When you came to be of a marriageable age, I decided I did not want you to be wife to a businessman and become like the other women in our traditional community who stayed at home being good wives and mothers, doing little other than attending parties. When we found you a professional doctor as a spouse, it was a happy occasion for us because we knew he would support you in anything that you wanted to do for yourself. For years after that, you raised your kids and looked after your family but I was consumed with the need to leave behind me a legacy that you could take up and run with.
Since I never went to school, I thought why not do something in the field of education and thus was born our first engineering college in Ratnagiri, a project which benefitted the simple people from our beautiful Konkan coast who did not have an engineering college in their region. That fledgling effort has now become a college that is much appreciated and has under its wings as many as four thousand students. But even though you were involved in it from the very beginning, the distance from your home in Pune to Ratnagiri always meant you were not able to work hands-on in the project.
In our families, girls marry young and don the role of traditional housewives. That was precisely the reason why I wanted you to get married to a professional instead of someone from a business family so you could have the option of doing something that would fulfill you, even after marriage. After the engineering college came about, you decided to take its reigns and started the journey of your own life. Later, my meetings with Dr Raghunath Mashelkar and Dr Vijay Bhatkar, (Dr. Mashekar is the former Director General of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, Dr. Vijay Bhatkar is one of the key scientists behind India’s national initiative in supercomputing, leading the development of Param supercomputers) got me thinking about setting up a path-breaking institute that would provide global quality education in advanced technologies, at affordable prices, to middle-class Indian students who could not afford to pay the exorbitant fees required for foreign education. That, I decided, would be my legacy for you.
In 2000, when I started this project, you took charge of it fully and it remains your passion a decade later. It amazes me how much time and commitment you invest in this project. Now that your children are all grown up, this is your main preoccupation. I’m happy that I have given you something that will outlive me and remain with you for a long time.
Aruna, it makes me happy that you have committed yourself to this institution because it is important to leave something in this world through which you will be remembered. I want you to create a name for yourself, support the poor, and the middle-class. The privileged have their money and their connections but the lesser privileged need the support and guidance of those who have much in their lives.
Through the course of the ten years since the institute’s establishment, IIIT has entered into so many joint ventures with foreign institutions. It filled me with pride when you travelled recently to China to work on an invitation by the University of Hunan which wants you to set up a branch of our college in that country. I am proud of you in a way I am not able to express. I grew up a poor, unlettered man and it makes me proud to see you so immersed in a career that has the power to change people’s lives.
For a long time after you got married and had children, I struggled to figure out what I could leave you as a legacy. In our community, women don’t study enough and often spend time in parties and other equally inconsequential stuff, but that does not help leaving any legacy. I wanted you to focus on something meaningful that will help the community around you and you have done such a splendid job, Aruna, and created your own identity with it.
It gives me satisfaction that I have done my job in giving you a meaningful path to follow. I deprived myself of education as a young boy but I wanted you to study and also open that magical door for others.
Aruna, my years on this earth have taught me that the most important thing in life is to never forget your roots, the place you came from before you became rich and successful. The initial years of my life were spent in luxury, but when my father passed away, all the money disappeared and the family came face to face with abject poverty. You know I have done every job from being a cleaning boy in a tiny textile shop in Karachi, to a domestic servant, to being a collection agent before I set up this business which has given me immense wealth and respect. I never let myself forget where I came from and in my daily life at home and at work, I always make time to meet the poor and the underprivileged people around me because that keeps me rooted and reminds me of my difficult initial years.
As you progress in life and move from success to
