Around the time of the partition of India there was a soap shortage in Pakistan and his father saw an opportunity to be made in buying and selling soap. My father was a entering Matriculation (~16yrs old) . His plan was to make money in soap and send his son (my father) to a good College which specialised in roads, government buildings etc. A local man had been boasting about how much money his son had been making in civil engineering projects. In those days, and still today, the salary is not much but it's the "baksheesh" that brings in the dough.
Anyway, he sold his plot of land to his brothers and headed down to Karachi. He found some contacts in a soap factory and ordered a train carriage's worth of soap and returned to his village.
2 months goes by no word of the soap. He calls up the factory and they apologise and say they've been flat out in orders but will send his soap straight away. Another month later and the order arrives at the nearest train station. The soap crates were loaded onto donkeys and transported to the village.
Upon opening the crates he discovered that all was not right. The soap was very dense and there were salt crystals in it. It was a disaster, no-one wanted the soap and the money was lost. It was later discovered that what had transpired was that the manufacturer had used saltwater from the sea to manufactur the soap.
With the money lost, things then started to get so tight that the final terms fees for my father's school were unpaid. The school however knew the situation and knowing how well my father was doing allowed him to complete college.
Though this was quite a sad story, my father still sees a silver lining. His outlook is that things happen for a reason. What it meant was that he didn't go down the path of becoming a building/roads inspector and so stayed away from the temptation of corruption. He was then able to take his own path which led him to this country (UK) and stayed honest.
