BOXING: THE COBBLER'S SON.

This is the story of a wild, 14-year-old kid, who would often be found engaged in physical fights on the streets of Quetta. When it became too much of a thing with him, and he refused to listen to the admonishments of elders and his family, as a last option, they decided to push him into something he was so clearly showing an aptitude for. They encouraged him to join a proper boxing club.

And that's how Syed Asif Ali Shah Hazara first stepped into the boxing ring in 2007.

Asif's father is not a rich man. He was once a cobbler. 'I stitched and repaired worn out shoes the entire day and still I was unable to make ends meet,' the father Syed Nazir Hussain Hazara tells Eos. 'Perhaps it was also my circumstances that were making my son angry and disillusioned.'

It was his family's growing needs that made Nazir look for other work but, not being literate, he could only find work as a night watchman in Quetta. Still, it was better than working as a cobbler. 'Suddenly, I was earning around 26,000 rupees a month and things somewhat improved,' he says.

A shining star of Pakistan, Syed Asif Ali Shah Hazara rose from a very humble background to become Asian champion through sheer determination. He now needs the support of his country for his attempt at Olympic glory

Things also improved for the young Asif when he met his coach, veteran boxer Haji Habibullah Jafri. The coach could see something in the boy that the boy couldn't then see himself. 'Asif was one of my most brilliant students. He was hardworking and passionate about boxing. He was also very respectful to his teachers,' he says.

Jafri used to talk to Asif. He used to tell him about the boxers before him who earned laurels for the country. He told him about Hussain Shah, Pakistan's only boxer who won a bronze medal in middleweight in the 1988 summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea. Hussain Shah hailed from Lyari. For years, he also used to wander the streets of Lyari, but he is settled in Japan now.

Jafri also told Asif about the light-middleweight boxers Syed Abrar Hussain and Asghar Ali Changezi, who also represented Pakistan in 1992 in the summer Olympics but who unfortunately could not win any medals for Pakistan.

Asif liked listening to the stories of other boxers. He could relate to Hussain Shah, who he thought was as poor as him, but his success inspired him. Still his all-time favourite boxer was the former heavyweight world champion Cassius Clay, who had embraced Islam to become Mohammed...