I like to shock people.” He does a marvellous and dramatic reading of a passage from his book. “I never undertake anything that I don't feel confident about. Writing is all about sensitivity, connecting, intellect and ideas, ideas, ideas, ideas…you can be very fluent with a language, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are able to express yourself in writing. Urdu is also a very expressive language – you can be very sarcastic, very subtle.” He speaks several languages including Punjabi, Balochi and French.

Today, Zia is exuding so much confidence that it is overpowering and I do wonder if he is in his Leader of the Breakthrough Programme mode. In this role he helps losers become winners. He urges them with absolute certainty that they can break out of the mould of being a victim. He urges them to let it all hang out.

Hold on a moment – aren’t we already an intensely emotional people? What happens at his seminars? I imagine a roomful of thirty people, mainly women all in high hysteria and here is this man encouraging them to to let it all hang out while he exudes this unshakeable confidence and strength. It must be very draining. “It is! It is!” he says “But I am always there to prop up things.” He wants everyone to interact, to unite as Pakistanis, be one as a nation and as a people.”

This is a surprisingly conservative side of Zia, considering that he is so radical in all other ways. His love for Islam and for his country is genuine and he quotes several stories to back up his contention that there is unity and strength if we take examples from the story of Solomon and the ant, from Joseph and his brothers, from Moses and Jesus and it is possible for ordinary men and women to change society and perceptions. He talks about how Gandhi was able to turn the tide, how Martin Luther King initiated the process that led to change in civil liberties for black Americans and minorities. I think, but (!) then all of these people were assasinated or crucified.

Would Zia be willing to organise a million man/women march?

He hesitates and skips the answer.

So yes, we are back in a full circle, neither of us winning or losing the argument. But we have had a confrontation of sorts and it has been as self-revealing as the revelations about the interviewee and that is why I have written about myself which I rarely do and perhaps Zia has proved his point that it is possible to initiate change even if it begins within us and expands from there.

Frankly without being disarmed in any way, but mostly concurring with him, this is possibly the first time in my egalitarian life that I am willing to be persuaded by a charming Balochi feudal lord.