Lofty Dreams for a Humble Family
Chapter 16 of “Hold On’’: Chamkani 2013
(N.B. I’m writing a novel, a chapter a week, here on Medium. Find out why I write here, start from Chapter 1 here, and always feel free to give me feedback in the comments. I write here for the community.)
Shafiq, Hira’s brother, got a call about the announcement of his FSc result on the weekend. He was very happy to announce that he had received an A grade. Hira’s mother, Nausheen, immediately sent Aftab to buy sweets from the nearby shop. She was ecstatic and her excitement knew no bounds. She would distribute the sweets in the neighborhood. Shafiq had gotten 10 marks higher than Hira. So, as usual, Nausheen taunted Hira that Shafiq had performed better than her.
She had said that she knew her son would outperform Hira in the exams. Hira was also very happy for her brother and hugged and kissed him, but her mom’s remarks were toxic, breeding resentment. She recalled how her mom had not celebrated her achievements even once.
After dinner, Hira started the conversation about what Shafiq was planning for his future and where he would pursue his college education. She went on to say that Shafiq could easily get admission with a scholarship for the computer science programme of the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) located in Islamabad. She told him how one of her classmates had gotten admission there with a scholarship, who had about the same marks as Shafiq. Aftab interjected that he could not bear the hostel costs of living in the university even if they gave a tuition scholarship. Hira said, “I do not know whether they give a living stipend or not. But it is true that the hostel cost will be very difficult for our family to bear.”
Shafiq broke his silence and said that he wanted to do a degree in international relations. No one in Aftab’s family had ever heard about this subject. Shafiq explained that one of his class fellows had advised him to do this degree. This degree was very helpful for Central Superior Service (CSS) exam. He said that his friend had been telling him about this. “Two of my friend’s cousins have done CSS.”
Aftab thought that his son could not do CSS because he had been seeing CSS officers as the head of his department. He always thought that such officers pass CSS on sifarish. But Shafiq told him that this was not the case. Even his friend’s cousins were not very rich and influential but they passed CSS with their own effort. This was a surprise for Aftab.
Hira interposed and asked Shafiq to consider studying computer science. For a moment she was about to mention Ahmed and how he had been telling her that the scope of computer science was going to increase in a few years. Fields like artificial intelligence were evolving rapidly. He had been telling her about the experiments on driverless cars, the application of computer vision in the medical imaging field, and developments in the internet of things. But Hira caught herself before mentioning Ahmad’s name.
She had never shared anything with her parents about her blossoming relationship with Ahmad and how they had even begun talking about marriage after the completion of their studies. She had been talking to Ahmad almost every week. Often, she was gripped by a feeling of guilt that she was doing something wrong without the knowledge and approval of her parents. Sometimes she even talked to Sadia about it.
“I feel I am not an obedient daughter of my parents. They had asked me not to be friends with boys, but I have gone ahead with Ahmed”. Sadia often told her that it did not matter, but it continued to be a source of grief for her. Ahmed even suggested to Hira once, that his father would talk to her father. But Hira stopped him from doing it. She could simply not dare to face her parents after they would come to know about her relationship. She asked Ahmed if it would be better to discuss this with their parents after he returned from the US.
Shafiq did not agree with Hira. He said that he did not want to become a computer operator. He wanted to become an officer. He told Hira and his family that both of the cousins of his friend were living a prosperous life in big bungalows after doing CSS. One of them was in the police service and another one was in DMG. The police officer had gotten married to the daughter of a federal minister and the DMG got married to the daughter of an industrialist from Faisalabad. “I want to join Police Service”, Shafiq said. Hira did not know how to convince him otherwise. Aftab sat there with a look of bewilderment on his face after listening to Shafiq’s lofty dreams for their humble family. Hira tried to argue with Shafiq that it would be much better for him to enter into a computer science degree instead of doing CSS. “It will help you develop a solid skillset to enable you to earn well and to contribute to the issues technology is helping to solve around the world”, Hira said. But Nausheen interjected Hira to support Shafiq, as usual, and said that he was right. There is no use of doing Kampoter (computer) course. Shafiq would become a Police Apsar (Officer).
