zero to hero

2005-10-07T19:06:00.001-07:00

There comes a time in everybody's life when they ascend to a new level... when they cross a visible or invisible threshold into a new realm.. a new stage. This can happen in many forms; it can happen in a relationship(when your tall enough to pick on siblings or friends) , in a task (such as passing that first maths exam!) or in a pyhsical way ( like finally getting to shave that damn moochie).

I can still remember the day i went from being a zero to hero ( and to all of you out there with any comments i aint looked back ever since!). Multan; i was a chubby well ok fat kid of 12 years old who used to cream all the servants and my as yet unaware of his massive talent younger brother all over our huge village ground in cricket games yet i wouldnt even get a look in to the 6th grade team. Kids with disabilities would play but whenever it was my turn we would either stop playing, or take a break or just not tell me and go on. All this time my job was to field in a 'special' area of the pitch, adjacent to the toilets some 2 miles from the ground. My pre teen brain just didnt get it; what was wrong with me??? i was good enough to hit all the 6 and 7 year olds at my house and score more runs that miandad yet i couldnt get a game at school.

I almost quit the game until fate intervened only the way it can. We were having a tournament in the school and us 6th graders had drawn the worst possible opponents, the 12th grade! not only were they twice our grade they were also twice our size and needless to say a hell of a lot better!!! No surprises for guessing where i ended up although to humour me my friends named me as a substitute. We ended up playing half decently and got a good score batting first. We got a few of them out and it looked like the impossible might happen; Bangladesh ( us, though we played more like a Burkina Fasso) might just beat Australia ( them- duh!).

And so as the last over began they needed some 6 or 7 runs and why i dont remember exactly is cos i wasnt a part of it for a long time and didnt care!!! God seemed to be on the seniors side when one of our guys had to go off injured and guess who the sub was!!! yes the cricketing untouchable was going into the holy land folks! It seems the whole school knew how crap i was and the seniors made sure i replaced the fallen player. My friends urged me to pretend that my leg was broken.. or that i was an alien... anything just not to go on the field. But the seniors were more than happy to have me on. And thus began an intriguing game of cat and mouse with one very simple rule for both teams; seniors had to hit the ball towards the fat kid who couldnt field... my grade had to put me somewhere where the seniors couldnt see me. Thats okay if your playing dark room but not so when playing cricket. They couldnt risk making me field where i might help a bad shot become a life defining moment. After much deliberation and swearing and praying the consensus was to confuse the opposition and put me where they could see me!! bang in the middle of the field the area cricket aficionados call "mid wicket". For me it was like being posted on a landmine.

Our captain ran into bowl the last over looking a hundred years old. Poor sod just couldnt bring himself to not look at me through the corner of his eyes as he ran into bowl. Each time the seniors tried to hit it towards me and each time it went somewhere else. Finally with 2 runs needed of 2 balls my captain gave up. He decided not to look at me as he ran in though he had to close his eyes. The batsman on strike decided to end our misery in a blaze of glory and swung ferociously at the ball. But he mishit and it looped high into the air... towards me!!! Now as i saw this giant red planet descending towards me( it was a red tape ball and i was a 12 year old with a very strong imagination) i had only one thought in my head... what the fuck do i do now?????? So i did what no self respecting Pakistani schoolboy cricketer playing in a match destined for defeat against superior opponents would do on a stone hard field with no grass and strewn with garbage, borken glass and debris (it was an all boys school in multan after all) ... i lunged for the ball. Without really looking at it i managed to catch the first thing other than a cold in my life. As i took the catch my momentum took me head-on into the above mentioned 'wonder' field. No way i was going to drop this so i just clung on as i crashed. A lesser mortal (ok a thinner mortal) would probably have broken most of the bones in his body. But i was ok. And as i sat up after the crash everyone was looking at me. And i held the ball up in my hand. Id taken the catch. Pandomonium is the only way to describe what happened next. I was lifted off the field on the shoulders of the same people who didnt reckon i couldve done anything to help.

Life just got better from there. I played in all the games after that, making runs, taking wickets and catches.But it was in that one moment that i went from being a zero to a hero. And it felt good.

who am i?

2005-06-21T20:57:00.000-07:00

you often dont wonder who you are when people ask you that, because you have a ready made answer depending on who it is and where and when you meet them . if its someone you like its likely to be a long answer, if its someone youre not particularly fond of its probably your job title. but what do you tell yourself when you ask.. who the hell are you??

not an easy question to answer is it now? you are so much and so little, often at the same time. you are your past and your future but how often are you the present? for every second that passes you go from being your present to either being your past or future.. depends on how you see the glass.. half empty of half full?? questions that in turn lead to more questions ... you are the circumstances youve been through and you are the circumstances you choose to be.... there are some memories that will always be you whilst there are others you dont even remember but those are often someone else... you are your first kiss, your first cigarette, your first car crash ( hopefully not too many of those or their wont be a you left) your first love and your first glass of scotch. you are your first car, your first paycheque, your first pair of expensive jeans.

but the best part about being you is that you dont know who you might end up being but you know very well who you have been.... and then you become someone else and who you are today becomes who you were yesterday and who youll be tommorow is anyone's guess.......

so seriously think of another question to ask next time.. like your shoe size, it doesnt chage that often and if it does than man youve got a great answer to the above mentioned question and a great way to keep people who ask such questions away ( think about it an expanding foot that will hurt more everytime you kick them!)

most people are probably wondering (quite fairly) that why the topic in question actually doesnt answer who i am? well that's because you need to figure out who you are first, and considering what all youve got to think about theres a lot to answer. if you'd still rather know about me then well that doesn't say much about you and youll have to wait... im still answering myself!

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zero to hero

who am i?