Anjali, the early years of your childhood was spent in the company of your grandmother, who brought you up gently but firmly, and you imbibed from her the Sikh way of life and grew up to be a caring woman who respects her elders and is concerned about their well-being.
It brings me to the point of one of my own biggest assets in running my enterprise. At 27, when I decided to branch out on my own, I was never left floundering.
Occasionally, you may feel you are not equipped for business, I want to tell you that at every step you will have good guidance. Besides, I am confident that you have great leadership skills of your own.
As for me, I think what has helped me is my ability to relate to people and reach out to them at every level of the organization. When you live alone in various cities of the world, as I often do when I travel, you realise you know nobody, you are a stranger. The millions in your bank do little for you. However, if you have created jobs for people, know their families, are concerned about their kids’ education, that relationship itself is motivating and satisfying. I know you sensed and understood this well after you returned and you are quick to have adopted that interest in people. I believe our personalities develop with the challenges we face and that each individual is an embodiment of his accomplishments. My favourite theme in your growing years was ‘Education is not everything. It is the only thing.’ My child you have learnt well.
Sometimes, perhaps, you are too impatient with people. You don’t suffer fools easily but I want to tell you that we have to do that occasionally. I would ask you to be less judgmental. We have an Indian way of doing things, in the sense that we take time over things, and you have to learn to work with it. People are most often inefficient but they are not ill-meaning and so, we just have to get them going and make sure they deliver. Business is ninety percent about people. Technology, marketing, and everything else make up the remaining ten percent.
Now that you are getting yourself involved fully in the family business, I know you will deliver. Nobody respects you for the money you have. Respect comes from building upon what your predecessors have set-up or something that you have built on your own and from taking care of the well-being of all the stakeholders.
Anjali, there are other important things little to do with business that I want to share with you at this particular juncture. All those years ago, when you lived in Switzerland, I, along with the help of your mother, decided to prepare you to live an independent life. You had a bank account of your own that you learnt to operate with responsibility and that came from the faith that we entrusted in each other. When you empower people at a young age, they learn to handle responsibility and authority. When you returned home after your studies, I confess I was concerned that you would not be able to manage money, largely because you were an artist; but when you started living on your own and handling your own kitchen, your staff, and establishment, you proved to be more than responsible and mature.
Put your faith in people, Anjali, and they will repay you with their commitment and loyalty.
I too grew up in a family of ten siblings comprising of six sisters and three brothers and as I grew up, my network of friends expanded. My closest friends even now are those from my school days. Some of them are now dying on me. I have lost a couple of close friends who I had known for over fifty years and if I don’t make new friends, I am likely to be a lonely man. I have an American friend, Lee Perkins, who now follows the good weather across the country, living a full life in each of his five homes. I asked him once how he has so many friends in strange places and he said to me that it is a necessary art of survival. ‘You learn how to make new associations and friendships. Not all will be deep and long lasting, but they will be good relationships nevertheless,’ he told me. I think it makes good sense. At 86, Lee hunts, fishes, travels the world, and leads a more than active life, even at home.
As a woman growing up in a largely man’s world, there are a couple of things I want to lay emphasis on. Don’t let anybody take you for a meal without paying for it. Be financially independent, always. I know you practice this till today and I am proud of it, even if you sometimes do it with me too.
You grew up exposed to nature, spending your childhood gathering birds eggs on our estate and riding horses when you were a little girl of barely 6 and it saddens me that today you are no longer into sports, as much as you should be. I understand that arts and nature is what catches your imagination but I want you to understand that being engaged in sports is part of leading a full life. You know how a sport encourages team play and makes you tough emotionally and physically. Horse riding, for instance, teaches you alertness, develops your mind, and helps you to predict behavior—if you are not alert and watchful of the horse’s behavior,
