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When I was about 10, my parents gave me the dreadful news that we were moving away from our neighbourhood. At the time I felt my world was coming to an end, especially because the place we were moving to was in the middle of nowhere. My dad, being an engineer, had to move from one place to another quite often so it was not completely unexpected but it was obviously hard saying goodbye to friends and moving into a small foreigners camp in the northern parts of Pakistan known as “Hatiyaan”. This was like a rather exclusive camp site where they had small houses at the north part of the area and is surrounded by all sorts of luxuries which are not so common in Pakistan like a big cafeteria, a bar, a pizza lounge, a beautiful pool and nice parks.

The glass shattered into a million little pieces and I knew I was in deep, deep trouble. This was the second time I had broken something while playing cricket, but what could I say; playing a sport that I was really good at gave me a miniature adrenaline rush, and that is what caused me to forget that we were playing cricket in our front garden which eventually led me to hit the ball extra hard when it collided with my bat and that led to the broken window. I looked around at my cousins and saw that they were snickering around, they knew I was in trouble and I did too.’Imad Khalil Hasan’, I heard my mom scream from inside. The usage of my full name instead of the ten thousand nicknames I had definetly meant that I wasn’t gonna get out of this one. Oh boy, I guess I deserved it. I wasn’t allowed to play cricket for the next month and I wasn’t going to get my pocket money too. And at the age of 10, that definetly was the end of the world for me. Even though I was punished I was pretty proud of myself and all my little cousins were in awe of me and how I was ‘cool’ enough to break the window. I wouldn’t say I didn’t love being the ‘coolest’ of the lot. This memory holds significance for me because I loved playing outdoors as a child and Hatiaan was a beautiful community. The fact that I was grounded made me realise how badly I wanted to go out and play in the green lawn. I was always an outdoor person as a child. Now a days, it is rare to see children playing sports outside and are too involved in technology which I feel is sad. If you are not able to go out into the real world and explore like I did, how are you going to experience life and what memories will you have when you grow up?