Planting Engineers….

Farmer to son: “Son! the crop is ready to harvest , we have to hurry otherwise the rain would possibly ruin our crops”.

Son: “Ah… we have ample time to do this job”.

Farmer: “No! My son, it is better to get our job done , don’t leave it for tomorrow, we have put a lot of effort in planting it”.The son didn’t care about  the old man's advice and one day  a storm came and along with it the crops were destroyed .

Four years back we were like seeds, planted in the ever fertile soil of NUST, accompanied with good faculty. We were going well and in June 2010 we were ready to get into the  professional world to reap our reward, like a crop fully grown and ready to get harvested.

 But like every other story with a sad ending, our university only told us about the hype, fed us with books, and then they left us for the so called Professional world. It didnt care about  the importance of making us ready for the Professional world. It left us like a forgotten child . And here we stand today looking out at the world and looking at those false promises made to us. 


 The relevance of our degree to the industrial world is zilch . In addition to this the university did nothing to facilitate us in our quest to find a job. We cannot truly hold them entirely accountable for this , but still I believe they have a significant role to play in our present suffering.

 We are lost truly . But I hope that the people coming after us donot suffer the same delusional scenario that we are facing today and I hope that NUST does more for its students than just bragging about them. 

Why democracy sucks ?

 A couple of years ago when I was still enrolled in NUST, I had the privilege to witness a student presidential campaign. The candidates were final year students and they required a majority vote from the rest of the university to win the election. It began with lobbyists trying to persuade their friends and batch mates to vote for their candidate. Later the respective candidates were to give elaborate speeches on what they have achieved and what they are to achieve. The first candidate elaborated on what was he to achieve but his approach was very pragmatic which resulted in realistic, believable and achievable goals. The second one however, justified why our country was in tatters. He began to describe his goals and consistently repeatedly made outlandish statements such as inviting a Belgian team to hold a first ever laser light show. Sure that sounds impressive and ambitious but anyone having spent a day at our university knows that all of that is a delusional lie. However, the “educated” university students  gave huge applause to such outlandish statements and not surprisingly the guy won . To this very date the students of NUST have yet to organize any credible event, let alone a lightning show, that could perhaps market the NUST brand.  And thus I reached a conclusion after experiencing this and that was that democracy was mass hypnotism at best. A university is a microcosm of the outside world. You wont find a more educated class of voters than  here . And if they can be duped into believing this , then it surely suggests that a system of democracy is flawed. People said then that a democratically elected student would be the ideal candidate which is ofcourse Rubbish . In essence democracy suppresses the attribute of wisdom  and magnifies the attribute of popularity.

That same year I also watched the obama-mccain townhall meetings , in which they debated a few points . It was ludicrous to say the least. Two people duping the whole of America into believing that they can fix the economy . But a couple of years later , the economy is still in tatters and the president has still not delivered. What will eventually happen is that the respective parties will replace the “puppets” with new ones that can make even more outlandish statements than their predecessors.

The whole system is a theatrical system in which the candidate disillusions the mind of the majority by making outlandish statements but says them in a rather deceivingly convincing manner . No wonder our leaders such as Altaf Hussain ,Shahbaz sharif , the bhuttos are such great orators . They reached the top because they were so good in manipulating the minds of the masses by giving them false hope . It is due to this reason that honest and pragmatic men like Imran khan , do not always win  and perhaps can never reach the top. I also remember a hadith here which implies that people are like herds and leaders are like shepherds. Where ever the shepherd goes, the herds follow. The salvation of Pakistan surely does not lie in democracy.  

The salvation of Pakistan lies in a system through which honest, wise men can rule and save us from the tyranny of democracy.

Chaklala Scheme 3 : Hostel Life

Just before I was about to join the legendary hostels of NIIT-NUST, I met the OIC ( Officer Incharge ) Hostels . When asked how are the hostels, he brilliantly summed it up, “ Imagine going to a four star hotel ” .  And here I was standing in front of my room on the first floor, and remembering those words of the OIC and in the same breath cursing him vehemently. 

It was a room of three beds with no attached bathroom .It had pretty disgusting old curtains which were often used for cleaning hands by my future roommates. The closets were outside of the room and later I found out that our specific room had a public bathroom which anyone could use , and I do mean anyone.

Luckily for me my first two roommates were pretty nice . One was Humayun khan , a mysterious character but one with great ethics and for one who I have utmost respect. I strangely , donot remember the name of my second room mate , primarily because he left within a week of joining. The thing that united us was that we were all A level students which was somewhat strange because we were the only A level students in the hostel and by chance we ended up in the same room. I did realize soon afterwards that Pakistan was a society with essentially three different education systems. The masses were educated at government schools. Then there was a crop of people who studied FSC at private schools and lastly there was an ostentatious minority which liked to emulate the west in every respective way and these were the A level’s educated breed . So it seemed the authorities decided to put all three of us in one place primarily  because they thought it would be easier to adjust for us.

The truth is it didn’t matter much to me , because I really didn’t come with that frame of mind . Anyway there was one imminent fear and one prominent discussion which all of us discussed and that was how to dodge the notorious tradition of ragging over here. (Ragging is a south asia specific tradition at universities and is primarily a remnant of the british empire. It is a practice in which senior students “rag” new students for a week or two)

                              

We were scared , we were fearful and we were extremely frightened when we heard from a hostelite that our ragging videos will get uploaded on youtube.  We did not see any seniors around  and all we saw were more of our batch mates , but they were there, we knew it, they knew it. We knew they were somewhere secretly hiding ,and plotting against their next victim . We did not have the courage to go out and all we did mostly was stayed at our rooms .

As the clock struck  10 , we started hearing a whistle  and then someone knocked at our door . We were scared . We did eventually open the door and we were relieved when we found out that it was a security guard who was calling us for the “night assembly”.

We stepped outside our room , and there he was (nope it wasn't a senior), the harbinger of destruction for us for the next two years coming slowly in a ironed shalwar kameez with a register in his right hand and walking stoically with a stiff back . He was honorary captain Afzal , our hostel warden.

Here is a video our seniors made :