MERRY MEADOWS - Chapter 7 - Master ‘Zubair’ Lan Ku Kang

Also hanging out at the coaching center were a bunch of boys and girls in karate uniforms, and our cooling down periods coincided. In the cool of the evening on the breezy front lawns of the coaching center, situated on a hill with a panoramic view of what now constitutes the Aga Khan University and Hospital, we did our stretches and meditated. I learnt that this was not Japanese Karate, but a Korean variant called Taekwondo, under the tutelage of Saleem Jahangir, recently returned from the USA with a black belt.

The stretching exercises inherent to Taekwondo I found to be particularly useful in squash, as also the physical conditioning that took place through the Taekwondo training routine. I made friends from amongst the Taekwondo students, with Jamal Feerasta in particular, also a student of the Karachi University with many common friends.

One day Jamal accosted me in the Arts Lobby of the Karachi University. I was not in a particularly happy mood. Studying Economics and Mathematics had not been my idea. I would rather have joined the air force after my Intermediate exams, but the family would not hear of it. Being the only son may have its privileges and advantages, but in my case it imposed serious limitations on my choice of career.

Jamal was clearly agitated. He asked me why I hadn’t shown up at the coaching center the previous evening. I told him it was none of his business, but if he really wanted to know, I was on a hot date, and as I told him that she appeared as if by magic, smiling and radiant. Jamal was still at the stage where in the presence of girls he became quite tongue tied. But it was clear that Jamal was very upset.

Apparently a 5th Dan black belt master instructor from Korea had shown up at the coaching center, and offered to teach, but Saleem Jahangir had been most inhospitable, and turned down the Korean master’s offer.

Jamal had been stuck at his Brown belt for many months now, only because Saleem Jahangir, himself a 1^st Dan, was not qualified to award a black belt. One could only award a belt two places below one’s own. Only a 3^rd Dan could award a 1^st Dan black belt. There were a few others, like Shabbir and Shahak, in Jamal’s situation that would have benefited from the Korean’s presence, including Saleem Jahangir himself.

The reasons for Saleem’s odd behavior were quite clear, and they were entirely ego driven. With a 5^th Dan Korean master instructor in his dojo, Saleem would lose all clout and cease to be the master of his club, or so he thought.

The other reason could have been Saleem’s association with the Toronto based International Taekwondo Federation (ITF) that dominated the North American landscape. Master Kang represented the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) based in Seoul, Korea.

The ITF had been started by General Choi Hong Hi, universally considered the founding father of modern Taekwondo. When the army took over in Korea under General Park, General Choi had been forced into exile in Canada, and set up the ITF. The WTF, however, had the backing of the Korean government and the International Olympic Committee.

General Choi Hong Hi (10th Dan), President of the Toronto based International Taekwondo Federation, visited Pakistan at our invitation, along with his second-in-command Master Rhee Ki Ha (9th Dan). In the front row is (left-to-right) my elder sister, General Choi, my mother, and my younger sister. In the back row is myself, Master Rhee, my brother-in-law and his cousin.

All this politics means little or nothing to a student poised on the verge of getting his black belt. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind that training with Kang would yield far greater dividends than staying with Saleem Jahangir ever could. Jamal wanted the use of my front lawn to set up a secret training program with Kang for a dozen brown belts.

The story of ‘Zubair’ Lan Ku Kang’s journey to Pakistan from Korea is quite fascinating in itself. He belonged to a miniscule Muslim community in Korea that was visited regularly by the late Maulana Noorani, and each time that the Maulana went, he brought back with him a few promising youngsters to study the Quran at his religious instructions school located in Karachi’s Pir Ilahi Bux Colony, a stone’s throw away from where I lived on Kashmir Road. I’m sure that the Maulana knew what he had in Kang, and had sent him on a low key visit to the coaching center to check out the Taekwondo action.

My agreement to Jamal’s request was instantaneous. Adil House, my residence, was a large sprawling joint family affair covering 2500 square yards and housing a small army of relatives and retainers, with plenty of room for 12 supercharged youngsters to be put through their paces. It would also provide my extended family an opportunity to shake a leg and stave off obesity, a family inheritance. But that thought came to me much later.

What struck me straight away was the prestige enhancement that would take place as a consequence of me hanging out with a bunch of black belts. Adil House had a preponderance of girls, all cousins once or twice removed, and these girls had girlfriends who’d come over all the time, and girls were at the top of my mind at that time of my life.

Not that I needed Taekwondo to make an impression. For that, being an Aitchisonian in Karachi, the stronghold of Grammarians, was more than enough. Being a co-education school, the Grammarian male was completely at ease with the female, and that became his disadvantage and undoing when rutting season came around, with familiarity breeding contempt.

The generally sissified demeanor of the Grammarian male didn’t help either. Naturally, there were some exceptions to this, and there did exist, very few and very far in between, the genuinely macho Grammarian stud, and I had the proud privilege of not just knowing one such, but actually being related to him and having him as a fellow housemate, for when I relocated from Lahore to Karachi, I switched from Leslie Jones House to Adil House, complete with the emotional bond and loyalty that goes with it.

The Aitchisonian male was pure alpha, bred in an all male environment, with exaggerated notions of chivalry. Distance indeed made the heart grow fonder, and the absence of the female in the formative years of the Aitchisonian’s life, automatically put her on a pedestal, yielding a mindset that females found irresistible.

That was true for me at least, though a lot of Aitchisonians displayed characteristics that were commensurate with typical male chauvinist pigs. Add to that my membership of the University squash and debating teams and, theoretically, I would have qualified for most eligible bachelor status, had I a few more bucks in my bank account.

Overkill is something most youngsters on the make tend to engage in, due to a confidence deficit and lack of finesse perhaps, and I was no different I suppose. Sometimes we get so obsessed with preening like peacocks performing to the gallery that we lose sight of the objective, to seek out and secure that one female who is most compatible, and fits the bill, as it were.

One lives and learns, but back then my fan club was thriving, and Taekwondo would further stoke female passions for me that were already running high. At this point I had absolutely no thoughts of turning master Kang into a profitable enterprise. It was party time as usual, and here was a brand new floor show.

The floor show got started in right earnest the very next day. Twelve young warriors, all brimming with a barely suppressed energy that threatened to burst forth, attired in their Brown belts worn on white Tobaks, the Taekwondo uniform, showed up for initiation at the hands of master Kang.

They took up the entire front lawn, going through their warm up paces, stretching their limbs, displaying great flexibility and muscularity to a gallery of swooning females, even as the family elders looked on with both amazement and approval at what one of their number was pulling off this time.

Master Kang’s Tobak was adorned with the WTF and Korean flag  patches, with Taekwondo in Korean script on the back, his black belt encased his waist, it’s ends swinging lightly as he walked. The boys were taking the presence of this 5^th Dan very well indeed. If they felt awe in his presence, then they didn’t show it, fully focused on being the best they could be. The presence of a bonafide master instructor has that sort of effect. To his credit, master Kang was quite unassuming, and his very broken English endeared him immediately.

Before the warriors could get into their act with Kang, there was a chorus that went up from all present, in particular the girls, for Kang to give a demonstration of his skills. The Bruce Lee movies had just been released in Karachi.

In retrospect, there was a great deal of providence at work in making this scheme a success. Two months later, two months into the secret camp that was by now an open secret, much to Saleem Jahangir’s annoyance and financial distress, Kang and I opened our first school together on the lawns of the KMC Sports Complex, just down the road on Kashmir Road. Thanks to Bruce Lee, eager beavers were lining up around the block to take admission, and filling my coffers in a manner most amazing. The Taekwondo Academy of Pakistan (TAP) was the name and style under which we operated.

The few more bucks in my bank account that I had been lacking, and which had become an annoying minor impediment to my attaining eligible bachelor status, were a distant and fast fading memory.

Kang was in full form on this day of our first encounter. He was a natural when it came to showmanship and playing to the gallery, and what a gorgeous gallery it was that mild winter afternoon. He wowed all present with his combination kicks, whirling and twirling in a blaze of potentially lethal front kicks and side kicks, and roundhouses, and spin kicks, uttering the spine chilling ‘Kiya’ cries, displaying a balance, poise and grace in movement that pointed to an exceptionally well conditioned body and mind.

I wouldn’t quite say that Kang had movie star good looks, but if one could consider Bruce Lee good looking, then Kang would definitely qualify. He had these inscrutable eyes that were difficult to read, but the one sure way of knowing when he was not amused was when he would lapse into agitated Korean, spewing forth a barrage that we couldn’t decipher.

The primary focus was on the brown belts training in preparation for their black belt promotion test, a very tough and arduous, and expensive undertaking. The fees had to be deposited into the accounts of the WTF in Seoul, and the black belt certificates when earned would come directly from the Ku Ki Won, the World Taekwondo Federation’s headquarters in Korea.

Seated: Master Kang, Master Kim (Center), and myself, with the first batch of graduating black belts standing, and new recruits sitting.

Wasim receives his black belt certificate from Master Kang as I help Riaz put on his black belt.

Since Kang was also the coach and trainer of this squad of twelve, the Ku Ki Won would fly in an external examiner present in the region, for whose visit, naturally, we would pick up the cost. Well, if a thing was worth doing, then it was worth doing well, especially when we could afford the expense. As the Taekwondo ‘seth’ the discretion was entirely mine, and I wasn’t tempted to hoard the profits.

It was my family’s connections with Jam Sadiq Ali, the Sindh minister for local government, which had got allotted the space in the KMC Sports Complex for starting our first school, and I was paying Kang a fee for his services, and rent to the KMC. The only thing going against me in this enterprise was that I wasn’t even remotely interested in learning Taekwondo and excelling at it.

Squash was my first love, and in my third year at the University I was not only captaining the Faculties squash team, but also the University squash team selected from all affiliated colleges. We were playing inter-university fixtures all over Pakistan, traveling by train to Lahore, Quetta, Peshawar, and Rawalpindi, and corresponding with universities in the UK to play friendly matches.

Qamar Zaman had won the British Open in 1974, after almost two decades of when Hashim Khan ruled the roost, and the prestige and international recognition associated with squash for Pakistan was completely out of proportion to the numbers that played it in the country.

Aside from the money that it was bringing into my pocket, Taekwondo just did not have any appeal for me. I was more of a pugilist, and had even made the Faculties boxing team that trained at the St. John’s Ambulance in Saddar. Where Taekwondo was concerned, the Mark McCormack in me had been jump-started into emerging, but it did not endear me to Kang.

Kang and I were equals. In fact, technically speaking he was an employee of mine. I was not his student, and he was not my master. On the others, especially Jamal, Kang had a complete hold steeped in the loyalty of a disciple to his master.

But they needed me to manage their show, and that I did, taking the enterprise to levels that went beyond their wildest imaginations. And I proved large hearted as well, which some say has been the reason for my undoing, but I tend to disagree. However, sometimes I am forced to reconsider. In some cultures, and it is unfortunate that we should be a part of those cultures, large heartedness is seen as stupidity, and undue advantage is taken of such people.

When we were churning out a small fortune every week, I rented for Kang a three bedroom house outfitted with refrigerator, freezer, air-conditioners, and television, and moved him out of the madrassah in PIB Colony. Actually Jamal Feerasta and I did, for in lieu of the introduction to Kang, I had offered Jamal a full partnership in the Taekwondo enterprise, and promoted Kang as the third partner. Having earned his black belt, Jamal was a valuable instructor as well for the burgeoning membership of the Club.

The model that we adopted for TAP was simple. Soon after the first black belt promotion test, I had twelve more instructors to deploy, and deploy them I did, going into a frenzy of activity striking partnerships with the Karachi Gymkhana Club, the Karachi Grammar School, St. Joseph’s College for Women, the Karachi Aero Club, and the Sir Syed College for Girls. Wherever I spotted a place where youth congregated, I made a pitch, and was welcomed with open arms. Bruce Lee zindabad.    

New instructors rose to prominence within TAP due to their superior prowess. There was Shabbir, Shahak, Arif Ghani, Basit, Sadiq Usman, and Riaz Chotani. There were also the two Jordanians Adbul Ghani and Ghani Tabalat, both students at the Karachi University and residing at its International Students Hostel. Those were great days, and even though squash remained my first and foremost love, I did manage to bond with the Taekwondo boys, much as a promoter with players that he is promoting.

After the workouts the entire gang would transfer to the ‘Lassi’ shop on Tariq Road and thrill the other customers present with our ability to consume astonishing quantities of the stuff. The same was true for ‘Nihari’ that followed. When one works out for four hours at a stretch one tends to develop quite an appetite.

Merry Meadows - Memoirs of an entrepreneur