Legacy: Letters from eminent parents to their daughters

by Menon, Sudha

  It is said our various life experiences shape us and make us the people we are. Certainly, these societal detours made me a more sensitive, caring, and knowledgeable leader at work. Equally important, it made me emotionally and mentally less vulnerable to ups and downs of corporate life. There was always something exciting happening in my life which prepared me to handle business cycles with lesser pressure. People often ask me how I get the energy to do all these things while still delivering full corporate responsibility. Frankly, these activities don’t consume my energy—they give me energy!

  Gudiya, each one of us choose a path to follow in our lives. For some it is achieving greater heights of corporate ladder and fulfilment at work. Others take up academics and yet others, sports. I chose to take up detours into socially useful projects, while still at work. That was my attempt at actualization. There is never a correct mix applicable to all. Each one can and does choose a recipe for life. My own life recipe changed during the long, lonely days that I spent in the intensive care unit of Bombay Hospital, some twenty years ago, after being grievously injured in a tussle with robbers who had broken into our home in the dead of the night. Even today, I break out in sweat when I think of the concern and the anger that coursed through me when I realized that there were robbers in the house and that they might harm my little children sleeping in the next room. I rushed out and grappled with them, trying to keep them from getting anywhere near both of you but ended up getting brutally assaulted. Pooja, even in the midst of that danger, my only thought was my children’s safety, and I recall how you stood terror-stricken, at the sight of me lying in a pool of blood, on the floor. I did make it to the hospital and pulled through the crisis but in those days of uncertainty and loneliness in the ICU, I realized that the most important thing in my life was my family. I realised that it was not the next promotion or designation that mattered in life. In some ways, perhaps, all these years since then have been a bonus for me, but that episode helped me shape what is truly important in life and how we should not get consumed by so many trivialities and pettiness in everyday life. Faced with the uncertainty of life and certainty of death, I have shaped my life by scripting in my head the ‘obituary’ that I would like to have for myself. With that script it becomes so much easier to make choices in life.

  Like every professional going through the ‘rough and fun’ journey, I had choices to make but in my head, since that harrowing time in our lives, there has never been any confusion on the priority between family and work. I have often shared this with my colleagues when they seek permission or time off for something important at home: In our work environment, we have succession planning and role sharing; at home there are no ‘backfills’. Work does go on in our absence (and sometimes that humbles us); but there is no substitute for us, at home. Important events and occasions in your personal life never come back but at work, you can make a difference in the next quarter or close the next deal. Which is why, I often made those really long detours for two-day visits to USA when your little Sahil was a tiny tot. My friends and yours too, commented on the strangeness of a detour to USA when I was actually meant to do London-Mumbai, but I would not have missed seeing him take his first steps or mouthing his first words, for anything in the world. For me, spending time with my children, three wonderful grandchildren and their lovely spouses Minu and Aseem, is not about work-life balance… it is about LIFE itself; not to be confused with what we do for a ‘living!’ What matters in the end for all of us is the lasting impression that we leave behind. Was he a caring, nurturing, humble human being? Did he leave a legacy of honesty, sincerity and love behind him? That is what matters…

  For me retirement has not brought the slowing down that it brings along for most people. I continue to work as hard, only this time it is with projects that I enjoy taking up, the ones that make a difference to the people around me. I am engaging myself with many educational institutions like IIMs, Symbiosis, not only for teaching but in the journey of institution-building. I have intimate relationship with NGOs and of course steer so many CII initiatives. It means the world to me that my Pune Power Model and Green Factory experiment are case studies used at IIM Bangalore and Ahmedabad respectively. And even though I still have long hours and endless things to do, I know that at the end of the day, I get to unwind in the company of my grandchildren and that is enough to take away the fatigue.

  Pooja, when I see you head to the school bus stop every morning, holding Diya’s little hand, I remember taking you to the school bus stop in Delhi thirty years ago. When I see Sahil on the tennis court for coaching, I can almost see Amit in him so many years ago. If growing old gives you an opportunity to see your children in your grandchildren, I would have welcomed it much earlier. One of the biggest joys of our life has been seeing both of your grow up with good, home grown sanskars. The credit for the wholesome upbringing goes to your mother, who, without any hesitation, gave up her career as an architect, to focus on you both. Her efforts have more than paid off—and we can see her magic work with her grandchildren.

  I want to close this letter with the fun question we all used to chuckle about as you kids were growing up—how did God choose to send the best son and best daughter in the world to the same parents. Gudiya, I am still posing the same question to God and am grateful to him for his kindness.

  Lots of love and blessings,

  Papa

  Prakash Padukone

  eeting Prakash Padukone was in some way a dream come true for me, the one rare occasion when I was completely tongue-tied and at a loss for words. I still remember that school-going girl that I was then, sitting on the edge of the sofa in our drawing room, with my badminton-loving father seated beside me. I was too young to know the intricacies of the game but was used to hitting the shuttle around, with my father on the other side of the net, during our summer holidays in my home town, Kerala.

  Back then, even if I did not know the rules of the game, I remember being struck by the intensity on face of the striking young man on television and his dogged determination to get the better of his rival on the other side. I can’t even recall the names of the tournaments that he participated in but I do remember watching several of them, each of which got wildly applauded not just by my father and me but by the entire country. India did not have multiple television channels back in the late seventies. In fact, there was just one dedicated to sports and we got to largely watch cricket, hockey, or badminton, the last of which this young man had brought into the limelight with his brilliance. Along the way, the young man became a formidable force in the global badminton arena, snapping up trophies and awards from all corners of the world and bringing to an end the domination of the Chinese players in the game.

  The soft-spoken gentleman who offered me tea at his old-world office at the Tata Padukone Badminton Academy was reluctant to talk about his achievements but happily talked about his journey to the top of the pile, in the game. He recounted for me the years spent practicing the game at a small wedding hall in Malleswaram, Bangalore, where he would wait anxiously for the marriage season to end so that he and his cronies could hone their game. Even today he credits his father for his success and for giving him the wings to fly. At a time when middle-class parents hoped for their sons to become doctors or engineers so that they could look after their families, Ramesh Padukone let his son follow his dream of achieving greatness in Badminton, a game which was little known in India and in which a top award was usually a wooden plaque.

  The young man did achieve his dream when he won the All England Badminton Championship in 1980, vanquishing one of the game’s most revered figures, Indonesia’s Liem Swie King in straight sets, putting his country on the badminton map of the world. Suddenly, India was a force to reckon with in this sport. The Gentle Giant of the court got a new name, ‘Bangalore Torpedo’, an icon who destroyed the world’s greatest players with a combination of deceptive but deadly wristwork, an uncanny ability to read his opponents, a much-feared ‘Net
dribble’, and delicate drop shots. When he could not combat the aggressive physical smashes, he simply decided he would play his opponents on the mind level, bringing them down with strategy rather than physical strength.

  India welcomed its sporting hero with the kind of celebration it had never before laid down—fans thronged the fifteen kilometre route from the airport to his house, raining flowers on the shy young lad, who, with this victory, made badminton a sport that was suddenly as popular as cricket or hockey.

  What he remembers of those years is his middle-class father’s great generosity in allowing him to pursue a sport that had little money or prospects, his refusal to crib about his circumstances, and the all-encompassing passion for the game that gave him the strength to take on the countless trips made in unreserved compartments of trains, sleeping on the floor, or spending nights on railway platforms so that he could get to his destination and play a good tournament.

  When he hung up his boots, retiring after he had given his everything to the game, Padukone set up the eponymous Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy in Bangalore, where he spends his days training the badminton heroes of the future. Along with billiards champion Geet Sethi, he also founded Olympics Gold Quest—a voluntary body that spots and funds India’s best prospective gold medal winners for the Olympic games. ‘It is only when each of us contribute in whatever capacity we can, no matter how small or big the amount, that we can fund our poor but immensely talented athletes. They have the fire in the belly to want to win the ultimate honor for our country but sadly, they don’t have the wherewithal to fund the long journey and tough training that it takes to compete with the world’s best’, he says.

  The master badminton players writes a letter to his daughters, film actor Deepika Padukone, and golfer Anisha, making a strong case for keeping their feet on the ground, eyes focused on their goals, and quietly going about their work with single-minded devotion.

  Dear Deepika, Anisha,

  As you stand on the threshold of life’s journey, I want to share with you some lessons that life has taught me.

  Decades ago, as a little boy growing up in Bangalore, I started my tryst with badminton, a game that was completely unknown in our country at the time, except in some parts of West and North India. My father, your grandfather Ramesh Padukone, had become fascinated by the game when he lived in Mumbai and introduced it in Bangalore when he relocated there. He took a group of us, young boys, under his wings to teach us the basics, often looking up rule books so that he could impart to us the finer nuances of the game.

  Those days there were no stadiums and courts where sportspeople could train without being disturbed. Our badminton court was the marriage hall of the Canara Union bank, near our house in Malleswaram, and it was there that I learnt everything about the game.

  Every day, we would wait to see if there was a function in the hall, and if there was none, we would rush there, after school, to play to our hearts’ content. Marriage season in Bangalore often lasted for five to six months and so there were not too many days we could play at a stretch. Sometimes, it would be just nine to ten days in a month, but we were grateful for even those days.

  Looking back, I realize that the most important thing about my childhood and adolescent years was my refusal to complain about my lot in life. I was thankful for the few hours a week we had the opportunity to hit the shuttle back and forth.

  In fact, that has possibly been the foundation on which I based my career and my life—the refusal to whinge or whine about anything, even as a child of seven when I first took up the game.

  I could have complained about everything—the lack of proper sparring partners, the shortage of practice matches, the unavailability of coaches and fitness trainers, poor infrastructure for training, and so on. But I, in fact a generation of people in the seventies, chose to just accept the conditions that we were presented with and made the best out of them.

  And that is what I want to tell you my children, that there is no substitute for perseverance, hard work, determination, and passion for what you choose to do. If you love what you do, nothing else matters—not awards, nor compensation, not even the gratification of seeing your face in newspapers or television.

  By the time I was sixteen, I was the national badminton champion. Often the prize for the effort was a candle-stand, a photo-frame, or a wooden plaque.

  It was only when I won the All England Championship that the prize-money became significant—£3,000—a huge amount in those days. But that did not distract me from the sheer joy of having been instrumental in putting India on the global map of this game.

  In a small way, I think, my winning that championship was the turning point for the game in India and it cleared the way for other champions to come in later.

  The success, the name and fame, the Arjuna Award and Padma Shri, were all by-products of my love for the game.

  Deepika, we know that you are in the film industry because of your love for it. Early on in life, even as a child of nine or ten, we knew that you were meant for modelling and to be under the arc-lights. You were a natural.

  Even so, at eighteen, when you told us that you wanted to shift to Mumbai to pursue a career in modelling, it was hard for us to come to terms with the decision. We felt you were too young and too inexperienced to be alone in a big city, in an industry we knew nothing about.

  In the end we decided to let you follow your heart, like my father had taught me all those years ago, as the only way to live fully.

  In the sixties, most middle-class families had their sons into engineering or medicine as that guaranteed a secure and stable future. Your uncle, Pradeep, and I were Junior National Champions together, but he pursued his interest in engineering and went off to the US for a career. I, on the other hand, had no intention of going down that path, and I was fortunate that my father gave me the freedom to follow my passion for a game which held very little promise of ever making money. His approval changed the course of my life. Had he forced me, I would have been a miserable, average engineer plodding through life.

  When the time came for you to make a decision about your future, we thought it would be cruel to not give our child the opportunity to pursue a dream that she lived and breathed for. If you succeeded, it would make us proud, but even if you didn’t, you would not have any regrets that you did not try. In retrospect, it has turned out to be the best thing we did.

  In the last few years, we have seen you mature into a young woman who has her head on her shoulders. Maybe it is a result of the responsibilities that came your way at an early age, but we are proud of the independent, sensible, focused young woman that you have become, a woman who effortlessly manages the things that compete for her attention every day—a demanding career, keeping house, managing the staff, and keeping in touch with family.

  Sometimes parents underestimate their children’s capabilities which brings me to my other belief: you can either like what you do or you can be passionate about what you do. If you only like what you do, you will become an average player, but if you love what you do, there is every chance that you will excel at it. For then, no hardship, no sacrifice will be too much to achieve your goal. Anisha, you want to be a professional golfer and I know you will let nothing come between you and that dream.

  At sixteen years of age, when I was representing the country in badminton, I travelled second class and often in unreserved coaches on trains, sitting, eating, and sleeping outside filthy toilets in the train for a couple of days simply so that I could reach the training camp and better my game. I see that passion in you. I don’t know too many young people who work sixteen hours a day and I see that the fruits of that passion are already coming your way.

  Deepika, I have learned that you can’t always win in life, that everything you want might not come your way, and events don’t always turn out as you want them to. To win some, you have to lose some. You have to learn to take life’s ups and downs in your stride. Looking back, the amount of ef
fort that I put in my game never varied from the first day till my retirement, regardless of the money, the awards and recognition, winning or losing. Whatever I got in addition to playing was just added bonus.

  Even during the toughest times, I focused on what I had, instead of dwelling on what I did not. I had the ability to make the best of the worst circumstances and remain steadfast to my goal. Thus, at the end of my career, I had no regrets, or any desire to ever return to the game, for I knew that I had truly given all to my passion.

  Remember how I constantly tell you both about the importance of making your way up in the world without waiting for your parents to pull strings and make things happen for you? I believe it is best for children to work hard to make their dreams come true and to not have things handed to them on a platter. And it makes us immensely proud to see that both of you have followed our counsel and are making things happen for yourself.