Read Azlal Nasir’s (from Chitral) inspiring journey.
When I was initially approached for this advertisement of sort, my immediate and instinctual answer was an emphatic NO. Nothing irritates me more than the public display of our own grandiosities that, at their roots, are either a product of chance or the fact that we somehow found ourselves at the right time in the right place. This is not to say hard work comes to naught or to suggest that we are the prisoners of fate.
I do not know what I am trying to get at here, but when I finally succumbed to the proposal of putting my name and what I had achieved on public display, I searched for ways to come up with something that could be critical of the fetishization of success that characterizes our society. To do that was a challenge, but a focus on failure, I thought, could mitigate some of the toxicity that success embodies.
I began, or was forced to begin, my journey in a private school in a village in Chitral, which now lies barren; so, does my memory of it. You can already feel from the choice of my words that I am forcing myself to write this. I struggled at school, as so many of us do, somehow made it to college, and dragged myself through it. I failed the entry test of KMC (medical college), failed the entry test of AKU (Aga Khan University), failed the admission tests at Karachi University, failed the entry test for Pharmacy at a university whose name I do not even remember now. I barely passed the entry test for admission at the University of Peshawar, where I eventually graduated with a gold medal around my neck and a distinction on my degree. I failed the CSS exam, failed so many tests that I eventually lost count. I started working in a call centre, and it was during this time that I got to know of the Institute of Ismaili Studies and what is strangely titled as GPISH (Graduate Program in Islamic Studies and Humanities).
I failed the GPISH exam test on the first attempt, failed the interview of what is called ISMC (Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilization), where a professor condescendingly told me that by applying for this program, I had not only wasted my time but theirs as well. I finally managed to pass the GPISH exam and the interview and found myself at IIS in London. I did my two-year MA in Islamic Studies at SOAS and found myself at the University of Oxford for an MSt in Intellectual History, which I recently completed. I have started my PhD in History and do not have a clue where I am going to end up after four years.
When I had said NO to the proposal, I was told that students would get inspired by my journey, which eventually made me write this nonsense. But I really hope that you people will not get inspired by the ridiculous rant that I have put on public display. However, I hope that when you read about my failures, you will take me for what I am: a failure. That is who I am. And I also hope that you won’t be taken in by the allure of a success built on the graveyard of failure!
I wish and hope that you find meaning in what you are doing and struggling with, but with the caveat that there is no meaning to anything. Get in touch if you are going through an existential crisis, and I will try to convince you that to exist is to suffer!
Note: Some of you will notice that I use “found myself” a lot in the write-up, and that is because I had never imagined that I would be where I am at this juncture in my life.
