Amazing how little things in 1940s shapes your destiny. THREAD

So we are small landowners.After giving everyone their Hissa,putting aside Zakat & storing up enough wheat for domestic use that'll last us until the next crop,our total sale of wheat amounted to 6300 at 1800/maund

Not enough to buy two ceiling fans @ 3500 a piece. (We still have 4 vacant ceiling fan slots in the house).

Sometimes, I am so grateful to my grandfather - yougest of 4 siblings- who overcame his humble farming environment and became the only person in the family to matriculate

.from a village that had the only high school in the region. It is like 3 villages away from our village. A special chingchee today costs you like 200. Man walked with the proverbial pyaz and roti his mother gave him for the journey.

Got a job in one of the hasaas idaara......

Served this country well during the Afghan Jihad days with postings in Fata. Died before I was born. Exactly when the 'triumph' of the Jihad was ripe. Because he couldnt be bribed, there are still stories in the village of smugglers and drug lords showing up at village to bribe

...his brothers. Everyone who served in the Afghan Jihad made an absolute killing. Fortunes were made. War economy enriched minions of the states as well as its elite: from the Political Agents of agencies,to men of hasaan idaaras to the khasadars manning the checkposts.

The pattern still continues. It is a gift that keeps giving.

Grandpa died in his 50s, helping this state 'win a war for its survival' [though I dont know how he would feel about it today. I sometimes have imaginary conversations with his dead soul in my head wherein...

Khair, back to our story, thanks to that Matric of my Grandpa, the family built on that foundation gradually. My dad got a diploma in Electronic (calls himself an engineer (lol) but that is ok. Cleared his BA in like 3 attempts and never enrolled in a BS Engineering..

..program despite my uneducated mother begging him to do so (so he can get that job promotion). [cant blame him though. Grandpa left him in poverty with 7 teenage kids to take care of. All happily married now]. And my uncle could only get a BSc even though my dad..

.put him in Police Public School, then an elite place and way beyond my father's means). And while my father could only get a diploma in electronics, my brother has got a phd in electronics from one of the best universities in the world, my sister and I, mphils.

All because grandpa took that journey to the high school way back in late 1940s-50s, pyaz and tandoor ki roti. Without him, I would have been working in the field finding it hard to make ends meet or driving a 20-wheeler truck in Gulf like so many of my cousins.

Money is still a problem but that is ok. Thanks to him, I live the good life today. I watch netflix, read the classics (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Kafka) and all the hip contemporaries (Atwood, Ishiguro, Hilary Mantel); and travel the land in search of good Deg Chawal; and

..and I get to be the one-man wolfpack of the Modern Pashtun Man movement and I write threads and get accused by little self-appointed patriotic pieces of shit on twitter.

PS: 1. this is not a belittling of farming. As someone who comes from a stock of farmers, I have tremendous respect for what used to be our way of life and in many ways, still is.

I am only highlighting the point that it is just not possible to make ends means for small land owners like us. Not anymore. Offsprings of the other 3 brothers of my grandpa have had to..

get into the work force of Gulf and other most earn a lot. Have bought so much land in the region and are very well off. But there is still not a single MA or Msc in the generations. Not because there are no chances. There are good schools, colleges,and

universities in and around the village now but those families never really developed an aptitude for education. I am only highlighting, as Malala points us, the difference one person can make when it comes to education.

2. Nor is this a case against human agency or endeavour. Humans do have agency and drive and some do overcome the hurdles life throws at them. I am only highlighting the fact that we take these little things that happen in the past for granted. Sometimes, pre-existing conditions

..(class, geography, socio-economic conditions, politics) can be just as strong or even stronger than human agency. It is just how it is. For some humans. For most humans. Call it fate, destiny, luck, whatever you will.

All the more reason then, perhaps, to strive for a society that provides everyone relatively fair opportunities. No? All the more reason to think about the past (which is not irrelevant) and strive to make the present fairer and better.

End