‘Success means different things to different people and if you have decided that your career should wait till you have completed your family and given your children all the attention they need, then being able to do that itself is a measure of your success,’ he writes in his letter to his daughter Ajnya.
Dear Ajnya,
You might think this is a fond parent’s indulgent letter to his daughter but to me, it is a conversation with myself about the things that I might or might not have expressed to you in all these years.
You know, of course, that when you were born, it was a very special occasion for not just your mother and me but also for your entire extended family because you were the first girl child to be born in two generations of our family on either side, your mother’s and mine. And while we already loved your elder brother, your coming into our lives was an amazing experience—not just because we were all learning the ropes of rearing a girl child through trial and error, but also because you ended up teaching me a whole lot of stuff about life in general. You continue to do so, even more now that you are a mother of three children and seem to have a wisdom that comes from taking on that role.
Very often, I am asked this question about you: ‘How does it feel to be the man responsible for grooming and mentoring some of India’s most successful women leaders and then to have your own daughter opt to stay at home and raise kids?’
And my answer is always categorical. That I find it admirable you took such a decision with positivity which shows your confidence in yourself. Success means different things to different people and if you have decided that your career should wait till you have completed your family and given your children all the attention they need, then being able to do that itself is a measure of your success.
You live far away now, in the US, but on my every visit there, I see you bringing up your children in such a confident manner and am struck by your remarkable strength of character and your dogged commitment to all the things that are precious to you.
Seeing you with your children reminds me of my own childhood and I want to share with you the memories and lessons that I learnt from my parents. I hope these are useful for you as you raise your own kids, even if it is in an entirely different age.
I grew up in a much simpler world, in a village where my father was well-respected—not just because we had a family business manufacturing the famed Mangalore tiles, but because of his education. At a time when it was quite uncommon for people to be well-educated, he was one of the first people who went to England in the 1940s to do his post-graduation and ultimately returned home after a few years to take over the family business.
Like all teenagers, I was not very serious about my studies and often whiled away time with friends. He would tell me, education and not wealth, can take a human being to the next level and beyond his immediate circumstances. Also, he would say, one has to take leadership position early in life. He would insist that leadership is something that can be learnt, like everything else is.
I was not sold on my father’s constant talk about leadership and throughout my high school days, I was happy to be cheering on others in my group who took charge of things. It was only in the final year of engineering that I suddenly decided I wanted to contest the election for the President of the Student Council. Getting elected by 2,500 students was an exercise in managing the expectations of that many people and the dynamics of various groups and it posed interesting challenges. It was when I managed to pull it off and actually got elected to the post that I started taking myself seriously and believing that I could actually become a leader.
My father’s belief in the importance of leadership skills is also the reason why he put me in situations where I could learn. Every afternoon, in between classes, I would ride my motorcycle to the factory which was miles away and spend three hours there, learning the ropes before heading back to college. I was not very keen on it at that point but today when I look back, I see how valuable it was to have got that opportunity so early in life.
He often told me: ‘Your true wealth is your education and that is the only thing I can leave you with. Education, and not money, will carry you anywhere in the world.’
After my engineering degree, when I told him that I would like to do my management studies at IIM, Ahmedabad, it is to his credit that he agreed immediately despite knowing that my decision probably meant that I would never go back to the village to take over his business. That was the degree to which he respected education. What I carry from him is the legacy of education, the push to be a leader.
Though I looked up to and respected my father, it was my mother that I was closer to and I learnt many valuable lessons from. As it stands today, I am often credited with having mentored a handful of capable women at ICICI, into leaders who now steer various organizations. And while I
