100, not out…

THIS is not an obituary. Far from it. It is a tribute to someone who is completing the first 100 years of a crowded, productive life. Syed Babar Ali was born on June 30, 1926. For the past few weeks, numerous relatives, friends, business associates and educationists have joined in celebrating his centenary. Eleven years ago, in 2015, he recounted his life in a published memoir Learning from Others. He compressed 89 years of his life into 237 succinct pages. How does one compact 100 years of his life into 800 words? Yet, perhaps that is what he would wish — to have his life set down on a single sheet of paper. Every Pakistani — the living and the yet unborn — should read this memoir, if they wish to understand who was who, who did what and when, and how a single person has beneficially affected the lives of millions of us Pakistanis. Syed Babar Ali was born into money. His father Syed Maratib Ali had a flourishing business in Ferozepur and post-1947 in Lahore. That enabled Babar to obtain the best education money could buy — Aitchison College, then Government College in Lahore, University of Michigan in the US, and in time Harvard Business School. Could it have been the early slur of being “a contractor’s son” at the elitist ‘Chiefs’ College that spurred him to achieve beyond the creditable? Was it being the youngest of four brothers that drove him to seek a separate path for himself in business? Was it the blessings of his parents — particularly his mother the formidable Syeda Mubarik Begum — that tapped him for greatness? All three certainly, and more. Babar Ali’s life runs parallel to the history of Pakistan. He belonged to an age when industrialisation and self-reliance were a national mission. He brought the Swedish Rausing group to Lahore where they established Packages Limited. His friendship with Ruben Rausing and his sons Hans and Gad spawned a number of profitable joint ventures like TetraPak. With great wealth comes beneficence. Faced with the spectre of Z