Legacy: Letters from eminent parents to their daughters (20 page)

Dear Aruna,

I know this is letter that has been long in writing, a letter that I should have actually sent you years ago when you were a young girl growing up with dreams, hopes, and aspirations. You are a mature woman now but I want you to know that this has been a letter I have been writing to you in my mind for many, many years. And, like they say, it is never too late for anything. I know the best years of your life are yet to come and I can see from the way you lead your life now that your dreams are about to take flight.

Aruna, I don’t know if I have told you this before but through this letter, I want to tell you how precious a gift you were to your mother and me from the day you were born. You were a kind, gentle, studious little child who quietly bore being left alone to grow on her own when your mother and I focused on your sister as she struggled with a fatal illness. Not once in all those years that we paid little heed to you and your brother, did you complain or rebel against our continued absence from your life. Your sister passed away and when we recovered from our grief, you had already become a self-sustained person who had learnt to live life on her own.

Dear child, looking back today, I confess I never realized when and how you grew up. Back then, I was still a struggling entrepreneur trying to grow his business and life was an endless journey from small town to yet another small town, in dirty, dusty buses and trains. Money was scarce and making a phone call to my family back home was a needless, unaffordable luxury. It was your mother who shouldered the responsibility of raising both of you since I was never around for either parent-teacher meetings or sports days. Looking back, I think I lost out on a large part of my own life by being detached from your growing up years. But that is life and I always believed in taking each day as it came.

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 success, be sensitive to the people around you. Ours is a country of vast inequities, so use your money to benefit many. Ultimately when you depart from this earth, you cannot carry your riches and possessions with you. Ashes to ashes, we go back into the earth that we came from. Instead, leave something for society to remember you by.

Because I grew up virtually with no education, I learnt that education is the best way to improve your situation in life and pull yourself out of you poverty and so, setting up a clutch of educational institutions is my way of giving back to society.

Whatever work you are doing, keep thinking ahead of your trade or business or chosen calling. Learning is an endless journey. Have a vision, continually dream new things for yourself, build a body of work, never put limitations on yourself by being timid, never think that you are poor and can’t achieve anything. All of us came to this earth with nothing. Establish your credentials with hard work and commitment. Being poor can often be an advantage because it acts as an incentive for you to work hard and excel. And, if you have been blessed by God’s grace and have a good life, be humble and aware of the difficulties of people around you.

Aruna, unlike the earlier times in which you grew up, the younger generation is more independent. Let your children be free, be aware of the changes of society around you. The young have their own way of life, don’t interfere with it. Our cherished joint family system is gone and it is the best to accept things as they are. I have adopted silence as the best way for myself, leaving the young to find their own way, but I want you to be willing enough to give guidance and advice when your young ones want it.

While you were growing up, I never got the time to instill values in you but I know that if you are attached to your children, they see you and follow your actions and there is no need to teach them anything. Children follow and adopt the things they see around them, so show them by your own living what the right path is.

I admire your hard work, commitment, and complete involvement in managing the growth of an institution that is now already being counted as one of the most forward-looking in the country. You have made it the only organization in the state to get triple IT status (
Indian
Institute of Information Technology.) When we started, I never imagined that we would one day become an institution where scholars could register for their doctorate programs. Now I know that you will do much more with this, even when I am long gone.

You know I am not a religious person, but I am deeply spiritual. I want to tell you to learn always from those around you—your students and the professors around you will teach you things that you would not otherwise have the opportunity to learn. After I pass away, I pray that you will always be inspired to keep steadfastly on the journey that you have chosen.

Aruna, I wish you boundless happiness. Happiness is often an elusive thing and the quest for it is elusive too, so cultivate the ability to be happy with what you have. Draw your happiness from your family and those who love you for what you are. Happiness is a way of life, it is not anything that you can buy or borrow. Your happiness has to come from within you. Don’t let you happiness depend on anyone or anything else.

As you become a leader in your own right, I want to tell you that a leader should have his or her eyes open at all times, notice things around them, and lead by example. Keep your team happy because they are the people who make you what you are. Your success depends on them. Learn to recognize that often you will know the truth only from the humblest person in your organization because the ones higher up will only want to praise you and your work. Keep in touch with the ordinary folk in your company.

At Finolex, I took joy in interacting with the many people who spent so many decades of their life building our organization. I took great life lessons from the peon in my office who worked for over 39 years for me, so if he wanted to meet me for a mere five minutes, I made sure I met him.

A leader should always be aware of the things around him. Mentor those under you. Don’t let the position or the chair that you occupy distract you or make you feel self-important. Always be ready to pitch in with your own hard work. Know everything about your work and your line of business because I truly believe self-help is the best help. I did that when I was building up my small business and grew it to this stage, not with my education but with my common sense and my ability and fierce will to know and understand what goes into the making of every single thing in our group. Aim for that level of knowledge, my dear.

Already, I know that you have embarked on what might seem right now a challenging task of studying for your doctorate. It is a difficult decision to begin late in your life, after your own children are grown up and maybe you are a little afraid, but I will be a very happy father the day you get your doctorate. My lack of a formal education has always been something that I have regretted and I am happy that my daughter is more than making up for this.

I don’t have to tell you about hard work and its importance in your life. You work so hard that sometimes I worry you don’t give yourself any time to relax and unwind. Hard work remains only a term till you actually do it and I am happy you are working hard. A lot of people speak about God and luck while speaking about their success. Often, these are invisible things and words but you can put meaning into them by doing your work with honesty and commitment. I believe it is possible to create your own luck and find the blessing of God through hard work.

Often, in living our everyday lives, we get carried away so much that we stop noticing our weaknesses. I never went to school and so, I cannot write, don’t know my spellings, and it bothers me constantly. Your weakness is the penchant to get much too involved in your work. Learn to delegate. As you grow, it is impossible to keep control of everything yourself. Learn to detach yourself and to stop micromanaging. The body and the soul gets burnt up from too much activity, so learn to rejuvenate by doing something that you like.

Wake up early every day, go for a walk. I have done that every day of my life and I can tell you that there is great merit in working all day and sleeping early. When you wake up early, you experience a freshness of spirit. I believe that when you walk alone in the morning, nature acts as your companion, walking and communicating with you. It is the time of the day that brings fresh ideas, energy, and the courage to follow up on doing the things that you need to do. In the end, I simply want to tell you that I am immensely proud of you.

God bless you,
Papa