Today, I feel like writing but I have nothing particular in mind. Some ideas are boiling beneath the surface but nothing very concrete. Don’t say I did not give you fair warning, this writing might not be that coherent.
I am a football fan. I am not sure when it happened exactly but I do know that up until the 99 cricket world cup I was not really into football. But things change – they have to. If memory serves me right, I was reluctant to play football at first. My father was the one who came up with the verdict (he lives to give verdicts and implement them) that cricket did not contain enough exercise. Like any good Pakistani worth his salt, I took this accusation very seriously and fought hard but alas, parents have a way of getting what they want – at least mine do. So my general frustration with Pakistani cricket and my father’s insistence on playing football slowly and steadily pushed me towards football.
It was a painful learning experience. Anyone who has played a bit of football knows that if you get a new player to play against, it’s like taking candy from a baby so for a good five years I distributed free candy. Ultimately my persistence paid off and I stopped looking like a complete idiot while playing. Mind you it was still comical but not embarrassing.
During my O and A-Levels I played in a lot of tournaments because of two reasons. One, there were only 11 players in the school. Two, I had mastered the art of not thinking of myself as David Beckham meaning that I stayed back when asked to stay back – which was all the time. Through all of this I kept taking baby steps in the right direction.
During my university, I was able to do the impossible and convert a number of people from cricket to football. The culmination of all my effort was a semi-final appearance and defeating the tournament organizers in the final football tournament I played in FAST. FAST saw me improve the most, simply because there was always a field available to play – well almost always. This is a huge problem in Lahore – you can’t find a decent place to play at. All the good ones cost you money and lets be serious you can’t pay to be playing daily – at least I can’t.
Near the end of my university education, I was invited to a ground in Defense Phase V by a friend. It was beautiful; lush green grass, perfect rectangular shape and empty. I mention all of this because I have played most of my football in dust and stones. Most grounds were triangular or pentagonal or something and all of them were filled with people – lots of people. So this was footballing paradise. I have been playing there to this day which means it has been around two years now. My game has come up in leaps and bounds. It now looks like I know what I am doing when I play football. They still don’t let me play up front but I guess not all of us can be Ronaldo.
Anyways, here comes the real sizzler. A few weeks ago, an ‘uncle’ came to the ground and argued for a good 20 minutes that we should not play here anymore, the reason being that his kid got hit by a football. This incident makes my blood boil on so many different levels that I can’t even begin. First of all, I don’t remember running to daddy every time I got a scratch. Secondly, daddy dearest did not feel the urge to bare his chest and scare away the offenders. Thirdly, people who think they can just come in a bully their way to success. There are a few other choice words I would like to use but let’s continue the story.
The uncle was alone and there were 20 of us so he naturally lost the argument. He had no answer to a simple query, where should we go? How many football fields do you know about? But off course this is Pakistan, the next time we went to play the ‘society-police’ came. No points for guessing who called them. Now a sizeable number of our players live in defense so we are pretty aware of the rules. The rules say that you cannot play in grounds where there is a track or there are children rides. Both of these don’t exist in the ground we play. Also wherever you are not allowed to play there is this big ass board placed to this effect. The society-police person who came looked dumbfounded himself. He kept repeating in his radio. “ these are defense residents, there is no track here and no one else is even present.” We could hear the replies on the walkie talkie and they were profound. “Bas aap band kerwa dein” meaning “Just get it stopped”. That is what I love about this country – common sense does not exist. In fact its singled out and annihilated.
This leads me to another question. What do they want us to do? Without trying to sound too full of myself, we are a group of 20 something year olds who are willing to spend their Saturday and Sunday evenings in a football field. We have been doing that for over 2 years now. All of us could spend this time in a multitude of Café’s and Sheesha lounges that have crept up all over Lahore. Better yet we could be spending this time smoking or indulging in other totally frivolous pursuits so why is it, that us playing football in an empty field is a problem? What do they want us to do?
The thing is my father is a doctor, he doesn’t have “PAWA” so to speak. I can’t call my uncle and ask him to set the Defense Authority straight. Even if I could, why should I? Why isn’t sound reasoning enough to convince someone? Because as the security guard who came to stop us said: “Sir, mein tau apni duty kar raha hoon.” Meaning “Sir, I am just doing my job.” The thing is we understand that, fighting him, arguing with him or insulting him will not solve anything. At worst he might lose his job because he wasn’t able to do what was asked and that is how it goes. Its all about who you know and how high up that person goes.
This reminds me of another thing. A few years ago, our neighbors sold their house. A serving army general bought the house and a few months later served us notice that we were encroaching upon his property. A 5 feet strip in our house belonged to him apparently. What happened was that the previous owners had built our side of the house for their sister so being family not much attention was paid to the exact dimensions. Now it turned out we had 5 feet more. I have no idea what actually happened. There were strong words said and there was a court case but ultimately one day they just smashed our wall down and built a new one 5 feet in. The Cantt. Regulations say that you must have 5 feet between your boundary wall and actual construction so naturally a whole side of the house then had to be reconstructed and what did the General do with those 5 feet. He grew grass on it. I have no words to express to you my anger at this. I mean 5 feet of grass – Aaarghhh . . .
The funny thing is that the General loved his grass and whenever the Cantt Board widened roads, the grass outside his house was never touched. He had to retire ultimately and the next time road construction came around his grass was massacred along with everyone else. Oh I could not wipe the smile of my face for days. But jokes aside that is how our country operates. I always say that we love our grand theories and schemes but these little things tell us much more about who we really are.
An empty ground, a five feet strip of land, the grass outside your house – little things that can give you profound lessons on life.
