Humble beginnings, a difficult childhood, and an uncertain future is how I started my life. I was hardly two when my mother died. My sister died of illness before I was born. That's how life was in my village.
I was the only child my father had so he didn't marry despite being in his early 20s at that time. He wanted to protect his only son from the evils of stepmotherhood.
I was raised by my grandmother. I was past ten years of age when I knew she wasn't my real mother.
My grandfather died when dad was just thirteen. Since then, and until very recently, my father has been keeping the family intact. The harshest result of this mishap was that my father couldn't get education despite being full of ability.
But he had the vision enough to send me to school. That's the best gift given to me by him and my grandmother. They both made sure that I went to school.
At school, I started learning quickly. My teachers recognized my genius. I kept topping the results in the government schools of my village without ever studying at home. No tuition as well. In fact, I used to leave back my bag in the classroom.
The turning point of my life came when I left my village's primary school, that I disliked, to join the primary school of a neighboring village. It was class 5 and I learned how to write ABC properly for the first time in my life. I learned basic English grammar and that's what changed my life I think.
When at local high school, my respected teachers advised my father to send me to some good school as I was way too talented in their kind opinion. That's how I appeared in the entry test of PAF Cadet School Sargodha. I joined it in 2004 among the 80 kids who were selected out of 17000+ applicants from all over Pakistan.
PAF School is one of the top residential schools in Pakistan. Despite its high position, it is quite affordable due to being a state run institute.
Despite the change of medium to English (the medium of instruction for me was Punjabi and Urdu before that) and classmates to the chosen talent from around the country, I kept getting top positions. That's when my belief in my ability got really strong.
Football is an integral part of my story. I started playing football in April, 2004; the month I joined PAF Shool. In December, I broke my right leg while playing football. I was right footed, which made it worse. When the fracture got better, I didn't give up and started playing again. In August 2005, the same leg broke again. It was a disaster for me as my academic life was ruined.
I still didn't give up and returned to playing after the injury. My name is still written on the Honor Board for holding football color for two consecutive years. I have a football color of my graduation years as well. Never giving up rewarded me with joy and respect from playing football. That's the message I wanted to share via my football story.
Never give up!
I consider myself a person extremely blessed by God Almighty despite all the broken dreams and difficult challenges. I'm a gazetted govt officer for the last 5 years and doing supply chain management as profession. Public procurement has been one of my favorite experiences having executed contracts and purchases worth millions of dollars at such a young age. You'll not find a single person doubting my honesty.
The biggest achievement of life has been to convince my father to marry. I arranged it all for him 2 years ago and finally he has a partner in life. I'm glad too that I can call someone a mother.
The people who know me online know that I keep learning from online sources, keep reading books, and love spreading positive message. The whole point of my life is to make a difference and I know that becoming a better person is the key to do that.
I would request all of you to face the challenges of your life with will power to overcome them. Take responsibility of your life and stop complaining about not having a mother, a degree, a better environment or a lot of money.
Get out of your passive mindset and make things happen; because you can!
