Your mother and I have watched you with pride over the last decade and more, from the time you were just another schoolgirl at Maneckji Cooper School in Mumbai to the education odyssey that has taken you through the International Baccalaureate programme at the United World College, USA, the Medical and PhD programs at Cambridge University, and now to the super specialization and post-doctoral training at Harvard.
Your travels around the world and your life experiences have made you a mature, wise woman, leaving me with little scope for sermons. Still, I would love to leave you with a few of my thoughts, which I am hoping you will assimilate into your own worldview. Over the years, you have developed a healthy respect for our own academic and business accomplishments, a better understanding of our roots, and of our journey to the current state of relative success, and I am sure this will inspire some of your future thoughts and actions.
My own family came from a little village called Vadiveeswaram in the Nagercoil district of Tamil Nadu. My paternal grandfather, Ganapathy Iyer, was the headmaster at the local village school. But even though he was a working man, he never had enough money to feed and clothe his fourteen children. It was left to his eldest son Natarajan, my father, to take up the responsibility of pulling out the family from their abject rural poverty to a life of dignity in the city.
You knew your grandfather very briefly and I probably never told you about the tribulations and aspirations of the young man who did so much, not just for his family but also for industry and society. Having managed to get himself a BSc (Physics) degree from St Joseph’s College in Trichy, he moved his large family to Kolkata when India was in the midst of getting her independence from an oppressive regime. Always a curious scientist—I suspect you get your interest in science and research from him—he co-founded Waxpol Industries in collaboration with the Garg family and went on to get many industrial chemical discoveries to his credit. Even today, people remember the famous Waxpol Car Polish and the industrial greases and lubricants that he created. Such was his simplicity and passion for work that he called himself Chief Chemist instead of Director (Technical) of the company.
His humility was something he passed on to all of us. His friends were ordinary people that he worked with and so it was with us. Having discharged the eldest son’s responsibilities by taking care of his parents till their demise, ensuring good marriages for his seven sisters, and jobs for the three brothers, Appa moved his little family of four to Ranchi to set up the Waxpol factory there and thus found the time to indulge in his many talents.
In Ranchi, our school-going days were spent in the company of the simple folks of Tatisilwai where we lived in the only brick house that the village could boast of. But our relative prosperity did not stop us from mingling happily with the village kids, indulging in hearty games of gilli danda. Appa was a passionate follower of the Ramakrishna Mission and he made sure that his entire family participated wholeheartedly in the Seva Kendra that he set up outside our family compound. Each evening, it became our duty to gather the village kids and feed them milk after which we would all join them in singing patriotic songs so that we would all become better human beings!
He had an incredible amount of energy and slept very little. He held the belief that life was so full of things that he had just time for four hours of sleep. He was my inspiration and he always told me: ‘Life is a gift and I don’t want to idle away time. It is a waste of my intellect and education.’
He was also the life and soul of the Tamil Sangam, (an informal cultural body of the local Tamil population) and brought some of the best artistes, philanthropists, and seers of those times, including MS Subbalakshmi, Kamala Lakshman, Ghanshyam Das Birla, and Jayendra Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Kanchi, to the little Bihar town and to our humble home.
When I think about it, I am convinced that his enthusiasm for life, his interest in people, and his commitment to hard work rubbed off on me too.
Karuna, I used every moment of my spare time for something useful, such as reading and educating myself. You are in Harvard today with some of the most intelligent minds from around the world, for company. I’m sure you are using that opportunity to increase the breadth of your knowledge.
Even as our little family moved towards relative prosperity and could afford a few luxuries like a monthly visit to the town’s Kwality restaurant, the occasional Enid Blyton book, or the latest movie, we still stayed true to the values of leading a simple life that father advocated. I remember the time when the six of us from Seva Kendra were invited to sing the welcome song for Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s visit to Ranchi. The next morning, her cavalcade of over forty cars was to pass by our Seva Kendra and my father was convinced that she would stop and visit us. So we stood on the dusty road and watched the cars flash by when suddenly the PM’s car reversed to halt beside us and Mrs Gandhi came out beaming and greeted all of us, much to our utter surprise! Your grandfather had complete faith in himself and in the greater power of doing good and this was one instance among many where he showed that such a power could indeed move mountains!
There is an old cliché that behind every successful man is a
