I have been researching the life and works of Waheed Murad for more than 20 years now and the mystery around him deepens with every new clue that I come across.

He is the greatest screen legend of Pakistani cinema and therefore we forget that he was also a writer, director and producer who entered filmdom with the intention of making some serious statements about the nation (he didn`t even appear on screen in his first two productions). As soon as we shift our attention from the Chocolate Hero to the film-maker, we are in for a volley of surprises. Here I discuss just one of the many.

As an actor Waheed Murad featured in more than 120 films but he also produced 11 titles under his banner, Film Arts. The first two in which he didn`t appear may rightly be regarded as pilot projects since he hadn`t even formed his team by that time, and it can be presumed that the statement he was trying to make didn`t come across effectively. That leaves nine films which can be rightly considered as his `statements`. Quite surprisingly, they seem to depict the gradual unfolding of a single profound message - sometimes too bold to be given directly and hence necessitating the use of masks and parables.

The first is Heera Aur Patthar (1964), which was the story of two brothers hailing from a working-class family on the outskirts of Karachi. One of them gets educated in the city but in order to marry in a wealthy family he disowns his ageing father, young brother and a sister of marriageable age. In the next film Armaan (1966), which was also written by Waheed, one saw just the opposite as here an educated young man (played by him) seeks his soul mate in a poor orphaned girl (Zeba). Ehsaan (1967) presented the story of an orphaned boy raised by a benevolent family falling in love with a young widow already the mother of a school-going daughter.

The message is clear - the educated middle class has severed its organic connection with the unschooled masses who are compelled to drive the wheels of the country all by themselves (the disowned brother is a donkey-cart driver played by Waheed).

If this was indeed the message that Waheed intended to impart through the film, then the very next one suggests the solution Educated youth from well-off families should try to find out what their real ideal ought to be. Ehsaan (1967) seems to present the basic principle on which societies like Pakistan can be built. The principle is ehsaan which, roughly translated, means `benevolence` but has a deeper meaning in sufi terminology and these meanings are successfully explored by the gifted poet Masroor Anwar in the film`s songs and dialogue.

If Waheed was a film-maker who presented the anatomy of Pakistani society through his films then he couldn`t have remained indifferent to the rift between West and East Pakistan which had begun to appear by that time. It became the theme of his next film which was symbolically named Samandar (1968), since the sea and not the land connected the two wings of the then Pakistan. For the female lead role he invited the Bengali actress Shabnam from East Pakistan who had never worked in West Pakistan before.

Interestingly, the story of Samandar (also written by Waheed himself) shifted the focus from love interest to the strained friendship between two friends. Set in a fishing colony which can be treated as an analogy of Pakistan, one friend aspires for nothing except love while the other who aspires to become the next leader of the fishing colony ends up playing in the hands of outsiders.

Quite understandably, the next was Ishara (1969), literally meaning `hint` or `suggestion`. It is the only film ever directed by Waheed (he also wrote it) and turned out to be an allegory about the film-maker`s creative self.

Naseeb Apna Apna (1969) takes this analogy into a darker zone by portraying a sister who works as a dancing girl in the red light area in order to `educate` her brother who lives in a hostel and is unaware of the dark side of his family. Needless to say the dancing girl can be taken as an analogy of the entertainment industry which is unfairly treated as a mere plaything (a point which Waheed`s team of Pervez Malik, Sohail Rana and Masroor Anwar were also trying to drive home in another film called Doraha around the same time).

The East Pakistan crisis is revisited in Mastana Mahi (Punjabi), which was released in early 1971. The opening sequence of Mastana Mahi was about a village thug who prevents a married woman from going to her husband belonging to another village. In retrospect, allusions to the political situation are extremely obvious throughout this sequence (such as the skin of a Bengal Tiger displayed on the wall of the village thug although the tiger is not found in Punjab), and the rest of the film places the question of national integration in its larger perspective - and it is a perspective which is relevant even today.

Waheed`s last two films, Jaal (1972) and Hero (1985), although separated by 13 years (the last film was released more than a year after his death), have the common theme of the agonies of a soul which knows too much.

Waheed had claimed before the press that `A new Waheed Murad will appear before you in Hero.` It is the story of a thief who is so perfect in his craft that he leaves no trace behind (just as Waheed doesn`t leave any clue of the underlying subversive messages in his films, and yet they could not be more perfect in allegorical structure).

Needless to say, the story was written by Waheed. This leaves us with a nagging question about who the real Waheed Murad was - the one we watched on screen as the Chocolate Hero or the genius who stayed behind in the dark and played around with our emotions? In one of his last interviews he had said, `Sometimes I think that if I suddenly disappear or am no more for any reason, I would like to be remembered by the song `Bhooli hui hoon dastaan, guzra hua khayal hoon/ Jiss ko na tum samajh sakay mien aisa aik sawal hoon`.` (I`m a tale forgotten, a though bygone. I`m the question which you couldn`t understand).