From Inferiority to Intellectual: My Journey with Books (1)

 

Javed Chaudhry is a Pakistani columnist, YouTuber, and journalist who has been hosting the Kal Tak show on Express News since 2008. He also writes Urdu columns on various topics in his Zero Point series in the Daily Express.

Born: January 1, 1968 (age 56 years), Lalamusa

Education: The Islamia University of Bahawalpur (1991), Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University

Notable work: Zero Point

Javeed Chudary

Disclaimer:

Today, we have a public holiday due to Muharram-ul-Haram. I got up early in the morning as usual, say fajer prayers, and after reciting the Holy Quran, I had some tea. I then opened my laptop to check my Medium.com and see the statistics about reading, reviews, and other analytics. This is part of my daily routine. At the same time, I also opened the “Express” Urdu newspaper and “Dawn” to check the latest updates on political and other issues.

Today, I found a very interesting and motivational article written by Javed Chaudhry in the Express newspaper. Javed Chaudhry is very famous in Pakistan for his unique writing skills and features. He creates stories that resonate with all of us and often align with our daily routines or government policies. We all enjoy reading his new stories daily. This is the main reason I translated his column into English and shared it with you, dedicating it to the esteemed writer, Mr. Javed Chaudhry.

I immediately picked up the phone. It was an old friend, a billionaire whose wealth keeps increasing daily. He had called me late at night, and I answered in worry, only to hear him laughing on the other end.

He said, “We have a bet going. I told them you would know the answer, while Shah Ji disagrees. So we will ask you a question, and you must answer immediately. Are you up for it?” I replied, “I’m up for it, but how much is the bet?”

He answered, “Ten lakh rupees each.” I asked, “And how much will I get?” He laughed and said, “All of it is yours.” I laughed too and asked the question. He said, “Why is the guest bathroom in homes called the powder room?” I laughed and said, “Brother, you’ve won the bet. Congratulations!” I heard loud laughter from the other side.

I explained to them, “In Britain, visitors of the king and queen had to wear white wigs, like judges. Back then, good wigs didn’t exist. The wigs had leather linings and both the leather and the white hair smelled.

So, visitors were taken to a special room before meeting the king and queen. This room had fragrant powder. The visitors would sprinkle powder inside the wig to make it smell good, then apply perfume on their gowns and go to the court.

The powder was applied to the wig by hand, so there was a sink in the room to wash their hands. Sometimes, visitors had to wait long periods in the court, and they couldn’t leave while the king and queen were present. Therefore, a commode and urinal were also installed in the special room. This room was called the powder room in the royal palace.

Since the habits and manners of the royals became fashionable for the public, the powder room became a trend and is now used worldwide. We no longer need wigs and powder, but the powder room still exists.” I fell silent, and applause erupted from the other end of the phone.

With the sound of applause, I also became sad. Tears filled my eyes. I had traveled a long and difficult path to hear those voices. Some people walk, some run to reach their destination, but I had crawled and dragged myself to get there.

Simple-minded people consider me a scholar, but I am neither learned nor wise. I just have a heap of useless information like the history of the powder room.

God gave me an extraordinary memory, so everything I read, saw, and heard since childhood stored in my mind’s hard drive, turning me into a small “USB.” How did all this happen?

The main reason is books.

As a child, I was a weak and dark-skinned boy, deeply rooted in inferiority complex. I was scared of people, couldn’t speak, and couldn’t face anyone. In this situation, books became my refuge, and I hid in them. I read whatever I could get my hands on.

Our town had two private libraries.

I used to collect money by selling tins, bottles, and cans from home and rented books. The rental was based on days, so I finished books day and night. I even read magazines standing at bookstalls.

My family was rural and illiterate. One of my uncles was extremely cruel. May God bless his soul, but he didn’t spare any effort in mentally, physically, and spiritually destroying me. Someone told him that these books were obscene and that his nephew was getting spoiled. So, my uncle would search my bag and bed daily, gather all the novel-sized books, and burn them to freshen his pipe.

In Punjabi, the pipe is called “topi.” Most of my uncle’s “topis” were made from the funeral pyres of my books. I used to cry and writhe every day, while my uncle smoked his pipe and enjoyed my misery.

My father was influenced by his brothers and believed everything they said, so he also beat me without listening to my side.

I learned my first lesson in book opposition at home, but perhaps I was made from stubbornness. I believed in “treatment through opposition,” or maybe I had no refuge other than books, so I persevered. But believe me, I paid a heavy price for this stubbornness throughout my life.

I was an alien in school because of books.

My classmates and teachers mocked me. Those times were better for books than today, but even then, book readers were called professor, bug, mosquito, and worm. My teachers and classmates called me the same. They would tear my books or throw them into the drain. I was also addicted to reading digests.

My teachers would take the digests from my bag and give them to the headmaster, who would make me hold my ears in front of everyone. My neighbors would report this to my uncle by evening, and then whatever happened to me, I still get teary-eyed and restless thinking about it at the age of 55.

I was the only student in college who read non-curricular books. Our college library was excellent, but even then, there wasn’t a trend for reading books.

Good students read syllabus books, memorized notes, and walked around repeating notes in the corridors.

Second-grade students played cricket, hockey, and badminton.

Third-grade students watched movies on VCRs and in cinemas. In our time, VCRs had come out. Young people would rent VCRs, put ice on their eyes, and watch four movies in a day.

Our film industry was taking its last breaths at that time. Cinemas showed substandard films, and third-grade students watched them, smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, and used hashish. They would roam around girls’ colleges and practice minor theft and thuggery.

Unfortunately, I didn’t belong to any of these three categories.

I only read books and suffered humiliation from all three types of students for this crime. Teachers also disliked me. They called me boastful and over-smart because when they asked about Newton’s third law, I would also write Newton’s background. They didn’t like this audacity, so they read my paper in class, laughed themselves, and made my classmates laugh too. They would also advise me to join arts and write poetry instead of studying science, saying science wasn’t my forte.

Because of this humiliation, propaganda, and discouragement, I failed in FSc. I was afraid of my father’s beating, so I ran away from Gujrat to Lahore, did FA privately, and enrolled in homeopathy. Why did I do it?

I still don’t understand the reason. I had good marks in FA, first got admitted to Government College. But due to the trolling because of my rustic appearance, I moved to FC College. This was an elite college at the time, attended by the scions of Lahore’s top families.

I got in on merit but the college environment was far above my social and psychological level. I brought books in my bag to college and sat in the last corner of the last bench.

This was the first batch of journalism in BA. Our teachers were working journalists.

They brought old notes from Punjab University and made it mandatory for students as if it were a faith. If anyone tried to go beyond a single line from their notes, they became like my uncle. I dared to do it once or twice, writing things about Maulana Zafar Ali Khan that were beyond our teacher’s knowledge.

So, they took my class in front of everyone, and at the end of the class, they named me Maulana Zafar Ali Khan.

My classmates liked the name and started calling me Maulana, pushing me into the last level of hell in humiliation and inferiority complex.

(To be continued)