I knew a brilliant engineer who made two cardinal mistakes, migrating to Pakistan and joining a religious party (even though right up to the age of 45, he was a firm believer in socialism). Of course, after many years associating with only extremist mullahs, he became like them. He became such a fundamentalist that he could talk about nothing else but religion. He used to call me many times a month, trying to convert me into his way of thinking, apparently under the delusion that if I became a fundamentalist like him, it would earn him a favored place in paradise.
As accumulating wealth was his only passion even for a few years after joining the religio-political party, he didn't have much time to train his children to become model citizens. One of his sons heard so many times that Muslims are allowed to have four wives that he married another woman, keeping the marriage a secret, until his wife's sister saw him with the other woman.
I should have mentioned that he started beating his first wife after she gave birth to a son who had a hole in his heart. He assumed that it was her fault, although I could have told him it could have been due to him smoking ten packs a day (he died in a tragic accident in 2006). One day I saw her crying bitterly, cursing the day she was born. Although the family spent millions trying to save the boy, she suspected he wouldn't live long. But the poor fellow did manage to survive to the age of 24 years, enduring the tortures of the damned, as his kidneys had deteriorated and he had to undergo dialysis thrice a week. His grandfather (the brilliant engineer and millionaire businessman) died six years back, a broken-hearted man. Perhaps it's true, what is written in the Bible about children having to pay for the sins of their parents and grandparents.
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