Picked Up A Gun, A “Soldering Gun”, After 40 Years! - IMRAN™
It’s hard to believe that I hadn’t touched a soldering gun in four whole decades! Even before joining the University of Engineering and Technology in 1980, graduating around the end of 1984, I had fallen in love with electronics.
I had too many other parallel interests to be one of those uber-geeks who are always building circuit boards. But, I did have the essentials of a hobbyist’s kit at my blessed home in Lahore.
The most “elaborate” thing I ever designed (and barely got to work) was a one-foot long circuit board with two rows of LEDs to act as stereo music audio level indicators.
Back then the coolest music decks, from then-awesome now defunct or reborn bands like my favorites Nakamichi and Sansui, as well as Onkyo, Akai, and others, were the ones laden with rows of knobs or sliders and controllers with the dazzling arrays of LEDs. Audio in and out levels, spectrum analyzers and graphic equalizers… you name it, they had it.
While I was able to get the LEDs to work as audio level meters, I never got to add on spectrum analyzer components,and real life started.
Finishing my electronics engineering exams for 2.5 years worth of time in 1 final year was an adventure too. I had to make up for courses I had attended but skipped taking exams for. That was because of my youthful & foolish dedication to being a student leader.
I was Chief Organizer of the QSF (Quade-Azam Students Federation), then Pakistan’s largest independent organization not directly belonging to any particular political party. Then the dead-dog roasted-pig military dictator General Zia banned students unions.
Just like that, all the time invested in preparing for students union elections was gone. But the life lessons, of how two-faced people can be, what actual door to door politicking is, and more, served me throughout life.
So, there I was, in 19844. Suddenly the end of the four years university era was also coming to an end. Vying to be the nominee of my party for the suddenly-banned elections became as low a priority as building circuit boards.
Fortunately, I was able to complete my Electrical Engineering (Electronics/Digital Systems) degree thanks to many great friends who shared their notes. I am forever grateful also to the even more wonderful teachers and professors. Late Masood, Suhail, Pervez, Saeed Cheema (also a childhood family friend), and others.
They were all very kind in helping me take the missed exams in rapid succession. Everyone was amazing.
Well, except, as expected, one slimy scumbag mullah professor of required so-called Islamic Studies. It was a course that the CIA-funded creator of fundamentalists in Pakistan, General Zia, had shoved even into professional degrees. That Maulvi teacher was an active member of the fundamentalist and violent Jamate-Islami, the party that the liberated, freedom & democracy loving, QSF was the nemesis of. Eventually, like the tail being stuck after the whole elephant has passed through, I passed his vendetta-driven exams that had 0.0% to do with either engineering, or frankly, even the true spirit of Islam.
Anyway, as I was finishing my engineering degree, the legendary Asian media tycoon Mir Shakil-ur-Rehman, then Deputy CEO and now Chairman of Jang Group, invited me to join his organization. That led to another incredible series of chapters and adventures of my life, which I will leave for another day.
While I helped him choose and acquire literally tens of millions of dollars worth of electronics and computers based latest & greatest publishing and printing systems, my own dabbling in electronics directly fell by the wayside. Until, today.
Recently I decided to fix a $50 fixture just for the heck of it instead of just throwing it away. I ordered a very basic soldering iron online - even this primitive one but equipped with a temperature control and actual switch is fancier than what I had in Lahore, Pakistan.
The solder wire they shipped was so thin I almost gave up on the project. But, I decided to do it for four decades worth of memories, and got the thing working again.
There…. who else would turn a simple photo of having picked up a soldering gun, actually a soldering iron in this case, into a chapter from my autobiography also covering music, branding, gadgetry, engineering, politics, history, religion, and gratitude…. Thank you for loving my stories.
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