TODAY'S GENTLEMEN BUT THEY WILL ALWAYS BE MY BOYS

                                   

There are some professions where seniority always counts. Though disciplinary aspect of seniority evades with the passage of time, but when looking back the seniors of the profession always find the gentlemen of today as nothing else but their juniors.

The profession of Chartered Accountancy is also the same. Here everyone enters the field as being a junior of someone. However within a passage of time, he finds his own juniors lining behind him, and so on and so forth. The profession of Chartered Accountancy (in my days 1970s and 1980s) was a bit different from what it is now a days, however the criteria of being a junior or a senior is still there and i hope will always be there.

The Seniors in the profession though do have to teach and train the juniors yet, they do have to get the work out of them too. For this the seniors do go through various tactics and styles, which indeed differ from person to person. The senior acts as the boss and disciplinarian at one hand and as the best friend on the other. As the years pass by, the juniors do grow up , leave the audit firms, join other professions and/or businesses, etc etc, yet the moments that they shared with their seniors become eternal, unforgetable and perhaps valuable memories.

I joined Rahim Jan & Co. Chartered Accountants in April 1974 as an Articled Clerk (after passing my B.Com). Finished my Articledship in 1976, and left the company. I stayed home till 1979 (during which i worked for a 8months period in Hameed Chaudhri &Co.). I re-joined Rahim Jan &Co. immediately after qualifiying as Chartered Accountant in 1979. (I was 24 years old then). I worked at various positions in the company till July 1991, when i left Pakistan for good.

The idea behind writing all this is to emphasis the length of the period in which i experienced the seniority relationship with the juniors. There must be hundreds of juniors who worked under me and i played minor or major role in grooming them, however i personally classify these juniors in two. One, those who worked under me for a short period of time, and got transferred to work under some other senior. Secondly, those who remain attached to me as my junior on my audit assignments for a longer period and we developed friendship among us. I refer to the juniors falling in the second category as MY BOYS. Among us we have developed a unique relationship . It is a unique mixture of mutual respect and friendship.

Years have passed, MY BOYS grew up. Went out in the practical world. Joined various organisations or started their own businesses. Got married, have children, some even became grandfathers. But still they are MY BOYS. And i am sure, they never mind when i call them (today's gentlemen) as my boys. This is a specail relationship between us. THEY ARE GOING TO BE MY BOYS FOREVER. I consider it as an honour for me to refer to them like that. I am proud of them.



I may clarify that MY BOYS can be sub-divided into two further categories. First, those who remained my juniors during the first half of the 1980s. They were much closer to me, also because of lesser age difference.
However, most of them left me after completing their periods of Articledship or whenever they found some other good working opportunity.
The Second ones are those who became my junior during the later half of the 1980s. There was rather a bit larger age differences between us. Although, we did have good working and personal relaitonship with them, yet they generally remained different from the First ones.

I am out of Pakistan since 1991. However whenever i visit Pakistan i do meet one or two of my boys. But it was this year (2012) when i visited Karachi for a short 10 days period , my boys (mostly from the early 1980s periods) did organise themselves and took time our for a collective get-together with me. It was indeed something unforgetable. I felt honoured.

However there was one exception. Mr. HASSAN AHMED , one of my juniors from late 1980s took pain to find me out, helped me a lot on more than one count during my stay, and was kind enough to take me out for a fantastic dinner at Lal Qila, with Mr. Waqar Hassan (an another friend of exceptionally high calibre ).

Returning back to the two lunches arranged by My boys, i would say that it was a unique opportunity to relive the old but golden days of our lives. For most of the period that we were there we were just recalling incidents that we had been passed through jointly on one or more audit assignments during the 1980s. We perhaps ate less (not from the point of the view of the host , who paid good amounts for that), because we remained too busy in talking and laughing, repeating the old jokes and funny encounters and personal adventures, during the audit periods.

I am too thankful to Mr. ZAHID AQEEL, the Board Secretary of Civil Aviation Authority, who took out his time to attend the lunch with me. He was my junior in Rahim Jan & Co. . I met him for the first time when i re-joined the company in 1979 after qualifying. He was the senior of the audit of Khairpur Textile Mills, when that job was handed over to me. So he was my junior in technical sense of the word, but not a junior to whom i taught the audit task. He was also with me at the audit of Bengal Fibres Ltd. It is very nice of him that he still considers me as his Senior and respect. I feel grateful and honoured.

Whenever i discuss my period in the audit profession, it always remain incomplete without finding SUHAIL AHMED in the middle. And mind it, this is not my personal opinion, all of my boys from the early 1980s period believe that Suhail is the one who is just simply unignorable person. Whenever any two of my boys from that period meets or talks on telephone even, their conversation never completes without referring to Suhail, in one way or another. He was one extraordinarily witted person, who has not yet lost his style and characteristics. He is still the same Suhail that he used to be on KESC or or any of my other audit assignments. Suhail is just Suhail, because he is simply the only one of his kind.

As i mentioned earlier, no conversation even becomes complete without mentioning the name of Suhail between us, so how could there be a re-union of my boys without him. On 12th December 2012 the lunch re-union was arranged by Zaki, but at the last moment Suhail had excused himself due to death of one of his close relatives. We did go out for the lunch, but we agreed that we MUST once again meet the next day at lunch WITH Suhail. He is so important a personality among us..So next day once again we met at lunch with Suhail . Although the lunch was in my honour, yet there was no doubt that Suhail was the centre of all attention.

Suhail, in fact was my class fellow in Premier College, when we were doing our Bachelors of Commerce (1972/73). We knew each other by face, but we perhaps never came across during that period. We came across once again during 1978 when i worked for a short period of 8 months in Hameed Chaudhri & Co. Chartered Accountants. I had completed my Articled ship and passed the CA Intermediate exam. Suhail, was completing his Auditship at Hameed Chaudhri & Co. We developed good understanding among us, during this 8 months time. Suhail joined Rahim Jan & Co. a little later, as Senior, after completing the period of his Auditship. I was working as the job incharge , after qualifying CA, with Rahim Jan & Co. Suhail made a direct entry on my all jobs as the job Senior. For the most part of time that we two remained in Rahim Jan, Suhail remained the Senior of my audit assignments. The uneding friendship that started during that period is still strong. For Suhail it is not just i, but all of my boys say. SUHAIL THE GREAT.


                                                                   SUHAIL AHMED


                            FROM LEFT TO RIGHT HUMAYUN MAJEED, HASHMAT ALI, MUHAMMAD ZAKI, SUHAIL AHMED, AHMET ABDULAZIZ (myself)




from left to right .........myself ANWAR IQBAL, KHURSHEED AKHTAR, NASRULLAH ZUBEIRI






                        ALAMGEER AKHTAR                                      

                            HASHMAT ALI

                  NASRULLAH ZUBEIRI                                        


                       MUHAMMAD ZAKI




 
                       















                     HUMAYUN MAJEED

NOTE: All of the above photos were taken and sent by Suhail.

And here under are some photographs taken at lunch, on 12th December 2012 at Lal Qila restaurant , Karachi. organised by my boys in my honour.

from left to right ....... MYSELF, HUMAYUN MAJEED, ANWAR IQBAL, MUHAMMAD ZAKI, KHURSHEED ANWAR, HASHMAT ALI, NASRULLAH ZUBEIRI and ZAHID AQEEL

In fact it was a wonderful re-union of my boys from early 1980s, however, there still were a few more ones left out, who were either could not be contacted or were out of the country. Among these were KAFEEL AHMED, MUHAMMAD FEROZE ALAM, MUHAMMAD HUSSAIN KHAN, SALMAN AHMED, MASOOD HASAN, etc. I hope to come in contact with them in near future.

I always miss all of MY BOYS.

I will add some more photographs in near future.

MY REQUEST TO ALL OF MY BOYS IS TO READ THE ABOVE AND SEND ME THEIR SHORT BIO DATA AND CONTACT NUMBERS, WHICH I INTEND TO INCLUDE HERE.