Ant Power

I'd just got back from watching TV, catching up on national news. My ECD textbook was open at Chapter#11 just where I'd left off.

I crouched on the flattened pillows I sit on nowadays to study. Picked up my pencil, bent low and started reading.

I'd reached the last line of the page  when I spotted a moving brown scrap along the outer perimeter of the book, the side closest to my face. It seemed quite strange to see the small piece of peeling from the roasted chickpeas I'd had earlier on moving on its own. Curious, I bent almost to the 90o angle to see the source of it's motion: that's when I spotted the brown ant.

It had somehow travelled up to my book and found the small piece lying along it's open spine, picked it up in it's 'jaws' and begun to traverse down. The downward journey was the more difficult part since mobility was being compromised by the occupied jaws. But, the ant didn't give up.

Moving her tiny butt up and down, she somehow didn't lose hold on the page boundaries and neither of the small piece she held. At one point it looked like she was going to fall off but she regained control almost immediately. Down, down,  down she moved until she finally reached the book cover, turned a 120o and began to crawl away. I  followed it's movement till it finally disappeared beneath the sofa.

Just before I'd got back to study I'd been watching the motivational clip on TV of a guy who started as a waiter in a dingy hotel. And now? The owner of a large company providing start-up funds to small businesses. It was part of the educational campaign launched by Jung Group of Publishers and boosted by their TV channel, GeoNews: 'پڑھنے لکھنے کے سوا ہ ،پاکستان کا مطلب کیا؟?' (What is the meaning of Pakistan, if not to seek education?)

Watching the ant-episode while my ears were still ringing from the background tune of the campaign seemed more than a coincidence, somehow. It seemed to endorse the fact that with proper education under your belt like the guy's, and with extreme determination like the ant's, nothing can stop you from fulfilling your dreams. And that with a little extra attention to surrounding, success stories like the guy's, and that of millionaires like Sunil Mittal, are created.

Small events sometime start the domino effect towards a bigger chain.

The ant didn't know it, it's mind was probably too small even to process the significance of the effects it's innate search for food had on others.

But, it's given many hope around the globe. Like it's given me. Like it's given to countless primary school kids who read it's story in the Urdu textbooks every year.

Maybe the guy had read it too.