MERRY MEADOWS Curtainraiser - AUTHOR’S NOTE (for Blogger.com)

Friends, colleagues, relatives, and readers of all hues who may read this, a hearty Hello! and Assalamwalaikum, and may the blessings of Allah be upon all of us, and may He keep us in His protection always, ameen.

The good news is that I am finally going public with a manuscript that I have engaged with great relish over the past twelve years or so. With my good friend Ali Leghari serving as the honest broker, it constituted my first commissioned book project for which I received a truly princely sum from Mr. Jamil Janjua, the Group CEO of TCS back in 2003, a year during which TCS celebrated 20 years of its fairly tumultuous existence.

I was tasked with compiling a history of this express logistics enterprise that had grown with great leaps and bounds, and showed every sign of continuing to do so under the stewardship of a young and dynamic team assembled by the entrepreneur Khalid Nawaz Awan, the co-founder and chairman of TCS.

I budgeted at most six months for the exercise, and was quite thrilled by the upwardly soaring graph of my earnings as a writer, my previous engagements as a freelance correspondent for the Dawn Sunday and other Magazines not having compensated me nearly enough to justify writing as a profession.

Like all worthwhile endeavors, this book too went over budget, from six months to twelve years, in fact, and from the 300,000 rupees contract to many millions of rupees that TCS has showered upon me in the interim to conduct my research into the Company by bringing out the periodical TCS CONNECT Customer Newsletter that really should be called a magazine.

As a first generation self-employed individual I have tried my hand at more businesses than I’d care to remember, all with financially disastrous results that have earned for me the abiding ire of my family whom I have, in the process, given good reason to question my standing as an adequate breadwinner.

The TCS contract constituted the turning point in my financial misfortunes. It didn’t make me rich overnight, as is prone to happening in Pakistan and a temptation best avoided, but it gave me respect and dignity in the eyes of my peers and family, and established me as a professional writer. That is something nobody can put a price on.

Had I been so inclined I could have put pen to paper and wrapped up the book in six months. But I had this gut feeling that the last two decades of TCS wouldn’t hold a candle to the coming decade. I could sense the energy building up around me at TCS, even though the lack of alignment amongst the ranks was causing friction and holding up the speed of progress, but this was to be expected for organizations, much like people, suffer from growth pains. In 2003 my journalistic instincts told me that the story I needed to track was right here under my nose.

Over the last twelve years or so I have interviewed at length the main protagonist, Khalid Nawaz Awan, hereinafter referred to as KNA, and mixed it in with his troops at close quarters, and then retreated to a distance to dispassionately chew the cud.

I must admit that overall I have found an enlightened frame of mind at work at TCS, and proof of that is in the very loose rein that KNA & Company has permitted me in my quest. I have come and gone as I have pleased, and I have pushed the envelope with great gusto, fully expecting to be slapped on the wrist at the very least. But to my very pleasant surprise it hasn’t happened.

The recognition has been muted for the many pearls that I have produced in the shape of the TCS CONNECT Customer Newsletter. I have taken the silence that has followed the publication of each edition as a backhanded compliment. The cheques have come unfailing every month, and that has been validation enough.

Back to the book that is now ready to see the light of day. While Jamil Janjua commissioned me to put together a volume on the history of TCS, KNA put a spin on that mandate that left me in a bit of a quandary. He didn’t want the end product sitting on some shelf in the TCS Archives gathering dust. He wanted it read. He wanted a bestseller. That took the wind out of my sails, but only for a short while until I realized that it was the logical direction any self-respecting writer would take, to notch up a bestseller. But from where I was placed as a writer at that time, it required a huge leap of faith.

My first attempt at a book had not gone so well. The White Knight of Trichmir that I wrote under the penname Korangi Jack had sold 300 copies, with another couple of hundred handed out free to friends and family. It was a self-commissioned work of fiction steeped in reality, and the story that I had penned was clearly a little ahead of its time that managed to ruffle quite a few feathers, in particular within my family who advised me to stick to finding an honest day’s work.

The use of a penname disqualified my book’s entry in the Commonwealth Writers Prize of 50,000 Pounds which, back in 1989 was a great deal of money, even as it is today. With that went my hope for fame and fortune.

Over a decade later here was another chance, and this time somebody actually believed that I could do it. Unless, of course, KNA was setting an impossible bar to achieve, but why would he? In retrospect I am now convinced that KNA knew then that the TCS story had what it takes to become a bestseller, and he wanted me to know that he knew.

Whatever the case, it had me in a twist as I struggled to find a viable storyline that would meet the objective. The other issue that I have struggled with often in my quest for international outreach is to find a publisher in the English speaking world who would give me the time of day. I mean, what good is it writing in English if one is to be restricted to a geographical area where Urdu is the predominant language of choice?

Well, time and technology have taken care of both my concerns. I found the storyline that would make the book interesting enough to read, and I have found a publisher who promises me a theoretically unlimited outreach to the English speaking world – Blogger.com!

In my search for a storyline one thing was certain. Were I to write the history of TCS I’d have to embrace a wider context to gain that much needed punch in the narrative. Between 1983 and the present, Pakistan has been through some hairy-scary times, and TCS, through its nationwide network of express centers and couriers, has kept the wheels of trade, commerce and industry oiled and greased, whether its been through Zia’s Afghan Jihad of the 1980s, or the Decade of Democracy in the 1990s, or the search for the moderate face of Islam after the turn of the century under Musharraf. Not to mention the war on terror. This was all very potent stuff that needed interpreting and weaving into the fabric of the TCS story. It boggled my mind just thinking of the task in hand.

Taking a detached view would not serve the purpose well. I had to find some way to get involved in the narrative, and unleash just a little bit of passion. Then it occurred to me that perhaps it was time to pen my own autobiography. Nothing quite arouses passion than the telling of one’s own tale. Also, this way I’d be free of any editorial strictures that my editors at TCS might impose, though that has never been a problem. But I could move fast without having to submit drafts for perusal and approval. It is my story and TCS is a big part of it, as indeed also is the Pakistan Squash Federation and Jahangir Khan, along with a rich cross section of Pakistani people that I have interacted and cohabited with since my migration from Nainital in India as a 14 year old, making me a first generation migrant, far too conscious of the higher purpose for which my family was making its move in the aftermath of the 1965 war between India and Pakistan.

Bestseller be damned, it was a story that needed telling. The story of an upright honest Muslim civil service officer, my father, in Hindu India, branded an enemy agent just because he had his brothers-in-law in Pakistan who insisted on visiting him in Nainital every year for legally sanctioned tiger hunts. As a mark of extreme protest against the attitude of his increasingly chauvinistic Hindu colleagues, he turned his back upon the pension due to him after a lifetime of service establishing the writ of the Indian government in far flung areas of the new republic, earning the tremendous goodwill, respect and love of the ordinary man to whom he brought justice. He came to Pakistan, a country where nobody knew him, and cared even less for what he had been through for no fault of his own, dying a disillusioned man shortly after Bangladesh separated from Pakistan.

I followed in my father’s footsteps as best as I could, and it hasn’t been easy. Treading the straight and narrow in a land heavy with gray areas, inhabited by all manner of gunslingers and hip shooters, and all kinds of other people intent on drawing you to their camp with promises of untold riches even as you strive to make an honest day’s living, would mostly make for a dull read. Not necessarily. The judgment on that the reader needs to make, and I am looking for some honest feedback in return for serializing my book for free.

Why Merry Meadows as the title of the book? I’ve always had a fascination for meadows, the wide open green spaces exuding tranquility in the midst of Nature, mostly manifest on the television or movie screens for someone bred in the concrete jungle and consigned to a life therein. But there were meadows in Nainital that I fondly remember, and I have stayed merry in their remembrance even as I have made a song and dance of life lived with a fair amount of adversity until TCS came along.

Starting with this Author’s Note, once a week I shall be posting a chapter from Merry Meadows, and eagerly awaiting your feedback. At the end of this process a print edition shall be compiled and offered for sale so the author can be compensated for his efforts. Thank you for your patience so far.

Adil Ahmad
Karachi - 7th July, 2015    

Merry Meadows - Memoirs of an entrepreneur