Genesis Sportsfest - TCS MTC

Disclaimer : God Almighty being my witness, I solemnly swear that the following blog features zero use of AI.

Shakespeare once described the world as a stage and people merely players. Some days, we may be center stage, other days, in the wings. TCS MTC was all center stage last weekend, courtesy of the Genesis Sportsfest.

"When the son of man is lifted up to that realm in which he rises above the fallacies of the physical realm, he thinks and acts on the plane of pure intelligence. There, he discriminates between those instincts which he shares with every other animal and those divine intuitions which he has in common with God." (The Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East)

The sun shone bright, mirroring the excitement brimming within the walls, making the Muslim Town locality lit like the time lapse of an expanding consciousness as delegates upon delegates from an array of different institutes (like LGS MTC, City School Ravi, etc) headed to TCS MTC not to escape life but for life to escape them.

We are living in challenging times, where we face many uncertainties and difficulties. We are witnessing the climax of a significant societal transformation, but we are also living in hopeful times, where we have the chance to overcome our obstacles and achieve our goals. We are living in times where we need to stay united, supportive, and optimistic.

We are living in times where we need to embrace the power of sports and socials, to bring us together and drive us forward. To quote Pablo Picasso, every child is an artist, but the main challenge is remaining an artist once we grow up. As that saying goes, in childhood, ten  friends gathered in the street to play cricket but would have difficultly in procuring PKR 50 to purchase a cricket ball. Now, that money can easily be arranged but those ten friends never gather again.

A short while ago, I watched this amazing movie called ‘Stand By Me’ starring the late River Phoenix in which a bunch of boys trek across countryside to see a dead body in the wilderness and bond along the way, conjuring up a plethora of unforgettable life experiences. I picked up some amazing lessons from watching the film such as; you are not what others think of you, embrace your weirdness (loved that line on embracing your stereotypes by Ice Cube in 21 Jump Street) and your friends have an impact on you. The Genesis Sportsfest also played an imperative role in symbolizing these lessons.

The games went rock and roll, guns blazing and firing on all cylinders. Futsal, table tennis, badminton, ludo, Play Station, you name it. Healthy physical extracurricular activities play a Herculean role in terms of bolstering our mental and physiological health. Whenever I think of sports, I think of teamwork with many prominent examples of great teamwork being showcased in the past, such as the Michael Jordan led Chicago Bulls, the Wright brothers and Apple’s development of the iPhone. A chain is as strong as the weakest link, and it makes me recall that saying of Michael C. Maxwell that ‘Teamwork makes the dream work but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream but a bad team’.

However, the addiction to digital gaming platforms is a matter of grave concern indeed. How sane it is to show our children pictures of violence as entertainment and allow them to adopt the egoistic belief that it is human nature to hurt others as a way to defend a right to be special and separate? You might be aware of the bread and circus analogy. When the ancient Roman Empire was falling, there were endless chariot races and gladiator contests in arenas to lull the masses into stupor and distract them from the actual issues of the Empire.

Today, you replace those chariot races and gladiator contests with scrolling, social media and digital gamification. What we see is an unholy alliance between a few, well-entrenched bureaucrats and the powerlessness of the masses. We also witness a chemical numbing and dumbing down of society in which the overarching emphasis is not only to create more people of a lower IQ but also to leave behind less people of a higher IQ because a numb and chemically dumbed society will be ready to embrace the Antichrist upon his return. Everywhere, kids are engrossed in endless chatter and social media surfing. It reminds me of that saying: "The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked my advice, I should reply that create silence.' (Danish Theologian Soren Kierkegard)

The event also showcased the power of leadership and creativity. I say this like a broken record that our country desperately needs fewer bosses and more leaders, fewer instructors and more mentors. He is not a leader who spends his whole life working in a cubicle quietly and has a Netflix movie dedicated to him or an underpass on Canal Bank road in Lahore named after him once he passes away. A leader is one who creates more leaders and is the beacon of light that perpetually illuminates the valley of darkness.

My favorite event was arm wrestling. I guess at the Sportsfest, the biggest challenge was exercising restraint over your wallet whenever you went hungry with the 1 meter pizza box making its way outside the nursery classroom was absolute box office. Wonder whether those kids ate the pizza or the pizza ate them. Indeed, deliveries don’t usually come late on a school night. They don’t come in a speeding car and they definitely don’t cry.

Normally, the story room looks like from the set of Alice in Wonderland but last weekend, it was anything but. It looked more like a typhoid stricken tooth fairy’s spitting alley with water bottles, beverage cups and pizza boxes sprawled as far as the eye could make out. We need to realize that we don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors but rather we borrow it from our children. No wonder they call it Scavenger Hunt because it pays homage to the hoarding, stockpiling and scavenger instinct that has been inculcated in us by mainstream society. It reminds me of a tale of the Prophet Solomon (PBUH).

Solomon, the wise prophet, held daily audiences during which he listened to his subjects' complaints and tried to address their problems. One morning, as he was listening to one person after another, a distraught man hurled himself into the great court. Solomon noticed how distressed the man was and beckoned him forward. Grateful for being invited to the front of the queue, the man fell to his knees before the great benefactor.

"What seems to be causing you such anguish, my dear fellow?" asked Solomon compassionately. "The Angel of Death, my lord! I saw him a minute ago as I was crossing the street. He glared at me with such disdain that my heart nearly stopped!" "We all know that Azrael takes his orders only from God and never wavers in his duties," asserted the great prophet. "Now tell me, what would you have me do?"

"I beg of you; my life's in your hands. Please tell the wind to carry me to India, where I'll be safe from the Angel's harm." Promptly Solomon ordered the East Wind to carry the nearly paralyzed man to India and lay him down wherever he chose. He then duly returned to his other subjects' unattended affairs. The following day when he returned to court, Solomon caught a glimpse of the Angel of Death among the crowd. He motioned the Angel to approach and asked him: "Why do you frighten people with that wrathful look, to the point that they abandon their livelihood and forsake their homes and family? What had that poor man done yesterday to deserve your crushing glare?"

Azrael was surprised. "My lord, I didn't look at him wrathfully at all! In fact, I was astonished to see him!" he said. "God had commanded me to take his pitiful life today in India, and I couldn't imagine, even if he had a million wings, how was he to get there on time. I was startled and gazed at him with surprise, not anger!" When you look at everything in life with the eyes of want and greed, who do you hope to escape? Yourself? God? Is that possible?

The Sportsfest participants went berserk on the food stalls. God bless Cairo Crunch and the Cold Coffee Fella! I never really liked people who never got food despite stuffing their bellies 24/7.

I guess you don’t always get what you want in life but there is no doubt that the event was a welcome respite from the tedious routine built up by the routine work and study proceedings. Robert K. Merton was the founder of bureaucracy and although he believed that it was essential going forward, he also opined that bureaucracy would stifle creativity and induce monotony and dullness. As that saying goes in Narcos, the cogs of bureaucracy turn at their own speed.

MTC is quite a unique zone away from the hustle and bustle of Canal Bank road but being an action-packed, wild ride on its own merits. Be it sessions with the guards, the local Mullah (cursing the school to infinity and beyond on account of conducting concerts, qawwalis and DJ nights describing them as Iblis ki Majlis e Shurah), IT homeys routinely swapping Wi-Fi passwords and guiding teachers on logging into the Century app, students aiming to bunk sessions, accounts fellas haggling with children on account on nonpayment of fee or waiting 45 mins outside someone’s office for a five minute discussion, each and every venue at times gives the vibes of a modern day battleground where you can picture Hector and Achilles strapped to their Iphones, jumping into the equation to engage in a keyboard duel at any time. The teachers pleading me to make their lesson plans is absolute cinema.

Guidance counselling can be boring (especially when you sit idle in a PTM, wondering if people even know your job description here) but, at times, it can also be fun with something new to learn every day, be it devising behavioral reform gameplans, planning mental health awareness campaigns, documenting International Peace Day proposal, conducting plantation activities, assisting my favorite student with the Head Girl Speech as well as chasing students across campus with Riasec forms.

If I had a dollar for every time the printer here encountered an existential crisis, I would be a gazillionaire. The tea/coffee ban sucks and MTC could really benefit from a Subway cart as well as a coffee vending machine (dig Vanilla Lattes for a living). Just when students complain about having it tough, they should thank their lucky stars they don’t have to sit 8 hours in an ICT lab with dysfunctional air conditioners, being stuffier and hotter than Lady Gaga’s blasphemous mouth.

Having waged war full throttle with the bureaucrats at my previous job (during my two-year tenure as a lecturer in the chemical engineering department of GIK University), I can testify to the need for a complete system overhaul. We have two words; the first world is the external world of events, organizations and life conundrums. This world was active before we came and will continue to be there after we go.

Then, there comes the second world; the inner world, the world of emotions, experiences, insights, creativity and love which comes and goes with us. The education system stresses too much on the former but hardly places any emphasis on the latter, which is why once that genius, kindergarten pupil has gone through years of behavioral conditioning, he winds up as a disillusioned, dejected chap walking around with skulking shoulders and a backpack, saying that it doesn’t even matter.

You are wrong fella. It does matter. As Mother Teresa once said, I may not have the power to change the whole world, but I can cast the first stone in the water that can create many ripples. Them streets are all about smiles and cries. You gotta hold on to your smiles and cries because that is all you have and nobody can take it away from you. Your worst enemy cant harm you as much as your unguided mind. Your sickness lies from you, but you don’t perceive it, and your remedy also lies within you, but you don’t sense it. Man perceives himself to be a meagre being but within him is unlocked the keys to the entire universe. What you seek is within you if only you reflect.

For me, this Sportsfest was a symphony of athleticism, a tapestry woven with threads of teamwork and a kaleidoscope of school spirit. The Friday evening and Sunday night fights were the unplanned socials. Its irksome to see how much the decorum has been disrupted in real-time with endless storms brewing in teacups and mountains being made out of molehills.

Its reminds me of the Prophetic saying; “The strong is not he who pins the other down in a wrestling match. It’s he who controls himself when he is angry”. Once we are full of emotional poison, we have the need to realize it. The prisons all over the world are full of inmates who committed the most gruesome crimes while having never believed that they were capable of committing such atrocious events until the moment, they executed them. “Indeed, Hell lies in wait for the criminals, a place of ambush for those who deny the truth”. (Holy Quran 78:21)

Ultimately, you are not your body. You are not the brain behind the body. You are the soul with a brain and body. We are in the same boat. I am simply offering some oars, life jackets, and a few flares to get on your way. The less we carry, the less we are burdened. Ultimately, we have to account for our deeds on the Day of Judgement.

It would be disingenuous of us to pretend ignorance of the past. To quote Mark Bauerlain, the decline in historic and civic knowledge among the new generation is not only an educational failure but is also a threat to democracy itself. Take the example of the Nazis, the Apartheid Movement, the Confederacy, etc. They were all losers because hate and anger make you feel temporarily empowered but ultimately, fire burns whatever vessel it consumes. There is a war of control in human relationships because we were domesticated to compete for control of the attention. The need to be right is often the result of trying to protect the image we want to project to the outside.

If each individual passes out of existence when he dies, what ultimate significance can be assigned to his life? His life might be important relative to certain other events, but if all the events are ultimately meaningless, what can be the ultimate significance of influencing any of them? Mankind is probably no more significant than a swarm of mosquitos for their end is all the same.

Because he ends up in nothing, he ultimately is nothing, but it gets even more distressing. For if life ends in the grave, it makes no difference whether you live as Joseph Stalin or Mother Teresa. If your destiny is ultimately unrelated to your behavior, then you may as well just live as you please.

Moral values are either just expressions of personal taste or else the byproducts of biological evolution and social conditioning. With the distinction between right and wrong being ever subjective and there being a complete dearth of objective morality, it would be virtually impossible to condemn war, oppression, or pride as evil.

It would be virtually impossible to live happily and consistently with such a worldview. If death awaits you at the end of the road, is there no reason for life? We need to snap out of our hibernation modes and comprehend the gravity of the repercussions associated with the choices that are manifested to us. If God exists, there is hope for man, otherwise, all we are left with is despair.

They will bury you just like they did your ancestors. You are not ready to live until you are ready to die. You leave all at the grave. Your life is a vapor that appeareth for a while and then vanishes away. Your days are as a hand’s breath. All the glory of man is as the flower of the grass. All flesh is as grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.

Waltzing around MTC at Sportsfest like a secretary taking notes for my poetic expedition while operating the hairbrush in supersonic mode was a visceral delight. Engaging in my OCD of brushing my teeth after every 30 minutes was merely the cherry on top. Resisting the urge to go Shams Tabrizi while recording the sponsor testimonial was a lost opportunity as far as my philosophical innuendos were concerned.

I overhead some chit chat on Illuminati and Freemasons, bringing into my mind my favorite conspiracy buff quote, “What if I told you that the version of history you were taught in high school was heavily modified to promote your nation’s propaganda and boost its rhetoric to hide its true crimes and enhance its allegiance to a corporate entity masquerading as your government?”

I was awestruck by Mashrab’s phenomenal performance as a host. Oozing charisma, passion and genius in each and every breath and convo, I can only pray that our system does not take such high performing individuals for granted. God gifted kids like her come maybe once in 10 years and I genuinely learnt so much as far as public speaking was concerned by listening to her going about her flow in majestic fashion as per the usual norm. The EC members pissed over the shortage of medals was hilarious. To hell with the medals. Who cares if they are short? Lezz binge watch The Mentalist and attack them loaded fires.

While sitting next to the chief guest towards the end of the closing ceremony (trying not to look at the Sheeli Ki Jiwani dance moves on stage which featured other people apart from students as well surprise surprise), I was super tempted to steal a bite from one of the many Jalalson Sandwiches lying on the plate in front of me though I did help myself to a pastry.  

Every event has its fair share of excuses and complaints galore. Mama is not allowing me to go to Qawwali night, I don’t want to share food, futsal matches being prioritized over badminton contests, endless MUN vs Sportsfest debates. Its amazing how we can complain 8 hours a day but cant devote even 20% of that time to attaining genuine, transformational growth in life. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but also came across some students voicing their regrets, including but not limited to infidelity, losing their temper and over-spending.

My take of it : Maybe, now is the time to stop asking, ‘How have I been wronged?’ and instead ask ‘what have I learnt?’. Afterall, what legacy do we want to leave behind? When a baby comes into this world, its hands are clenched in a fist as if it wants to grab everything around it but when the old man dies, his hands are open on the death bed.

We take nothing from this world apart from our deeds and verily, the services we provide to humanity are the rent that we pay to God Almighty for our room on Earth as well as in Heaven. Special shout out to the peons, support staff, teachers, volunteers and participants for gracing us all with their presence. The Sunday afternoon conversation in the PRO office with Sir Ali on the crisis of our society’s academia was one of the great memories.

In 2009, the BBC’s Horizon series aired an episode about how many people can live on Earth. There are now 7.2 billion people on Earth. That’s nearly twice as many as in 1970, and we’re heading for nine billion by the middle of the century and twelve billion by the end of it. They concluded that if everyone on Earth consumed at the same rate as the average person in India, the Earth could sustain a maximum population of fifteen billion. On that basis, we are halfway there. The trouble is we don’t all consume at the same rate. If everyone consumed at the same rate as the average person in North America, we’re told, the planet could sustain a maximum population of 1.5 billion. We’re nearly five times past that already.

Its often said that we have to save the planet. I am not so sure. The Earth has been around for almost five billion years. As far as we know, modern human beings like us emerged less than two hundred thousand years ago. If you imagine the whole history of the Earth as one year, we showed up at less than one minute to midnight on December 31.

The danger is not to the planet but to the conditions of our own survival on it. The Earth may well conclude that it tried humanity and is not impressed. Bacteria are much less trouble, which may be why they’ve survived for billions of years. The challenge is not to fix the system but to change it; not to reform it but to transform it. We must get rid of the academic vocational caste system.

Theatre director Peter Brook’s driving passion was to make theatre the most transformative experience it can be. To heighten its power, its critical to understand what the essence of theatre is. To do that, he asks what can be taken away from a typical theatre event for it to still be theatre. You can take away the curtains, lights, costumes and scripts. You can get rid of the director and dispense with the stage, the crew, the building.

The only thing you cant lose is an actor in a space and an audience watching. It may be just one actor and one person watching, but these are the essential and irreducible elements of theatre. That’s the analogy with education. The fundamental purpose of education is to help students learn. Doing that is the role of the teacher but modern education systems are cluttered with every sort of distraction such as political agendas, national priorities, union bargaining positions, building codes, job descriptions, parental ambitions and peer pressures.

The heart of education is the relationship between the student and the teacher. Everything else depends on how productive and successful that relationship is. If that is not working, the system is not working. At the most fundamental level, the focus of education has to be on creating the conditions in which students will want and be able to learn. The role of teachers is to facilitate students’ learning. The role of principals is to create the conditions in their schools in which teachers can fulfill these roles.

The role of policymakers is to create conditions – whether at the local, state, or national levels for which they are responsible – in which principals and schools can fulfill these responsibilities. Afterall, as Rumi said, illumination is when a wave realises that it is the ocean and we go from room to room, searching for the diamond locket that is already suspended around our necks.

There were some great moments on display at the Sportsfest as well. It was a treat watching Meeral going about her duties with full discipline and concentration though I was tempted to offer her lemonade considering she was angry enough at one stage to gun down a bunch of alpha males with a Gatling gun.

I probably did not dress for my Valima with as much intensity as the girls did for the Qawwali night. I met a brilliant sports teacher from another school, who happened to be one of the kindest and most gentlemanly souls I came across in recent times in Lahore. Ehtisham taught me the definition of rage bait which was pretty cool.

I always loved playing cricket but it was the bowling department where I struggled for consistency with my inadequate muscle mass hindering me from developing a legitimate, medium-pace balling action. Stalling the gardeners and sneaking into the nets with my cousins at Bohranwali Ground in Faisalabad was probably my favorite pastime. I had become comfortably accustomed to people telling me I didn’t have what it takes to become a full-fledged cricketer at the domestic or country level, forget the international peg or franchise games. I guess it's always impossible until you show yourself that it is possible.

I remember this one net session where I was balling to Daniyal (a dexterous and wristy left-handed batsman who excelled when it came to playing both spin and pace on the front foot, especially square of the wicket) while coming over the wicket. It was a futile effort as I bowled either full tosses or half trackers that were massacred by him. An hour later, it came down to the last ball of the day, with my cousin still standing tall, positioned deep in the crease to potentially ramp an expected waist-high full toss over extra covers while I slumped back to my mark, disillusioned and psychologically shattered.

It was at that moment that something happened. I took a deep breath, said a prayer, and braced myself for a shorter run-up that prioritized precision and accuracy over pace. I went around the wicket and in the 25th year of my life, I bowled arguably the defining ball of my nascent cricketing profile.

It was a good-length ball, pitched on the second off-stump line. My cousin’s eyes lit up as he strived to go out on the front foot for a bristling cover drive but a fraction of a second’s worth of indecision led to him exhibiting a concentration lapse for the first time in his life while facing me. He exposed the tiniest of gaps between his bat and pad which normally wouldn’t have mattered much but was a catastrophic mistake in this case as the ball dramatically swung in after pitching and cannoned into the top of the middle stump. The silence was deafening and that’s when the moment dawned on us. A masterful case of David beating Goliath.

It was then that the words of Fyodor Dostoevsky echoed through my mind “Your greatest sin is that you have betrayed and destroyed yourself for nothing”. It was then that I realized that with discipline, motivation, longevity, and consistency, I could forge a decent outing for myself in this format. Since that day, I have bowled hundreds of deliveries and while I was never able to recreate that dream delivery again, it was enough to get me up and running.

On top of that, I had a scintillating conversation with a student from City School Ravi who happened to be a copywriter and whenever you pair two freelancers together, you are bound to generate some interesting perspectives on financial literacy and decoding the ultimate purpose behind existence in today’s internet-wired, satellite-covered global village where our hopes are intricately positioned like the most fragile piece of glass perched on the thinnest strand of wire as we pray for not one more drop of rain underneath an overcast sky.

The interviews we conducted of some participants were cherry on top. One girl gave me ditto copy nerdy vibes of myself by talking about always giving your 110% in life while another delegate talked about the need to stop trusting others and if anything, that reflects the dire need to create a more positive and supportive environment around us. We have to be there for each other at the end of the day otherwise, the tables will be turned, and no one will be there to aid us.

To quote Martin Niemoller, 'They came for the trade unionist, but I kept quiet because I was not a trade unionist. They came for the socialist, but I did nothing because I was not a socialist. They came for the Jew, but I said nothing because I was not a Jew and then, they came for me and there was no one left to stand up for me'. Satan’s policy is Divide and Conquer. After all, united we stand and divided, we fall. May the road rise to meet us!

The greatest things in life are not to be heard about not read nor seen but if one wills to be lived. Let this Genesis Sportsfest be our fuel for conducting ourselves forward. Let us pick up the baton and bag a pony in this race. Let us never cave in but to be relentless in our pursuit for tranquillity and inner peace. May God Almighty grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can change but more importantly the wisdom to know the difference.

“Donot weaken and donot grieve and indeed you will be superior if you are a true believer”. (Holy Quran 3:139)