It’s a common saying that a man is known by the company he keeps, I enhance this further that, “he is also known by how he keeps his surroundings”. By keeping the surrounding good means to keep it clean, tidy, peaceful and fertile for literary growth. It should be kept in mind that if the surrounding of an educational institute is not tidy and peaceful then there is less chance for a literary approach to flourish. This was somewhat the essence of our first lecture at Karachi University by our visionary teacher, and I sort of made it a bible for my entire life.
In my whole tenure at university I had been living up to implement the above mentioned saying, or at least become an aid to those who were trying to do so. Throughout our student days in university we were very active through our youth-based platform KUMAK, we organized cleaning campaigns, held literary discussions, organized reading sessions and much more to establish a literary environment in our department, where knowledge found a peaceful environment to persist.
Karachi University, as most of us know, is under strong control of political parties which operate through their respective student groups, ill-famed for their not-so-humble attitude. Despite their repeated claims of being an aid to students on campus, they actually are annoying at times and mostly a hindrance in the smooth flow of literary activities inside the university premises. They can be seen boycotting classes, forcing teachers not to teach, doing wall-chalking on department walls, pasting posters on every clean space of wall they find making the department more of a ‘Numaish Chowrangi’.
I, along with others fellows had actively initiated cleaning campaigns in our department to clear it off the political posters and hold. We always faced strong objection from political parties for keeping the environment clean of their influence but we somehow managed to tackle it, sometimes by diplomacy or sometime by completely ignoring to their threats.
I somehow managed to take the official permission for running this campaign, or had to look for favorable allies to keep them calm, but we never stopped following the right path. We had gathered a sizable number of like-minded students who all wanted a peaceful and tidy learning place, this lobbying proved effective many times.
Things don’t run smooth all the time and there comes a time when you have to face the heat. It was my time to face the music some one and a half year back, when I was in my final semester. On a sunny day, we who were doing the poster cleaning in department got in deep trouble at the sudden arrival of the political activists, that too of the same party whose posters we were removing. Despite the various efforts to calm the situation, the mess was done and it all ended up with me getting the beating of my life - yes it happens in KU. It was a very awkward situation for me, lying on the department floor with a bleeding nose. I had never expected this, but this never made me go off track. I went back to doing the same cleaning up, this time a bit more carefully and in a subliminal way without coming to front and preferring to control the strings from backyard, but the mission prevailed.
The bible constituted on day-one was followed in its true letter and spirit and it will be, the motivation is still there though I don’t regularly visit the university, when I do, I try to leave a mark. Not on my nose, but on the surroundings.
