My uncle Abdul Fatah Memon served as a member
of the Muslim League executive board during 1947 partition struggles and
became general secretary of the Pakistan Muslim League of Sindh in 1948. He
was appointed as Pakistan’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1963 to 1969. He
also worked very honestly and when he retired, he lived in a modest house in
Karachi with not much money but a very high level of respect, within senior
politicians of Pakistan.
On the other
hand, my uncle Nizamuddin Memon worked as a close advisor to the late
Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the only elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. He
also showed utmost honesty and dedication towards the public service and is
living a very down-to-earth life in Larkana, which can be very easily
visualized from his family picture given in this book.
Weighing their
lives raises a question in my mind: “Is honesty the best policy?”
Following the footprints of my elders, when I joined the public service and
volunteered my time to work as Advisor to the Mayor of the City of Houston
for a salary of $1.00 per year, I kept the same standards of honesty, hard
work and high degree of integrity and was helpful to everybody who
approached me. My friends who worked with me in the same political circles
achieved contracts worth millions but I considered it a dishonesty to
manipulate public service to make my financial ends meet. I, therefore,
never put hands in any business dealing with the City of Houston and kept
all my financial involvement in the neighboring city of Deer Park, Texas.
After working six years with Mayor Lee Brown and one year with Mayor Bill
White, what I accomplished in my community service maybe forgotten but, time
and again, the same question echoed in my brain: “Is honesty the best
policy?”
Yes, at the
end of the day people who are true, honest, dedicated, and live by good
ethics may not be bestowed with high-profile positions and rewarded
financially by the system but they sleep carelessly at night as they have
nothing to worry about…. However, people who wrongly manipulate public
service and take undue advantage of the system to make financial advances,
most of the time fall back as the system catches up with them at the end. I
have seen such people on the run, altering the course of their lives to get
away from sinful past of irregularities and illegal financial gains.
One thing is
rest assured: we lived a hard life. My father supported a family of eight.
With his modest salary he educated every one of us to college level.
However, we lived with respect. My father earned such a reputation of
character that even the President of the country would not dare to even ask
him to do an illegal favor. We lived modestly but respectfully and I am sure
that honesty is the best policy though it may not raise you to a
position you deserve. Rest assured, you would have inner peace and sound
sleep at night with satisfaction that you have never made a buck illegally.
The biggest
problem in our society today is the barometer of honest living. As our
social values are changing so drastically so are the rules of society.
However my barometer of honesty is the one inside me: my conscience. If your
inner voice says that what you are doing is right and based on hundred per
cent honesty then it is fine. This is because you can hide from others but
you cannot dissemble from self. The dilemma with honest people is that they
speak the truth which never takes them to sublime heights. Therefore they do
not reach the peak of their careers and are particularly deprived of top
positions in public service. However, experience shows that manipulators,
liars, crooks, corrupt and dishonest people reach to the high authority
positions. In turn are the frustrating honest people who always wonder if
honesty is the best policy. This is unfortunate that our society doesn’t
recognize honesty as a supreme human feature but considers it a weakness and
discourages people who walk along this track. Unfortunately, our rulers also
sideline people who talk straight, follow and preach honest ways of doing
things. This is the reason you will always see crooks in power and honest
people living modestly but peacefully.
I have tried
my best to write in a positive and honest way about people I have come
across to highlight their positive contributions avoiding their weaknesses.
In turn, I did eliminate several names from my book because I could not find
any positively fitting words for them.
The
purpose of this book is to spread the word that hard work and honest
dealings may not raise you to material heights but will give you inner peace
which is eternal for a person’s happiness. I have also tried to make this
book educational shedding light on my tenures with the legal system, law
enforcement authorities, politics and business management for twenty seven
years in the United States.
At the
end of the day the reader will notice that with so many fights for the truth
and undergoing recurring losses, I still achieved my financial goals and, up
to now, live a decent life and celebrate the unshakably true philosophy:
honesty is the best policy.
I would like
to apologize for any errors and hard feeling if created by any of my words.
My intentions are honorable towards all the people I have come across in my
life. I thank them all for letting me see the world from a different
perspective.
I want to
thank so many people who have helped me in compiling this book. My daughter
Sana helped me in my writing and correspondence. Anthony Hernandez did my
initial draft. My editor, Mohammad Mazhar, helped me in making the book a
material reality. |