The most crucial human faculty is not the art of learning, but the ability to unlearn what has already been learnt, or to forget the habits and practices of the past. This seems very tough to unlearn; it is like breaking the comfort zone and challenging your own conformity.

The new life of work for everyone is not the same as a classroom, where you can skip a class or, in present times, sneak into your mobile or gossip a bit safely.

At the workplace, specifically at mine, the rules were very strict and my job was to remain on my toes. Yet, even in those circumstances, I always created some room for recreation, which I felt then — and still feel — is necessary to perform duties effectively.

The business model of an ad agency at that time was very simple, and there was no concept of separate companies for every niche of advertising business, as there is now.

The main engine of an agency was the media department, through which the complete business transaction was carried out. The agency would receive an order to design and place an advertisement in a newspaper. The ad would be designed (the public sector usually did not pay design charges), placed through a release order, published, and subsequently billed. The agency would receive its commission and the transaction would end.

The aggregate of many advertisements in a month formed the agency’s revenue, and the business continued. The word agent itself explains the cut the agency receives from the media amount.

Perhaps I must add here that in the present business scenario for agencies, there is no such thing as agency commission in the private sector; it has largely been replaced by a buying fee. However, the practice of agency commission is still valid in the government sector.

In Islamabad, during those years of my job, almost all agencies were surviving — and sometimes flourishing — on government-sector business. Nearly 95% of the agency’s revenue came from this source, and even when there was design work, the cost paid for designing was minimal.

A tall man, usually with an untrimmed but huge moustache, was the head of the media department — Mr. Saeed. He was highly energetic and empowered, and the sole runner of the entire media operation in the office. His walking style was very peculiar: one arm resting to the side and the other swinging slightly more than usual. His speed in manually sorting and marking right and wrong in documents was amazingly impressive, almost mechanical. Now I feel he was a master of his trade.

In a small cabin with a fax machine, he would come, sit, deliver instructions, and leave. He always looked content with everything.

Later, after two years, when I returned to the city, I worked with Mr. Saeed again in another agency where he was the boss, and the agency was owned by some renowned politicians of that time.

Because of my innate dissatisfaction with the status quo, I started giving interviews and was interviewed at Interflow Communications by two renowned people of the industry, Mr. Gulrez Mojiz and Mr. Muhammad Malik. However, I was rejected by them, perhaps due to lack of qualifications or poor presentation.

Interestingly, I worked with both of them later in life, under different circumstances.

I was almost ready to leave the job, but fate did not give me an escape — or perhaps there was still more for me to learn there, or more people I had yet to connect with in that blue-door world.

The story goes on.