Three Tales by One Traveller: Tale One

SUPPORT

The life is never easy. That we all know but it is even more difficult for those who are bent on making it less easier for themselves. I was the one who always shied away from the most obvious paths (they may not be the easiest but undoubtedly were the most obvious). Consequently, I have tasted quite a fair share of disappointments in my life. And I can't claim to be the all conquering hero of fantasy land who takes all these disappointments in his stride and continues moving towards the ultimate aim. I must confess...I was quite a broken man when I joined National University, FAST. And a quite hopeless broken man on it...so life was tough as they say.

and it will live on....always a survivor

But then we don't know what fate has in store for us. I tried my level best not to enter this campus which was like a horrible dream for folks like us who shied away from hard work. It was elite, it was focused, it zeroed in on rewarding only hard work, it was proud.....it was not for me.

But again the fate brought me here. And I toiled here like I never did before. I learned and succeeded in realizing many of my dreams here. I eventually passed out from this wonderful place completing my doctorate studies. I was given due recognition, respect and sense of self esteem. But those are not the things this blog is about. This blog is about my lessons that I learned about what "support" actually means.

Here, I learned what it means to be a true teacher. There were teachers who left options abroad to come here and teach us the way anyone can imagine the best teacher in the world to deliver. They never expected anything from us in return. That was the support for me. Here I got my mentors. The ones who understood me, realized me, nurtured me and taught me. They not only taught me what I paid to the university for, they also taught me the real essence of being human. They taught me qualities like dedication, commitment, honesty, dignity and honor. They taught me to shape me as a human. They protected me. I can never forget those who sacrificed their nights for my mornings. That was the support for me. I am indebted for that to my mentors like Dr. Aftab Maroof, Dr. Anwar M. Mirza, Dr. Rauf Baig and many others. That was support for me.

And then there were friends. The folks who helped me when I was desolate. The ones who stood with me when I was standing alone. Who made me work. And who worked with me on my work. Who helped me getting my first job. Who helped me getting my first algorithm understand. Who laughed with me and wept with me. That was support for me. People whose number I cant count but some among them include Dr. Arfan Jaffar, Dr. Ayyaz Hussain, Dr. Amjad Iqbal, Dr. Abdul Basit, Dr. Sajid Anwar, Muhammad Nazir, Naveed Iqbal, Dr. Hassan Mujtaba, Dr. Abdul Rauf and countless others. That was a support for me.

And yes....the university taught me that ultimately, it is fun to work hard....it pays when you need the most. That was the support for me. My lessons in support were learned. Support is not to hide your crimes. Support is not to close your eyes on every negative that your friend commits. Support is not the omission and commission. Support is the strength that you give to a person to become a "human" worthy of its existence. I am proud to be FASTian to have learned this lesson.

Fluid Mechanics Group, Quaid-i-Azam University...is there any need to feel despair?

We as Pakistanis are usually subjected to a very harsh criticism regarding our supposedly lack of research aptitude. In this way, we are constantly told that we are destined to live at the bottom of food chain of human development since we are nowhere in the research. By the way, a lot of what is said is actually a fact and we need to improve ourselves. But the rhetoric and its systematic method is quite depressing. A few years back, I too subscribed to this opinion and was quite pessimistic about my future as an individual and as a nation. But then, fortunately, I cam under the supervision of some very enlightened teachers such as Dr. Aftab A. Maroof, Dr. Anwar Mirza, Dr. Abdul Rauf Baig and Dr. Arshad A. Shahid. At the same time, I had company of some very bright fellows who later turned out to be very illustrious PhD doctors such as Dr. Arfan Jaffar, Dr. Ayyaz Hussain, Dr. M. Amjad Iqbal and others. What is common amongst all of these is that with the exception of one or two cases, all above mentioned names have one thing in common. All of them are garduates of Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. After meeting all of these gentlemen and working under or alongside them, I realized how much this great seat of learning is under appreciated amongst us Pakistanis. What a gem, we have in the form of this university and how much this university needs to be promoted and upgraded. Indeed, Quaid-i-Azam University ahs potential to become the stanford of Pakistan and it will come out even better one day with the grace of god.

The inspiration for today's blog came as I was going through various research groups set up at this university and I cam across this vibrant reserach group titled as Fluid Mechanics Group (http://www.fmg.org.pk) or FMG. Just look at the PhD produced under the banner of this group (http://www.fmg.org.pk/Ph.D.Produced.php). The list is long enough that you may not expect. So just to give a shock therapy session, I shall just copy the whole list below....

1.      Muhammad Ayub                           PhD(1992)

Thesis Title:        Diffraction of acoustic waves by half planes
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar 

2. Masud Ahmed                                   PhD(1992)

Thesis Title:        Propagation of the love type waves in inhomogenous media
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar 

3. Bashir Ahmed                                   PhD(1994)

Thesis Title:        Scattering of spherical acoustic waves from an absorbing    half-plane
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

4. Akhtar Hussain                                 PhD(1995)

Thesis Title:        Diffraction of acoustic waves
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

5. Tasawar Hayat                                  PhD(2000)

Thesis Title:        Scattering of waves by half-planes with mixed boundary conditions
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

6. Tahira Haroon                                   PhD(2002)

Thesis Title:        Non-coaxial rotations of porous disks for unsteady MHD flows of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

7. Sohail Nadeem                                  PhD(2004)

Thesis Title:        Oscillatory flows of magnetohydrodynamic non-Newtonian fluids
Supervisors:        Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar and Dr. Tasawar Hayat

8. Masood Khan                                    PhD(2005)

Thesis Title:        Some flow problems of an Oldroyd fluid: Homotopy analysis method and numerical computations
Supervisors:        Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ayub and Dr. Tasawar Hayat

9. Khalid Hanif                                       PhD(2005)

Thesis Title:        Accelerated flows of viscoelastic fluids with no-slip and partial slip conditions
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

10. Muhammad Raheel Mohyudin          PhD(2005)

Thesis Title:        Inverse solution of Rivlin-Ericksen fluids
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

11. Muhammad Sajid                             PhD(2006)

Thesis Title:        Similar and non-similar analytic solutions for steady flows of differential type fluids
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

12. Rahmat Ellahi                                   PhD(2006)

Thesis Title:        Some steady and unsteady flow problem involving Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

13. Zahid Hussain                                  PhD(2007)

Thesis Title:        Rotating disk non-Newtonian fluids
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar

14. Faisal Shahzad                                 PhD(2007)

Thesis Title:        Non-Newtonian fluid flows in rotating and non-rotating frames
Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ayub

15. Muhammad Mudassar Gulzar           PhD(2007)

Thesis Title:        Flows of third grade fluid in rotating frame
Supervisors:        Prof. Dr. Saleem Asghar and Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ayub

16. Ambreen Afsar Khan                        PhD(2008)

Thesis Title:        Effect of magnetic field on the peristaltic motion of fluid
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

17. Iftikhar Ahmad                                 PhD(2008)

Thesis Title:        Solutions of unsteady flows over a strectching sheet using         Homotopy analysis method.

Supervisor:         Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ayub and Dr. M. Sajid

18. Muzhar Hussain                              PhD(2008)

Thesis Title:        Transient flows in a porous medium
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

19. Tariq Javed                                     PhD(2008)

Thesis Title:        Homotopy solutions for flows in a rotating frame
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

20. Sher Baz Khan                                PhD(2008)

Thesis Title:        Rotating flows of non-Newtonian fluids in a porous space
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

21. Nasir Ali                                          PhD(2008)

Thesis Title:        Mathematical models of peristaltic transport involving non-Newtonian fluids
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

22. Haider Zaman                                 PhD(2009)

Thesis Title:        Flows induced by a stretching surface
Supervisor:         Dr. M. Ayub

23. Zaheer Abbas                                  PhD(2009)

Thesis Title:        Numerical and series solutions for flows of non-linear fluids
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

24. Muhammad Ramzan                        PhD(2010)

Thesis Title:        Application of Wiener-Hopf technique on diffraction problems
Supervisor:         Dr. Muhammad Ayub

25. Khadija Maqbool                              PhD(2010)

Thesis Title:        Some simple flows of non-Newtonian fluids
Supervisor:         Dr. Tasawar Hayat

and that is not all...I shall not dare to paste the whole list of impact factor publications this group has made during last 15 years so I shall just give the link (http://www.fmg.org.pk/publications.php)

So...why am I writing all this??? Only because these achievements by us give us beliefe that we are not all just a downtrodden and long forgotten story. We have people and institutions amongst us who know their duties and responsibilities and deliver only their duties with any care for reward. Groups like FMG, universities like Quaid-i-Azam Universities and people like Dr. Aftab Maroof, Dr. Anwar Mirza, Dr. Baig, Dr. Arfan, Dr. Ayyaz, Dr. Tasawar Hayat, Dr. M. Ayub, Dr. Saleem Asghar need a big salute from all of us. May universities like QAU and groups like FMG always prosper.

What do you do when start losing hold of people who cared about you?

  These days are quite tense days for me on a personal note and I wished to record it as many others may relate to it as well. The dilemma is quite strange but equally difficult to grasp. I am talking about losing hold of people who are quite well and healthy and happy in their lives and who are as best my friends and family now as they always were. Yet the feeling of losing hold of them is quite intense.

I have always been considered as someone who has been blessed with great company. I have wonderful family and some of the greatest people as peers and friends anyone can ever imagine. I was blessed with greatest of my memories in past ten years. These have been my most blessed years of life. More so because I had my family, my teachers and my friends around me. The thought of ever being without such great companions never struck me....

But then, it started happening...the family started to take its logical course of action as siblings started to move out as they grew in age. Younger sisters and brothers who grew up before me started looking so mature that at one time it pleased and at another it saddened with the realization that another thread with my own childhood has collapsed. We, were children a few years back and we were becoming parents now. The feeling was both of accomplishment and of nostalgia.

And now, another transition is taking place. The problem for me is that transitions are so quick that my mind is unable to grasp it. The circle of peers and friends that we (and I in particular) cultivated with so much love started to disperse. In the words of another friend "Our swarm has started whirling". It started with departure of our respected teachers, Dr. Anwar M. Mirza and Dr. Rauf Baig departing for Saudi Arabia in quick succesion. It was followed by departure of Dr. Amjad to Lahore which suddenly started feeling like another country. And now, Dr. Arfan Jaffar is about to leave for South Korea. Despite wishing all of these great and lovely comrades every happiness in the world, somewhere inside my heart, I wish the time to roll back and some how grab all of them again within my circle of loved ones.

So, a very warm happy birthday to myself which is looking so lonely and so sad this year...without my very loved friends and well wishers around me...A personal nostalgia