Legacy: Letters from eminent parents to their daughters

by Menon, Sudha

  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, you risk finding yourself thrown on the ground. I know in childhood you have had a few falls from riding on the horse’s back.

  Darling, I want you to live life to the fullest and cultivate a variety of interests. Being multi-faceted is a very important part of being a successful human being. Today, when several of my friends are retired from active professional lives and sitting in their clubs playing cards, I find myself unable to do that. Perhaps, if I had learnt the art of killing time at a young age, I would have enjoyed it but my youth was spent in building up my career with the result that today, I don’t even know how many cards a pack has! I know it has two Jokers! Thankfully, I have my own pet passions—Golf, movies, music, reading, watching an occasional play—which adds so much value to life. Let us not overlook my addiction to Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian cuisine.

  My letter to you will remain incomplete if I don’t tell you what you mean to your parents. The five years that you spent with us after you returned home from your studies was such a precious period, one in which I felt like you were ours, finally. That was also when we talked business, you and I. I know you are a private person and shared more about the man you were seeing then with your mom than with me, but just getting to talk with you about life in general and business matters was hugely interesting for me.

  Happiness, I’ve always felt, comes from following your heart. Today I think that going into a different line will maybe will open up vistas for me that I would never have seen, but for your prodding. I am looking forward to spending time with you, so you will be able to teach me things that I never learnt from anywhere else. With a child, especially with a gifted daughter like you, learning can be fun. I’ve already learnt so much just by watching you conduct yourself.

  I have learnt to love from you. Having you and loving you brought another dimension to my definition of love, taught me of a love that is pure, taught me to be more considerate, more appreciative and understanding. Adults can learn from a child’s love; there is no give and take there, just joy and complete acceptance. From you, I learnt what it is to love unconditionally.

  Dear Anjali, I brought you up as the son of the family, ‘my puttar’. But now, it is such a pleasure to have a daughter. She is more forgiving, caring, and more than generous in reciprocating your affection.

  Maybe I never told you this before but sometimes I dream of you sitting next to me, listening to my rambling nonsense, and not disappearing to cater to all the other distractions in your life. I love your attention, dear daughter. I want to enjoy your company. There are too many distractions that take you away from me and your mother, like the phone constantly buzzing by your side. I want to ask you, do you know where the birds sat before mobiles phones were invented? On telephone wires that no longer exist. Now you know why I don’t possess a mobile. But you have not noticed and I have not asked you, because there are always too many distractions for us to have the time to share that.

  With all my love,

  Dad

  Ganesh Natarajan

  anesh Natarajan’s earliest lessons were learnt from his father, a simple village boy who worked relentlessly to make a career for himself so that he could look after his parents and thirteen siblings. That journey took the young man from his village in the state of Tamil Nadu to the city of Kolkata where he set up a small enterprise, and from there to, Tatisilwai, a small village in what is now the state of Jharkhand.

  His father’s commitment to his family and to the people around him left a lasting impression on Ganesh. As a young man, he recalls evenings spent serving up milk to the children of the village and joining them in singing patriotic songs which, his father told him,
would make them better human beings. From his father, who worked hard at the factory and then at the Ramakrishna Mission’s Seva Kendra till late night, Ganesh learnt the qualities of sincerity, hard work, love for the community, and the ability to maximize his time. From his mother and grandmother, he learnt generosity of heart and the ability to make the whole world his own and to reach out to everyone who touched his life.

  Today, Ganesh Natarajan is the Vice-Chairman and CEO of Zensar Technologies, one of the most successful IT companies in the country, Co-Chairman of the National Knowledge Council, and a member of the Chairman’s Council, NASSCOM.

  The little boy who grew up to be a God-fearing young man now finds himself an atheist, increasingly questioning his earlier beliefs, thanks to daughter Karuna, a keen science scholar who is currently engaged in cutting edge research in Hematology and Oncology at the prestigious Harvard University.

  Ganesh writes a nostalgic letter to Karuna, a letter in which he wonders if he could have, perhaps, spent a little more time with her during the few years that she was with them, before setting out in her early teens, on a trans global journey that took her to some of the biggest educational institutes in the world, including the Cambridge University. And yet, he says in his letter, he is glad they had the courage to let her find her own wings and take off in pursuit of her dreams.

  My dear Karuna,

  As always, it is a pleasure to write to you, this time especially so since you have now embarked on the next phase on your voyage of scientific discovery. In your fellowship at Harvard where you are working on Hematology and Oncology, I am sure you will put both your medical training and research orientation, acquired at the Cambridge Medical & PhD programme, to good use.

  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 woman and nothing could epitomize this more than your grandmother Subbalakshmi, fondly called Rajam, who came from Bombay as a bride into our large family in the year 1951. She was a graduate who was encouraged by your great grandfather Ganapathy Iyer to complete her Bachelor’s Degree in Education in Kolkata and became one of the most successful teachers of Mathematics and Sanskrit at the Bishop Westcott School in Namkum near Ranchi where both my sister and I completed our school education. She was the family’s pillar of strength, a willing ally to my father in all his activities, and, later on, his source of strength when his health slowly failed him. She was also the guiding parent for both my sister and I, helping us through school work, teaching me cricket and music, and encouraging all forms of curricular and extracurricular pursuits. You did have some experience of her wisdom and love during the years she stayed with us in Mumbai after your grandfather’s demise, so you know how much she pushed for strong values and excellence. She was an inspiration to all whose lives were touched by hers!

  I learnt many lessons from the way my parents conducted their life and I think these lessons and values are applicable to futur
e generations too.

  My parents believed that you can never choose the hand that fate deals you but insisted that how you play the game determines whether you win or lose in the larger game of life. Shouldering responsibility cheerfully without regret or remorse is one of the abilities that separate true winners from the also-rans, they said. As a young man who had to look after the needs of ten siblings and his parents, he never complained about his fate or blamed destiny for it. He just worked hard and dispensed his duties with good cheer.

  Appa always said: ‘Don’t let transient troubles come in the way of long-term goals. If there is something worth achieving in life, whether at work or beyond it, it is worth burning the midnight oil and pursuing relentlessly.’ I second that completely, Karuna, and know that you are already living that life.

  Never inflict your passions or priorities on others, my father said. If there is something that you like to do, something you feel adds great value to the world, others will gravitate to the cause voluntarily without any need for cajoling or coercion. This creates, long term converts rather than reluctant followers.

  During your own growing up years in Mumbai, you would have seen many other examples of selfless endeavours that were worthy of emulating and you would no doubt have your own role models at various stages of your childhood and youth. Your mother’s centenarian grandmother, who at that time was over seventy when you spend your first year with the family at Pondicherry, has always been a role model for all of us. The young widow courageously raised two generations of family, her own four children including your grandfather SV Iyer, and finally, her great grandchildren starting with you! That is an indication of the abundance of love and giving that reigns supreme in a large heart.