Preamble 

Pakistani passport is tricky; getting a visa is somewhat an adventure in itself. Be that as it may, I have been to over two dozen countries through it. Whenever I narrate my voyages to anyone, the response is recurring – they ask me to write a travel diary, or a blog, or maybe even make a movie. Are my ingenious, verbal storytelling abilities not enough? Regardless – my mother was included in these people, so I decided – why not give it a shot?

Chapter 1: The Dumbbell Beginnings

It began in 1999, my last semester of bachelors in Computer Science in FAST NU. I considered myself the guru of programmers in my final year – being almost invincible in coding. One sunny morning, one of my friends “F” approached me. “Since we are such great programmers,” he considered, “I have found most prestigious international programming competition. any company in the world is bound to hire its winners.”

The Competition was called IBM – ICPC competition. Regional matches were being held in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I was immediately on board – after all, who wouldn’t want a job of your own choice in the world? Plus, a chance to visit Dhaka? In agreement, we approached another Cheetah programmer, ‘A’ who resided in a hostel near our university, and convinced him to be our team’s third wheel. Our team was now complete. Unfortunately, when our adrenaline wore off, we realised one crucial fact – considering we were middle class fukras, we couldn’t do this without a sponsor to pay for us.

The sheer concept of going abroad on a coding competition was alien to our university, plus no one wanted to risk their money on self-proclaimed coding gurus. We kept pressing until a deep pocketed teacher descended like a fairy godmother, waving his platinum debit card like a magic wand. The catch? We had to promise to pay him back once we either hit the jackpot or started rolling in dough from our swanky tech jobs.

F sent an email to the Competition head in Dhaka, informing him of us gracing the event. Then came the hard part – the grind for the competition. Nights blended into days, the sun gave way to the moon, and we studied day and night, attending classes in the mornings and proceeding to solve past problems all night. Needless to say, our sanity began to exit our minds, but  our stubborn dreams of victory clung on, refusing to be ghosted..

To prove ourselves that we are better than others, we enrolled in Procom – the same kind of competition but local. It took place in FAST Karachi, hoping that it  would grant us an extra feather in the cap. At long last, we were confident in our abilities, and went to buy air tickets to Dhaka.

Murphy’s Law came into full effect, however, as we realised that the price of tickets had increased monumentally. The cost now exceeded our budget. Our team sat resignedly in our university’s Khokha, trying to brainstorm ways to secure additional funding, and fast.

Soon enough, we spotted one of our classmates – a daughter belonging to a rich bureaucrat –  walking through the cafe. All three of us got to our feet with the same exact idea. She told us she was going to submit her semester fees. We pleaded her to give us money, considering our dire lack, but urgent need of it. She was hesitant, though – today was the deadline to submit her fees, and any more delays would cost her a fine. After some thought, however, she was kind enough to lend us her money.

The worst was over, and from here it would be smooth sailing. 

Or so we thought. 

Overpriced air tickets in hand,  we proceeded to acquire our visa. In those times, shuttles were rare, so we hailed a taxi and drove to the Bangladeshi embassy in Islamabad.

The embassy was closed. 

Shocked, we asked the guards what was going on. He told us that embassy just closed for the Friday Prayer break – and, considering that Saturday and Sunday are holidays, the embassy would open again on monday. 

While we were thinking what to do, The main door opened and a car with a bangladesh flag came out. We knew he was the ambassador, so the three of us immediately formed a line infront of car, forcing it to come to a halt. A grey haired ambassador stepped out of the car, did a quick survey of the three wayward students standing infront of him, and sighed.  “Who are you?”, he asked. We told him about our situation – that we desperately needed a visa to Dhaka for an imminent competition. Much to our surprise, he was kind enough to open the office again, taking us in and issuing visas for us. Phew. 

We returned to lahore, joyous and celebrating our first success. Little did we know, however, that there was much more in store for us.

We had decided to attend Procom, the local event, on monday, and then proceed to the actual competition in dhaka on wednesday. Thus, on Sunday,we arrived at Lahore train station, seeking tickets. We were then hit with yet another obstacle; all the tickets were sold out. Desperation was overriding though; we could not give up after coming this far. So we kept our heads low and blended into the crowd on the carriage. Avoiding the array of guards required skill, and even required us to hide in the toilet for a while, but thats a story for another day.

Finally, the day for Procom arrived, and our team, pumped up with ambition, participated with vigour. So much vigour,, that we utterly failed to solve any of the problems and could not secure any positions or awards.

It was, quite frankly, depressing. Sadar Bazar, a colourful, cultural market in Karachi, was considered therapy back in the day. It was Wednesday evening, a few hours before our flight to Dhaka. To pass time, we took a bus to the Bazaar, and spent a couple of hours there, trying to get rid of the feeling of dread for the actual competition.. 

Once we reached back to our accommodations, however, we ran into another obstacle: our passports were missing? We frantically searched everywhere but our labour bore no fruit. 

Flustered as we were, we knew this could not be the end of our journey. Suddenly, we recalled having accidentally left them behind on the local bus on which we came back from the Bazaar. There were three hours to our flight, and our passports were nowhere to be seen. F’s father arrived as a beacon of hope, and he took us to the last bus stop. Got the sleeping bus checked, but could not find our shopper bag of Passports. We asked around, and, by some miracle, managed to find the bus’s conductor’s house address. The journey to his house was torturous, with a plethora of inner dread and dialogue. What if he didn’t have our passports? Would we miss our flight? Would all our preparation be in vain? We went to his house and knocked anxiously. The yawning, very annoyed conductor opened the door. His sour mood was overlooked by the sheer joy of knowing that he did, in fact, have our passports. 

It was very late, and less than an hour to our flight. We rushed to the airport, passed through passport control, Airport staff were running with us. We reached the aeroplane and they reopened the door for us. We got in and, had not even reached our seats, that the plane started taxing. The sheer amount of struggle, we marvelled, that it took to get into this seats.

We landed safely in Dhaka, took a taxi to the university where the competition was being held. God’s plan was still not over for us, though. The in-charge informed us that since none of us replied to their email of confirmation, our names werent in the list of competitors, and hence no accommodations. One look at our stricken faces, and he relented. “Since you guys came all the way from Pakistan, we cannot let you go back like this. Please wait till we enroll you and find you a place to stay.” more relieving words had never been heard, and we gratefully waited.

Finally, he returned and told us that, considering that the dorm rooms were fully occupied, they had rented a three room penthouse apartment for us near the university. We were taken aback by the luxurious layout of the apartment. It was so inviting, infact, that we had half a mind to rest here for the next four days, and skip the competition.

Those were our tired minds speaking, thankfully, because we woke up the next day pumped for the competition. It was the pre-test round. We entered the hall, and looked in wonder at the diverse races here — there were chinese, Japanese, Indian and Bangladeshi teams everywhere. Much to our surprise, they were using Notepad, a very primitive app, while we used IDEs. that gave us confidence. The pre round started, and went flummoxingly well. Infact, we were able to finish the question before any of the other teams! 

After the competition, we had time to socialise and even made friends with some bangladeshi and indian teams. 

The grand day arrived – the day of the competition. every team had to solve a maximum of 6 questions in 3 hours. We solved the first question in twenty minutes; but, that was where our luck ceased. It was like a brain block for remaining 5 questions – we could not solve any of them. When last fifteen minutes were left, I made our way to the food area, where they were serving free delicacies. 

A was angry to see me so relaxed and eating at the food stall. He shouted. “What are you doing, we are in the middle of the competition?”

I asked him why we were in the competition. 

“To Win”, said A. I replied, “then what?”. “we will get great jobs”, he said readily. 

“Then what”, I asked. 

“Then we will become rich”, 

“Then what”, I reiterated.

“Then we will spend a life of luxury, eat quality food and enjoy”, he replied.

I asked him, beef burger in hand, “What do you think I am doing right now?”

Flabbergasted, but convinced, both A and F left the computers and joined me at the food bar to enjoy the food, and spectate the stressed out competitors.

Finally, the award ceremony arrived, and we knew we wouldnt get anything, considering we only attempted one question, while every team attempted more than that. The first prize went to the chinese team, who somehow managed to get all 6 questions right. The Indian team got 5 questions right and won a consolation prize. Lastly, and much to our surprise, they announced a special prize of $500 for the team who finished the first question first. And that was, of course, our team. At long last, we had gotten at least a part of what we had desired. 

The competition was over, and relief flooded our senses. Like I  mentioned, we made several Bangladeshi friends. One of them was a nice, rich Bengali girl, who invited A to her house for lunch and meet her parents. F and I, loyal teammates that we were, insisted that we accompany him as well. The house was well built and luxurious. They invited us to enter their fully carpeted drawing room. Of course, it is only right that we remove our dirty shoes before doing so. The problem was, F had been wearing the same dirty socks for the past week. He tried his best to resist; but eventually took them off. The odour of smelly socks filled the drawing room. The hosts, who had almost come in, had to back out because it stank so much. With no other option, their servant put the food in front of the drawing room door, where we ate hastily and ran as fast as we could from that house, vowing never to return and show our faces here again.

The time came to end the adventure. Unfortunately, our return tickets were not confirmed yet, so we were on standby in our penthouse on extended stay, thanks to our generous hosts. A few days later, someone knocked hard on our door at 7am in the morning and informed us that we had exactly one hour to reach the airport or we would miss the flight. It was again a race against time to reach the airport, and once again, we were the last passengers to board the aircraft. 

The trip littered with misfortunes, but fun memories, had finally come to an end. F, A and I graduated from our universities. We secured good jobs, and paid back our debts with $500 and our first pays. Today, F is working in Meta and lives in San Jose. A is some big shot in a bank in Saudi Arabia, and I am living well in Pakistan.

Alhamdulillah, all’s well that ends well.