The young woman never went back to the US where she was studying but made the slums of Mumbai her home, working relentlessly to bridge the inequities in Indian society by educating its children. Her hard work paid off when Akanksha, the first organization that she set up for underprivileged children, caught the imagination and had young volunteers lining up to help her out. Akanksha touches the lives of over 4000 children through 40 centers and 13 schools in Mumbai and Pune, which delivers not just quality education but life skills that boost their self-esteem and empower them with income generating abilities.
Seventeen years after she started Akanksha, Shaheen took another leap of faith when she started Teach For India, an audacious venture that ropes in outstanding young graduates and professionals to dedicate two years of their life to teach in low-income schools for two years. The Fellowship enables them to become lifelong leaders advocating for educational equity.
Shaheen’s daughters have grown up living their mother’s dream, accompanying her mother as she visits the poorest communities in Indian cities, playing with the children of those communities and developing sensitivity to the inequities that are the scourge of Indian society.
Here she writes a simple poem to her children that underlines the strength of her own belief and her bonding with them.
Dear Samara and Sana,
If I could give you anything
I’d show you the times when I was really myself
When I did what I believed in
When I followed my heart
When I tried to live my potential.
And most important,
I’d show you some of what I wonder for you.
I wonder how to
Show you fun
That fun is fun
For everyone
To always take
The time to see
The bubble floating
Color-free
I wonder how to
Show you fair
That all things need
The greatest care
To push you hard
And gently too
To strive for greatness
In what you do
I wonder how to
Teach you right
And keep you safe
And hold you tight
And set you free
But not so free
And let you be
What you can be
Love you,
Mama
Zia Mody
arrived for my 6.30 pm meeting with Zia Mody, possibly India’s best-known corporate dealmaker and legal eagle, expecting that she was going to be at the end of her working day and relaxed for a long chat with me. I was mistaken.
I was ushered into the conference room of her 23rd floor office in one of Mumbai’s high-rise buildings, just a stone’s throw away from the famed Queen’s Necklace, and was treated to coffee and biscuits before she bustled in, a smiling bundle of energy that seemed difficult to contain in the room. She looked like everybody’s friendly neighborhood aunt, the one you slink off to for some tender loving care when your mother has put you in the dog house for some nameless misdemeanor. But those who have mistaken her for that have discovered in the past that it was a completely wrong and very expensive error.
When Zia, a student of Cambridge and Harvard Law School, decided to start her own litigation practice, she ran into a glass wall straight away with many a client rolling their eyes in disbelief that a woman would handle their case. She had two burdens to bear—that of being a woman in a completely male-dominated space and that of being the daughter of India’s former attorney general and brilliant legal mind, Soli Sorabjee. Zia was vexed and she turned to her mother for advice. She got sound advice from the mother who told her to ignore the whispers and get down to the business of proving that she could become a career attorney who could beat not just her father but any man in the same business.
In the following decades, Zia’s firm AZB & Partners has become one of the most sought after in the legal space, known for sorting out the most complex corporate disputes and closing several expensive and prestigious acquisitions for some of the country’s top corporate houses, including Tata Steel’s high profile acquisition of UK steel-maker Corus, in a jaw-dropping $12 billion deal. The firm followed this up with advising the Aditya Birla group during its $6 billion plus acquisition of Atlantis-based aluminum maker Novelis and later, Tata’s takeover of Jaguar Land Rover.
My meeting with Zia was interrupted several times when she had to retreat into her office to attend conference calls. She told me later that she preferred coming into office after sunset in order to be able to work more efficiently in the still of the night, without distractions, before heading back home after sometimes having put in over fifteen hours at work!
When she is not working at the frantic pace that she goes by, Zia is a practicing member of the Baha’i faith and doting mother to three daughters with whom she does not get to spend the time that her mother spent in raising her. Her mother, she recalled fondly, spent her days teaching her not just sewing, embroidery, dancing, and music but also taught her about the importance of the woman being a unifying element in her family and in the community. Zia did try to ape her mother and teach her children some of the skills that she has but eventually gave up when her own career gathered steam. Which is why, she cherishes the couple of family vacations that she takes every year with her childhood crush and now husband Jaydev and their three daughters.
In this touching letter to her daughters, Zia tells them about the importance of doing whatever it is they do, with passion, being grateful for the generosity of God in their lives, and being happy in all circumstances or
