Aurora celebrates Pakistan’s 77th Independence Day.

Good writing has some simple rules. First, use an active voice. It is more exciting that way. The other is to keep things short. And I propose a third: if Osman Samiuddin has written anything about a sport or sportsman, stop writing because you won’t have anything to add that he hasn’t already said masterfully.

Osman has already weighed in on Arshad Nadeem and his words have captured the sheer magic of the historic Olympic moment. But, with some unearned hubris, I continue to write this piece since I was already commissioned to do it.

As someone who has a fleeting interest in cricket and maybe the same microscopic interest in the javelin throw as I have in military marching band music, I was excited – actually elated – when I watched those few minutes on television. Reko Diq never gave us gold, but Arshad Nadeem did.

Rafay Mahmood, the cultural history and music journalist, may have put it best when he explained just how important those 92.97 metres were. “In a time when all people want to do is hate on their country, it has made them so angry that they are boundlessly proud of it again despite not wanting to. Pakistanis feel like Khalil ur Rehman Qamar would have, if only that tryst had gone according to plan.”

It’s often bandied about that 65% of informal conversations are stories. And what a story Arshad Nadeem has. He captures the zeitgeist of our times. The state is suppressing information and democracy, cannot provide cheap electricity, has surrendered to inflation, and is continuously inept as daily challenges mount.

But Arshad Nadeem’s win provides an antidote to the morose vision of reality. A Pakistani, if possessed by enough drive, can surmount all that holds him back and climb above all that was never provided.

Arshad Nadeem is the dream of the everyman, just as he encapsulates everything about the idea of an everyman. “He is from Mian Channu; can you believe it?” says nearly any person you converse with, as if we knew where Mian Channu was just a month ago. Had we been asked about Mian Channu in July, we would have probably guessed it was a dodgy MPA from Punjab with suspect form 45s.

In a sport that is mostly ignored, with an athlete not supported enough, the powerful and the privileged are now trying to make up for lost time in cradling Arshad Nadeem now that he no longer needs it. Random people are announcing cash prizes and the government is announcing even more. The persistent inflation in the consumer price index is also now prize inflation. A predatory FBR has gone vegetarian on his winnings.

There is a consensus that what Arshad Nadeem has achieved is unprecedented. And that’s true. Sort of.

In the Seoul Olympics of 1988, three decades ago, a young man from Lyari won the bronze medal for middleweight boxing. It was a phenomenal achievement. Hussain Shah had an impoverished childhood that made the struggles of Arshad Nadeem seem pale in comparison.

Hussain worked as a labourer and lived a rough life on the streets when he was homeless. Hussain Shah’s boxing dream started with wanting to be able to defend himself from street thugs in Lyari. Like Arshad with the javelin, he also found ‘jugars’ to create punching bags with materials readily available. Hussain found support in departmental employment with the railways and Arshad with WAPDA.

But where they are different is that Hussain Shah didn’t have parents. His mother died when he was a child, and his stepmother turned him out. When one sees the love of Arshad’s mother and father when they speak of him, one can understand why the javelin thrower didn’t throw in the towel on his dream.

Hussain, when the celebrations died and we moved on to watch the next game of cricket, realised that a lot of the promises he was made would never come to fruition. The plot the government promised him in Karachi, in Gulistan-e-Johar? It has been more than 30 years; all he has is the file. Eventually, he packed up and moved to Japan so he could earn a living. And boxing? We have that one bronze, and we are worse off today than we were back then.

This is a cautionary tale. Things are different today. We have an economy that has deepened, and there will be great sponsorship opportunities for Arshad Nadeem. But his victory is his. We were just there to watch it. For it to become ours, we have to make sure that the javelin doesn’t become the same as the state of boxing after individual brilliance and gumption deliver us a medal. The wrong lesson from Arshad Nadeem’s win would be to keep things as they are and hope that a once in a lifetime talent keeps getting born every four years.

He threw 92.97 meters, but Pakistan’s athletics have a much longer way to go.

Fasi Zaka is a communications consultant and public policy adviser in the development sector.