Learning from Others
By Syed Babar Ali

In the late1990s I was giving a talk at Johns Hopkins University, at a Conference on Pakistan and industry. There was a sizeable crowd of people known to me, who had gathered there from Washington. Among them were journalists Khalid Hassan and Khaled Ahmed. After the Conference, I was talking to them and Khaled reminded me of a remark I had made five or six years earlier when I was roped into an interview for a documentary about LUMS and the interviewer asked me, How do you wish to be remembered?' I said I don't want to be remembered.' Khaled said You are the only person who has ever made such a remark.' Why have I written this autobiography? I would rather not have it. In the way I have been brought up and lived my life, I have never tried to advertise what little I have done. Instead of blowing my own trumpet, it is for others to see and recognize it. Very early in life I remember a friend of my father's remark: One should never talk about oneself.' At that time I was just entering as a young person in our family business and that has always stayed at the back of my mind. Talking about oneself gives one no mileage, and I have seen that people recognize my effort without my talking about it. I have recorded these memories because many people have suggested that I have witnessed events that they could not read about anywhere else. The only compelling reason for bringing out this book is that it might trigger ideas in others and somebody might want to improve on what I have attempted. The question is: Can the next generation benefit from it?' The biography may be useful to someone who would like to extract and distil what I have written and from which hopefully some lessons can be learnt. The whole purpose of this initiative is not for people to learn about me and what I did, but to see what lessons can be learnt from it. It would give me great satisfaction if, in the future, somebody were to use it as a case study.