The Origin Story

Well basically I was born in a small little…………..nah that’s quite boring. My childhood stories are waaaay to boring to tell. All you need to know is that I spent 18 years of my life living in Singapore and New Zealand. Yep that’s the normal childhood we know about in Pakistan.

18 years of my life whizzed past and I had absolutely no clue what the hell happened. Throughout the years the dreaded question, “Oi!! What do you want to be when your older??!” was thrown at me, and every single time I dodged that bullet by replying in a childish manner, “dunno.”  It was the last year of college and the time had come to choose a direction. So I chose to become a pilot. I managed to convince my parents and that was the end of it. Phwww!! All done. Hardest decision of my life made!  All tensions dissolved. All worries finished. We can all sing with joy. Easiest decision of my life. And that’s the end of it. But nothing that’s simple, it is really?

It was all going good until that dreaded phone call from my granddad which shattered my hopes, tore away: my dreams, my future, my will to live, my passion and my soul (you getting my point? Or do I have to over act some more?).

 He inhospitably bellowed my acrimonious destiny; I was not going to be a pilot.

Throughout college I studied all the main subjects, (Physics, Chem, Bio and even bloody Calculus!!). My friends told me I was crazy for choosing the hardest subjects and jokingly I gave them a nothing reply – “meh.” Unfortunately, to add to my confusion, my grades in all subjects were reasonably good; I didn’t ace any subject but had good command of all of them (at least that’s what it felt like on the exam day). It all confused the hell out of me. I had no bloody idea what I was going to do! I liked all fields and my one true ‘love’ was stolen from me.  It was all hell breaking lose in my mind until 2 days before my finals my sweet grandmother said on the phone, “Doctor banja Habib. Hamri khandan mai kohi na doctory kare, tu banja Habib.”  So it was set. My future life was to be set by my old grandmother. As of that day I was destined to become a doctor.

I’m going to sum up a year of life in less than 80 words now. The next year I spent doing first year medicine in New Zealand, studying at Otago University, in the coldest city ever. Well, I didn’t meet the aggregate of 93.21% and wasn’t allowed to continue into 2^nd year Medicine. Although they offered me a seat in Neuroscience I refused and sat with my family to sort my life out.

It was decided then that I was going to try and get into a Medical school in Pakistan. And so the journey had begun.