Stuck on a Ship

This post is quite unexpected in that it was never meant to be blogged about. For my second post, I wanted to put up a story I have been working on for the past week. But it turns out that I have lost my way again, though not as badly. For starters, I can just tell you that this story is set to take place on a sea vessel and I have already placed my protagonist on the ship's deck.

Now the trouble is that I have little knowledge of layouts of huge ships, and I need to form some accurate blueprints in my head to move myself around, along with my protagonist. Dear ol' Google has been of some help and I am more familiar with certain terms, practices and ships now than before. But it has been frustrating work so far, and I still have not acquired some knowledge that I desperately seek. Perhaps I am not searching for the right terms as I am not well-versed in sailor lore.

This search and seek practice of the past few days has opened my eyes to a new kind of irony: my dependence on facts and research to form the support columns of my imagination. Imagination is supposed to be an all-powerful weapon that can define new frontiers. However, it is something that can neither exist nor develop on its own.

For a powerful imagination, one must be open-minded and absorb the lessons of their surroundings. Even for an imaginary setting where the imaginaut has defined surroundings completely other-worldly and alien to what is known to us, they form roots out of what they gained from their own experiences on the real earth. Wonka's great glass elevator may not have the same characteristics as our normal elevators, yet it was imagined from the foundation of a normal elevator of which the esteemed imaginaut Roald Dahl was aware of. Tolkien was a skillful linguist and used that knowledge to create languages to support Middle-Earth. He also used his appreciation for the wide-open spaces in England, where he lived, to gain inspiration to conjure the Shire.

Right now, I may have the imaginary power and the inspiration to write my story but I lack the knowledge to do so. I can still define the boundaries of my own ship, the like of which has never been made before, but I believe that will not connect my audience too well with the setting. The artificial layout will need to be polished and waxed too well, and the depth of characters will need to be quite intense to delusion the reader into believing that those walls can really exist. After all, Khaled Hosseini re-imagined a true Afghanistan that gave him the power to connect well with his readers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle placed Detective Holmes in London so well that his statue actually graces Baker Street today. And I have simply not reached that level of experience as an imaginaut yet.

So I am afraid that unless I find some true knowledge about sea travel which I need, I cannot proceed with my sea tale. It's not that difficult, but will need some time and more effort on my part. I think I need to go to the Karachi Port and have a tour of a huge cargo ship myself. And if any of you are guessing as to what the story is about, well, it's not that hard to guess and the theme may be predictable but not in the way you imagine it. For now, I shall leave my protagonist to stand at the ship's deck on their own until I can create the world for him to move about in.

Last First Day

It’s actually time to put things into perspective now, and look ahead to the future. It’s quite hard to believe really, that today was the last time I entered IBA for a first day of the semester. I’m writing this while sitting on a bench in the foyer, taking in all the sights and sounds of main campus. As usual, the atmosphere is jovial and cheerful with a lot of laughter going around. The singing of birds is also audible over the loud chatter of my peers, and I’m reminded again that nature is a huge part of main campus. A healthy breeze perpetually flows through the foyer, adding to the comfort on the marble benches. Against the background of the gray, cloudy sky, the futsol goal posts are visible a few meters away, positively inviting me to come and play. A few of my chums can also be seen playing the beautiful game. So am I really going to miss it?

To be frank, I have never associated the kind of loyalty to IBA as I did to my school, St. Patrick’s. But yet I have this feeling of dread and uncertainty hanging over my head, the like of which I have never experienced before. I know a lot of people who are quite eager and excited at the fact that they will be leaving IBA soon. But I mostly find myself at a loss for words when they ask back: Aren’t you glad IBA is ending? It’s quite a mixed feeling really.

When I first came to IBA, I hated it. I was looking for value in petty things like the size of the campus; I felt that the campus was too small for a university, which should have acres of land. I hated most of my teachers initially, whom I felt screwed up many of my concepts. I got ragged in my first few weeks quite a few times, experiences which cannot be elaborated in detail here, and all of this put me off about IBA.

But I guess over time I started to take a liking to many things, and met some great people. The small population on our campus initially contributed to a homely atmosphere where everybody knew everybody else, and you could go and talk to almost anybody in any batch. Most seniors were willing to help you out in any problems you faced or gave you advice if you needed help in any matter. This is independent of those people who stepped up to help you during the time of elections and disappeared into the thick of the crowd after they ended; trouble was, the crowd was not thick at all. I loved the gigs that used to happen in the cafeteria, where people sat in open circles on the floor, filmed hanging from the rails of the upper floor and the whole place was packed like crazy. The football that we played almost daily just beyond the foyer became an inseparable part of life.

I remember Independence Day 2008 in particular. It was raining and everyone was clad in white and green and the ambience that morning is hard to define in words. There was energy in the air that is felt rarely, and people were happily decorating the campus. A few guys went upstairs in the cafeteria and hung the green and white banner to soak in the rain of freedom. Others were taping confetti and jhandian in the cafeteria, where I joined in. Some girls had brought tiaras, brownies and poster paints which they were using to paint the crescent and star on people’s faces. The energy we felt was surely not a fad, as it got to the teachers as well and I remember a few of them giving the classes off early as well (something that hardly happens in IBA). We made the most of that morning, singing anthems, splashing water and simply soaking in the monsoon shower. Such mornings are hard to come by.

Since I have come to IBA, I made many amazing friends as well who are hard to replace. Over four years you tend to go through things thick and thin, and there are people who have stood with you through all that time, and it is something you cannot easily let go of. Yet, four years is also a long time in which to lose people as friends. It is a sad fact which I have also come to embrace. At the start, I started off with a lot of people who would hang out with me, meet and talk. Yet, with time circumstances changed and I met many of them only occasionally, and we used to greet then. A few years passed, and then they pass in front of me, with glazed and far-off looks in their eyes, amnesia taking hold early as they fail to recognize me. This is another part of reality that I have come to accept over the years, and feel I have also changed with time. I also came across some very inspiring teachers who really taught with passion and taught us much more than the course outline, and many who really made us work like donkeys, but you found you learnt more at the end of it all. They really helped me shake the initial stereotype of the not-so-great teachers at IBA, but I had a very diverse experience with all the teachers.

In 2009, I became part of the Entrepreneurship Society and embarked on a memorable, year-long journey of hard work, new friends, frustration, failure, success and unprecedented milestones. In IBA, I learnt that the edge we gain is not mostly from what we do in our class rooms, but mainly from what we learn from interacting with our peers and taking part in the management of different events that happen around the year. These experiences have given me lots of new perspectives with which to see things, and made me aware of all the effort that goes behind even the smallest of things we see, but do not appreciate.

If we consider The Verve in this context for example, a lot of people appreciated the event and the way it happened. But what most people don’t know is the effort and khwaari I had to go through to book that venue. Around four weeks before the event, a friend and I were going around hotels to look for potential venues for the event. We had already settled for the Sheraton but wanted to explore additional options before confirming it. We went to Avari Towers at around 3.00 PM, but due to an immense traffic jam we had to park the car towards Saddar and walk the length of the road to get there. We had a meeting time for Sheraton at around 4.00 PM, and left Avari at around 3.30 PM to allow half an hour for the traffic jam. However, the half hour turned into an hour and we had barely moved past one signal. We missed the meeting, and it was time for my friend to drop me home, return to his place and then return for a class to city campus in the evening. However, all plans went to waste and we both ended up proceeding to city campus. In the end, the situation was so bad that we parked the car in the middle of Saddar and proceeded to city campus on foot, nearly a 25 minute walk. For an end to the perfect day, on the way back to his car at night when the roads had cleared, we discovered that the car had a flat tire. I reached home at around 10.30 PM when I should have reached back in the afternoon.

Now all those experiences and memories are coming up and swirling around me, and I can’t help but wonder what lies beyond June when I graduate. Life will go in a new direction, but we can never be sure of any more summer holidays, meeting friends everyday or anything else for that matter.

Right now, I’m sitting on a sofa in the city campus waiting for an evening class. A few people are engrossed in their talk on the other sofas, and four guys are playing Trumps on the table in front of me. The parked cars are visible outside the glass doors, and I can see their shadows lengthening on the ground as the sun begins to set. I think IBA has changed me, and has given me a lot of things which I had not realized previously. The parting will be more bitter than sweet this June, as I start the long walk towards this great uncertainty that surrounds me.