Every year, capable A-Level students hope and pray for a successful transition to a prestigious university. Unfortunately, for some, those transitions are made difficult — or even impossible — by crippling personal problems that necessitate some heavy trade-offs. Maybe the student has to care for an ill parent; maybe there’s a group of dependents in need of an older sibling; or, maybe, the family is just struggling to make ends meet.
Here, the author talks about his own ordeal, addressing lost hope, the pressure to pursue more “lucrative” prospects, the burdensome discourse of “practicality”, and, in the end, the encouragement to follow your heart and sometimes, be a little irrational, despite your circumstances.
The time's an afternoon, the season's a summer. Outside, it's a bright, scalding August in Lahore. All cars out of shade have baked, their engines overheated, and the prayer mats on mosque floors singe the skin.
Somewhere, a student is late for class as his car won't start. Elsewhere, a prostrating man perseveres through prayer as his forehead burns and itches. The vegetable seller labours his cart through the fiery hailstorm, his body a downpour of sweat, and his hair, neatly combed in the morning, is now a sticky mess that clings and congeals with perspiration.
From a distance, the glimmer of water catches his eye. There is no actual water there.
Inside, the atmosphere feels only slightly less oppressive. The AC struggles to work, its vents lukewarm, and a tie that I haven't worn since six months now strangles my neck. Opposite me sits a man, his shirt starched and hair trimmed, spouting words that would impress anyone who dreams of Wall Street.
"Accounts, finance, money, power, America..." and so on.
A year ago, during my A-levels, I had different plans — the same as everyone else. Go abroad, make a life, make a living. I knew it would be tough, but I certainly didn't think it was out of reach.
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People would urge me to forget about it, to let it go — they said I had little money, so my chances were slim. I didn't listen. I was hopeful, chasing a reality I couldn't afford.
I had to try.
Some months later, university decisions had finally rolled out. I was standing in the red-bricked corridors of my school, my hands in my pockets and head hung low, staring at the marble tiling that stretched out in front of me.
I hadn't made it.
I let out a deep, morose sigh — the journey ahead already seemed to turn more arduous.
For many, this was a day of joy, but I felt limp, weak, the lamentations of the world wearing me down into a ragdoll.
As I looked up, I saw students, proud and victorious, displaying their acceptances — a reassurance that, in life's confounding mess, at least one thing to them was certain.
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Friends, enemies, acquaintances — all divided in their beliefs, their aims, their intentions, but heading towards a sure future, one and all.
They turned towards each other, and inquired and nodded. Then they turned towards me and asked,
"Hey Uzair, where did you get accepted?"
"Nowhere as yet, I'm afraid," I answered.
And having nothing to say to that, they would give me a solemn pat on the back, and leave — my friends, enemies, acquaintances, one and all.
"Do this, do that, put in five years, six at most and you'll be a tycoon. This finance degree is the best for you, okay?"
I nod in assent. "Okay."
The details have been gathered, the formalities completed. I stand up and exchange firm handshakes with the admissions officer at the finance school in Pakistan I'm about to enrol myself in; his eyes sparkle with the confidence of surety — he knows I'm going to join. And, he's right.
I tell him that I want to enrol.
Wasting no time, I pay my fees, making sure that I've secured a place in the program, and then walk back out through the blistering heat, get into the waiting rickshaw, and leave.
I now study seven consecutive hours of classes each day, six days a week. Eventually, a week goes by. Then two weeks.
It's the 16th day of the program: I persevere through my fifth continuous class, say my farewells to my peers, and return home.
Frazzled and broken, I stare at myself in the mirror — there are deep, dark wells under my eyes. I see who I am, and I think about who I've always wanted to be...
This was not okay.
The tea plantations are beautiful.
The text on my phone screen lights up against a backdrop of emerald-green hills that were blanketed by a shallow haze of fog and mist. I sat on my bed — among a pile of books on finance — scrolling through my best friend's SnapStory.
The next snap showed more of the plantations, and the one after that the same, just from a different angle. She was right, they were beautiful. Malaysia seemed like a pretty country. I missed my best friend.
I exited the SnapStory and checked the others on my list, all by different friends in different places. Sheffield, Vermont, Wisconsin, Montreal — great friends, great people, all of them living across the world and in my handheld at the same time.
Their SnapStories were similar: Look at this café; look at these people; look at my university; studying is really tough.
The rest of their social media catalogued the same. By contrast, my last tweet was dated a year ago, my Instagram had four pictures, and my Facebook display begged to be changed. Two birthdays since my graduation, and yet, I had nothing to show.
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I saved a picture of the tea plantations and sent it to my mom on WhatsApp. A moment later, from outside my room, my mom calls out to me.
"Oh! Beta, the tea plantations are beautiful!"
Yeah, they really are, I thought inwardly.
I've just finished my last hour-long finance exam for this year.
I've written too much; my head throbs and my wrists ache. I stare at the bold letters on the computer screen in front of me:
You have successfully submitted your test. With the permission of your invigilator, you may now leave the exam venue.
I've slogged through three long months to finally see those words. I stretch out and lean back into the soft leather of my chair with a comfort that is only familiar to the well-prepared. And then, I head home.
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Once I've returned, I immediately throw off my shoes and socks and collapse onto bed, still dressed, waking up 13 blissful hours later.
My vacations have just begun, and I intend to exploit them to their fullest. At this point, there's really no end to the things I could do. Maybe try to learn a new language, or write a story, or, dare I say, try to prepare for my next exams in advance.
Instead, I navigate to a streaming site and begin watching a Japanese animé with a name that I find too hard to pronounce.
The mild beginnings of winter flake my skin. I'm at home, lounging in my broken sofa that's woven through a flimsy, ligneous material which makes my back stiff as I rest against it. With a pair of earphones on, I browse through Natasha Ejaz's tracks on SoundCloud.
The last time — the only time — I saw her, I was a barely-blossomed eleven years young. The stage was all rollick and spotlights with a comedy that had the audience convulsing with laughter.
On it, an 18-year-old Natasha played the part of an underdog, acting, singing, and dancing, often together, much unlike your typical underdog.
Now, I am two years older than the underdog, bobbing my head to the aural tempest of her latest release Raqeeb.
A sermon of vocals cradled by a musical constellation — the starry strum of a guitar, the earthy blare of a trumpet — echoing, oscillating, they resonate through the reminiscences of my past and my ears in the present, both, together and at once.
As the track reaches its end, I pull out my earphones, pull on my jacket, and amble, basking in that state that follows good music, difficult to describe but easy to feel. Like euphonic petrichor.
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Upon my return, I sit and read, through mouthfuls of biscuit and tea, an old interview of Natasha, taken some time back when she was in college. Halfway through, Natasha talks of how she had, at one point, been hired into Coke Studio, and then how, five days later, they had let her go.
I try to empathise, try to think how it must feel to go through that. Being accepted to live out your dream, telling all your friends and family about it, and actually going there, being with a bunch of people you thought you would only ever see on TV.
Then, five days later, having to bring yourself to tell everyone that you weren't a part of it anymore. And yet, despite everything, to push on, undefeated, but not unbroken — like a weird analogy that forces its way to the end of a sentence — in search of new beginnings.
This piece was the first. I go on to read about a dozen more — articles or blog posts — each for a different person — Usman Tanveer Malik, Muniba Mazari, so on and so forth. Every one of them, contextually different, but fundamentally the same — Pakistanis, like me, struggling through their own third-world narratives for what some would call first-world ambitions.
Too often we observe the pantheon of the present without keeping in mind the toil of their past — that although they, for us, are different from how we perceive ourselves, now or to ever be, they are, to others, perhaps a sister, a husband, a child, average and ordinary: commoners once unheard, now commoners worth hearing, made so only through the persistence of their efforts, and nothing more.
I've got my pen and my papers, but I really wish I had some tea.
In the early light of dawn, the December winds cascade through Lahore's streets, making the windows frosty and wet. I sit at the dinner table in my grandma's house, staring at the pages in my hands.
Two weeks ago, they were bare, but since then I have filled them with notes and ruminations, and pointless doodles.
On the wall in front of me is a clock, ominous and stubborn, ticking away like the beating heart of time. It's 4:53 — only five more hours till I start work.
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The rest of my family is wrapped in layers of cloth and wool and synthetic furs, dreaming, while everything else is silent and still: no movement, no sound. On this dead night, only the clock and I are alive.
Together, we write.
We spend a good portion of our daily lives studying economic models, or chemical reactions, or mathematical ratios, or even the etymology of words, behind each of which there has been an investment of time that spans millennia and of human effort that spans generations — all of them having systemised the many disciplines into the conciseness of a few textbooks that are still a struggle to read through today.
But we, as human beings, transcend the simplifying generalisations of these textbooks, or even the impressive potential of the genius of the greatest of human minds, venturing beyond all that into realms that are so far unknown with possibilities that are limitless.
We tax and trade, we drink and sweat, we add and subtract, and the few languages we speak are from a list of hundreds. Yet, for some reason, not even having become adults, we assume we've got everything figured out.
No. Of course not. You see, for most of us, from the beginning of life to its end, a common theme predominates — repeated, again and again and again, like gospel, with a religious zeal that hardwires it into the crevices of our minds:
Pursue the rational, eschew the rest.
It reiterates itself, everywhere: in the droning lectures by older relatives; the crafted words of our books of academe; the crossroads that pervade the rocky path of life — the slogan persists.
But, alongside it, irrationality — the absence of reason — is often confused as its opposite, even though the absence of reason constitutes many actions:
The brushstrokes that create an indomitable work of art;
Or the doctor's attempts to resuscitate an unbeating heart;
Or the asphyxiating embrace of two lovers who've spent time apart
Behind each action, an organised, but not logicised, thought. Here, emphasising a single point:
That we, humans, striving against irrationality, forget that, ultimately, it is irrationality which makes us human.
So, if you ever feel that there has come a time in your life when you must decide between something you want to do but cannot and something you must do but do not want, then take the bit between your teeth and sally forth:
Do what you want to anyway, in all your impassioned glory.
Because, when all strategies have failed, the cartridges are empty, and the onslaught is relentless — the war is fought on wits alone.