I am Nusrat Ali, a Pakistani because my father didn’t avail the free ticket to take my mother to the US—he worked for an airline. Photography fascinated me from an early age—teen age i.e. for the non-urdu readers the English translation of teen is Aluminum. I bought my first pre-owned Kodak Ektralite 10 pocket camera with the money taken from ammi (mother). Since it was monetarily taxing to pursue the hobby, I never took it seriously.
When I reached college (yes I did go to a college!), I got my hands at-- no not a camera but-- Shafiq ur Rehman’s “حماقتیں” (Himaqatain, 1947 http://pdfbooksfree.pk/himaqatain-shafiq- ur-rehman/ ) which has a chapter “99 Not Out” in which a character (shaitaan) brought a camera to the cricket field and was busy in taking photographs. When asked later how were the pictures, he said “I haven’t got the film role”!