But her journey to the top was no smooth ride and came with its own set of challenges. When the global financial meltdown led to a Rs1,050-crore decline in the bank’s profit after tax for FY 2008/09, it was Chanda, then Managing Director, who stepped in to take some hard decisions. ‘In times of crisis, the leader should broaden his shoulders and straighten his back so that he can absorb all the strain and leave the team to do their best to resolve the crisis,’ so is her leadership mantra. It worked wonders for the bank and got her the ultimate reward: the privilege of stepping in as CEO and MD.
Chanda’s biggest life lessons were learnt from her parents. Her father refused to bend the rules even for his own son seeking admission into the engineering college of which he was the Principal. And her mother single-handedly charted the course of her family’s life without once letting her children gauge the extent of the pressure she shouldered.
It was from her that she learnt the importance of never letting stress get to you and, in turn, affect those who depend on you for leadership and guidance—whether at home or at work.
Chanda writes a touching letter to her daughter Aarti about the importance of family in our lives and of never letting the daily pressures of life bog us down.
Aarti is an engineering graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and is currently employed with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as an Associate. She plans to do an MBA sometime later this year.
Dear Aarti,
It makes me feel so proud today to see you standing in front of me as a confident young woman right on the threshold of an exciting journey through life. I am looking forward to seeing you grow and flourish in the years ahead.
This moment has also brought back memories of my own journey, and the life lessons I learnt along the way. When I think of those times, I realize that most of these lessons were actually learnt in my childhood, mostly through examples set by my parents. The values that they instilled in my formative years gave me the foundation on which I try to live my life even today.
Our family of five, comprising of my parents and three siblings, lived in Jaipur, Rajasthan. Our parents treated all three of us—two sisters and a brother—equally. When it came to education, or our future plans, there was no discrimination between us based on our gender. Your grandparents always had the same message for the three of us—that it was important to focus on what gave us satisfaction and to work towards it with utmost dedication. That early initiation enabled us to develop into confident individuals capable of taking decisions independently. This also helped me when I started out on my journey of self-discovery.
Every quality that has stood me in good stead in life actually has its roots in my childhood. I remember an incident which as a young girl, had left me thinking of my father as a harsh man. But it was only much later in life that I realized that what I had mistaken for harshness was, in fact, his way of teaching us to lead an honourable life.
My father was the Principal of an engineering college in Jaipur to which my elder brother had applied for an admission. He had also applied to a college in Baroda to be on the safe side, but it was far away for us who had grown up in a protected environment all our lives. When the results were announced, my brother found out to his dismay that he had missed the admission into the Jaipur College by a mere half per cent but had cleared the Baroda entrance test with flying colours. The family was, of course, disappointed. At that time, my father’s colleagues in the college approached him with the suggestion that the college start a system wherein children of the faculty members seeking entry into a given course be given a small privilege in terms of a lower cut-off level as compared to the others. My father flatly refused to implement the suggestion in the year when his son would benefit from the proposed new rule. It was a good suggestion, he felt, ‘but the college could implement it from the next year’. I remember feeling very angry with my father and thinking how unfair it was on his part to deny his son something that was within his reach to give. But now when I look back, I think my stand on values, ethics, and governance today was, in fact, formed from that very incident! We got our initial moorings about fair play and honesty from him and these are the values that I adopted for myself in the long run.
I was only a young girl of 13 when my father passed away from a sudden heart attack, leaving us unprepared to take on life without him. We had been protected from life’s challenges so far. But without warning, all that changed overnight and my mother, who had only been a homemaker till then, faced the responsibility of raising three children all on her own. It was then that we realized how strong she was and how determined to do her duty in the best possible manner. Slowly, she discovered a flair for designing and textiles, found herself a job with a small firm, and quickly made herself indispensable to them. It must have been challenging for her to shoulder the responsibility of bringing up her family single- handed, but she never let us feel like it was a task for her. She worked hard till
