It's July 2019. Lahore is being thrashed by the torrential downpour, especially the Cavalry, MM Alam, and DHA Main Boulevard localities with the alarming situation being exacerbated by an array of mad drivers, cutting rashly from all sides, splashing water over incoming commuters, and destroying the rhythm on the roads with utter disdain to everyone else's safety. You have just winded up your teaching session and are on your way back home (after failing for the umpteenth time to inspire the not so pumped-up millennial lot into a debate over whether artificial intelligence is a threat to humanity). Your line of sight momentarily encompasses the shawarma stall adjacent to your office, your taste buds get riled up and you start salivating like that dog in Pavlov’s experiment.
Desperately resisting the high carb temptation, you drag your exhausted body into the car, strap in your seat belt, wishing you could take a leaf out of the book of the Chinese drivers and try to deter high-beamers with scary reflective decals while momentarily imagining yourself in the realm of Rick and Morty alongside the dynamic duo getting caught in a narrative device disguised as a train full of passengers telling stories about Rick and then calling on Ice -T to help them write a tune for an intergalactic song competition! Imagine Jerry taking a trip to Florida while befriending a talking cat. Running out of bharosa with people while silently murmuring "Wingardium Leviosa". Peeps telling me that my hair has grown whiter at a rapid rate as opposed to the previous years with me responding by saying that my head used to be lighter then. I guess sometimes, only the disenfranchised can cure the disintegrated.
Often, we are engulfed by the rage and are hurtling through obstacles at a supersonic rate while trying to keep our facts straight. Indeed, that saying rings true "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade". We're deeply in debt, working more hours and more jobs for less pay and less security, struggling to achieve the same standards of living as our parents, and operating in psychological and physical precariousness, all the while being told that if we just work hard, meritocracy will prevail and we'll begin thriving. The carrot dangling in front of us is the dream that the to-do list will end. or at least become far more manageable. The sea of mundaneness has not spared any department, lest of all music. I agree that different generations have different tastes and views but some of the stuff coming out these days is just mind-numbing. The creative mainstream music culture has become lazy. It used to take talent and skill to have your music heard. Now all you need is a Mac Book and a mumble. It's like all the superheroes went into hiding and the villains took over.
Life often puts us through a testing period and as you whizz past the streets at night (landmarks, shops, restaurants, underpasses, traffic intersections, and people drifting past like ships that pass each other during the stormy night at sea, never to be seen again) wondering why smog has most definitely become a 5th season in the City of Gardens, you get to experience the undeniable weakness as well as the empowering strength of the human spirit. When someone you love dies, it changes your life forever. It is not something you 'get over. The loss now becomes a part of who you are. Suddenly, your mind goes back to the painful 2019 CWC Final (Guess what's worse than a GPA deciding your career? Number of boundaries deciding a World Cup Final) and you feel that feeling of numbness cascading over your body. Ecstasy for England. Agony for New Zealand! Suddenly, you hear a shrill noise across the block, increasing in magnitude until you feel your ears are about to explode. Lickety-split! A red-eyed mule stares at you from the corner of the street, a platoon of bats hovering above the car low in the sky, a weird feeling of Déjà vu creeping through your body, a bunch of tattooed con artists strolling by, and the spiritual eye starts seeing the flickering of streetlights. A shadow looms on the horizon, growing in magnitude. Beads of perspiration drip on your forehead as you clutch the staring wheel with even greater intensity. Suddenly, you wake up and the nightmare finishes as quickly as it began.
Three things in life are common: death, taxes, and Glasgow’s Weather Forecasts displaying 75 to 80% precipitation probabilities 9 days out of 10. And so I woke up on one of the greatest days of the Islamic year, mulling over the prospects of rain. Then, I figured that we have rainy days so that they open up our eyes to the sunny days we ignore in life. Besides, until and unless you are done with the rainy part, you will never get to witness the prolific rainbow on the horizon. Draining a glass of Rooh Afzah, for the first time in my Glasgow tenure, I put on that enticing Kurta (courtesy of a memorable visit to Junaid Jamshed Outlet in Pollokshields on my way back from work while the city was thrashed by torrential downpour) along with jeans and a coat to emulate the dress attire of the Great Munna Bhai MBBS (nostalgia hitting me momentarily as I envisioned the Eid celebrations in Karachi in the past).
Assembling with the gang, discussing the pros and cons of part-time work as a Sortation Operative with Mr. Junaid, and strolling past river Clyde towards Glasgow Central Mosque, it was impossible not to be spirited away by the lovey chirping of the birds and the blossoming of the fresh flowers amid the usual flow of traffic. Stopping briefly at an intersection, you couldn't help but contemplate how immensely strong the circle of life is (tough times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create tough times).
The Khutbah and the pre-prayer Sermon by the prayer leader were inspirational, to say the least. As everyone huddled together (confusion over whether to dish out one hug or three prevailing once again) the unbiased onlooker couldn't help but marvel over the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and Allah (God) over the Devil. Satan tries to mess with our heads by teaching us false doctrines, making us hold on to grudges as well as attempting to instill pride and vanity in us. He personifies our internal struggles and it's an ode to the struggle between good and evil in life. There is a fight going on inside us. It's a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil-angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant, and cowardly. The other is good- peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy. Ultimately, the wolf we feed is the one that will emerge victoriously. If there's one thing the mosque or prayer for that matters instills in us, it's the essence of sticking to the right path in our daily lives. That's when the power of forgiveness is inculcated in us by the Islamic School of thought. May we all reach a stage in our lives where we no longer care about dishing out vengeance. This view is also mirrored by the Bible (Second Corinthian Verses 10 through 11-'If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And what I have forgiven if there was anything to forgive-I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake in order that Satan might not outwit us for we are not unaware of his schemes). Indeed, United we stand and Divided we fall.
After that, as usual, it was a classical case of downing in dopamine addiction via clicking a barrage of photos though an optimist like me would cherish them till eternity and imprint them in my mind palace. This was followed by a luxurious breakfast at SUMSA (boys absolutely drooling over the desserts) followed by an enticing round of Vermicelli at Mr. Zurain's place.
Cricket was, is, and will always be a crucial cornerstone of the lives of us Pakistanis. A day of celestial magnificence it was indeed when a squadron of the Glaswegian Knights turned up in full flow at the ground we have rekindled our most beloved sporting instincts to indulge in a riveting cricket battle that rejuvenated the modern-day sportsman buzz while paying homage to the blessings conferred upon us during the Holy Month.
Around 4 matches were played. Thankfully, the rain gods spared us their wrath once again but the trees continued to be irksome, blocking a few maximums as well as a couple of dismissals (a hypothetical depiction of the double-sided sword of life)
Games were mostly low-scoring with the pendulum rocking to and fro as the momentum transitioned from one side to the other after every couple of minutes. Special mention to Aman Ullah's sensational captaincy, disciplined bowling, and neat fielding coupled with some clean power-hitting. Rizwan continued to blossom with his ever-improving performance.
That being said, the beauty about the game was it was perfectly imperfect with a few sitters being grassed, a catch not being taken in the outfield (owing to the fielder coming ahead rather than staying at the ropes) and a couple of boundaries being conceded on account of misfields. A perfect testament to the evolutionary process of life and the fact that learning never stops. Hopefully, we all bounce back from this strongly Inshallah.
Always refreshing to see passersby engaging with the players. A little girl walking past the boundary with a school bag perched on her shoulders goes on to show the all-around magnanimous grace provided by this beautiful park to captivate the audience and make them relish their humble abodes and deep spirited strolls.
Indeed which of the blessings of Almighty Allah will we deny?
The player of the day was arguably Mr. Zeeshan. I remember once approaching him about cricket at a scintillating tea session back at chai wala ( another refreshing session for Battalions of PakSoc) and he worried about his ability to become a utility player. On the ground, he was starring in all three departments and is a personification of Andy Dufresne's quote in Shawshank Redemption "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies".
The sumptuous Bar BQ session in Glasgow Green was delightful, packed with tasty food, soft drinks, tea, loads of gossip, and laughter. Catching up with an old coursemate, chasing each other like frisbees, and playing cricket yet again.
For me, the highlight reel of the session was meeting my senior and great mentor Mr. Aftab virtually after ages and reveling in some old talks, notably the viewpoints of our esteemed Professor Mr. Hassan Sayyad. Even the realm of academia has not been spared by the waves of nepotism and corruption. The ultimate purpose of higher education is to inculcate vital foresight, critical thinking, deductive analysis, and abstract conceptualization, instead of generating brainless corporate robots, devoid of contemporary knowledge who are scared witless owing to the disequilibrium between the market forces of supply and demand. To facilitate this vicious self-serving cycle, policymakers, at the behest of such institutions, fashion policies to create more and more employment positions of the same kind, expanding the society's burden. Even in affluent countries, a part of the research funding goes to the so-called 'pure science' but most of the research is targeted, and policy-driven. The root cause of this dilemma is inept and complacent leadership, misguided priorities, and erroneous decision-making processes.
If I apply an extension of this debate to the school of engineering, matters are no different there either. To quote one of GIKI's all-time great academics and renowned Professor Muhammad Hassan Sayyad, there have been ample instances of university professors, having written papers (even books) on all sorts of topics [lasers, optics, photonics, discrete Fourier transforms, radars, antennas and so on]. How can a professor teach engineering effectively without having any sort of engineering experience? Is it possible to be a good pilot without flying an airplane or a good surgeon without operating on a patient? The fundamental problem in modern engineering is that we have two types of engineering educators; nearly four out of five who tell how to perform (unluckily, who are also in charge of the administration) and one out of five who perform (unfortunately, who do not have any power in the administration). Every now and then, whistleblowers emerge in various institutions, beckoning society to see the errors behind its customs and ways but as that old saying goes, history repeats itself because we seldom learn a lot from it.
In the end, the magic lies in the everyday affairs of our existence. The world may overwhelm us occasionally with its struggles and strife but may happiness reign supreme in the eternal teapots of our lives. Backing up that saying from "Perks of Being a Wallflower"❤
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