Legacy: Letters from eminent parents to their daughters (13 page)

That young man is one of corporate India’s leading lights, with an awe-inspiring reputation that precedes him wherever he goes. He is the man who has almost singlehandedly mentored half a dozen of India’s most admired women leaders, a group of trendsetting women who began their careers as executives in the erstwhile ICICI (In the 1990s, ICICI transformed its business from a development financial institution offering only project finance to a diversified financial services group offering a wide variety of products and services, both directly and through a number of subsidiaries and affiliates like ICICI Bank) who were handpicked and groomed to take on leadership positions as the developmental finance institution transformed itself into India’s largest private sector bank.

In the years since then, it is a matter of great pride to him that one of his protégés, Chanda Kochhar, has taken over the mantle of steering the bank as its CEO and Managing Director while others have left to become heads of competing banks and financial service institutions. Much like a fond mother who might feel a temporary pang about her flock flying the coop, but takes pride in the fact that they have set out on their own individual journeys, Kamath watches with visible pride as his mentees take giant strides in the field of their choice.

The soft-spoken gentleman that I met in his office at the higher echelons of ICICI’s corporate headquarters in Mumbai, carried his many achievements lightly and insisted that the journeys and achievements of the women that he groomed would never have happened if they had not had it in them to relentlessly push their own boundaries. Each of them had it in them to take on a challenge and get after it with a single-minded commitment that nobody and nothing could distract them from.

It is perhaps one of life’s delicious ironies that his own daughter, a highly qualified young woman who left home in her teenage years to study and explore her own interests, chose to step off the beaten path and be at home to care for her family of three children and husband who is a very busy doctor. It takes a man with great conviction who will say that it does not affect him that his daughter’s potential is possibly being untapped as she leads the life of a homemaker in an American town. It is to Kamath’s credit that he supports his daughters categorically and without apology.

‘Success means different things to different people and if you have decided that your career should wait till you have completed your family and given your children all the attention they need, then being able to do that itself is a measure of your success,’ he writes in his letter to his daughter Ajnya.

Dear Ajnya,

You might think this is a fond parent’s indulgent letter to his daughter but to me, it is a conversation with myself about the things that I might or might not have expressed to you in all these years.

You know, of course, that when you were born, it was a very special occasion for not just your mother and me but also for your entire extended family because you were the first girl child to be born in two generations of our family on either side, your mother’s and mine. And while we already loved your elder brother, your coming into our lives was an amazing experience—not just because we were all learning the ropes of rearing a girl child through trial and error, but also because you ended up teaching me a whole lot of stuff about life in general. You continue to do so, even more now that you are a mother of three children and seem to have a wisdom that comes from taking on that role.

Very often, I am asked this question about you: ‘How does it feel to be the man responsible for grooming and mentoring some of India’s most successful women leaders and then to have your own daughter opt to stay at home and raise kids?’

And my answer is always categorical. That I find it admirable you took such a decision with positivity which shows your confidence in yourself. Success means different things to different people and if you have decided that your career should wait till you have completed your family and given your children all the attention they need, then being able to do that itself is a measure of your success.

You live far away now, in the US, but on my every visit there, I see you bringing up your children in such a confident manner and am struck by your remarkable strength of character and your dogged commitment to all the things that are precious to you.

Seeing you with your children reminds me of my own childhood and I want to share with you the memories and lessons that I learnt from my parents. I hope these are useful for you as you raise your own kids, even if it is in an entirely different age.

I grew up in a much simpler world, in a village where my father was well-respected—not just because we had a family business manufacturing the famed Mangalore tiles, but because of his education. At a time when it was quite uncommon for people to be well-educated, he was one of the first people who went to England in the 1940s to do his post-graduation and ultimately returned home after a few years to take over the family business.

Like all teenagers, I was not very serious about my studies and often whiled away time with friends. He would tell me, education and not wealth, can take a human being to the next level and beyond his immediate circumstances. Also, he would say, one has to take leadership position early in life. He would insist that leadership is something that can be learnt, like everything else is.

I was not sold on my father’s constant talk about leadership and throughout my high school days, I was happy to be cheering on others in my group who took charge of things. It was only in the final year of engineering that I suddenly decided I wanted to contest the election for the President of the Student Council. Getting elected by 2,500 students was an exercise in managing the expectations of that many people and the dynamics of various groups and it posed interesting challenges. It was when I managed to pull it off and actually got elected to the post that I started taking myself seriously and believing that I could actually become a leader.

My father’s belief in the importance of leadership skills is also the reason why he put me in situations where I could learn. Every afternoon, in between classes, I would ride my motorcycle to the factory which was miles away and spend three hours there, learning the ropes before heading back to college. I was not very keen on it at that point but today when I look back, I see how valuable it was to have got that opportunity so early in life.

He often told me: ‘Your true wealth is your education and that is the only thing I can leave you with. Education, and not money, will carry you anywhere in the world.’

After my engineering degree, when I told him that I would like to do my management studies at IIM, Ahmedabad, it is to his credit that he agreed immediately despite knowing that my decision probably meant that I would never go back to the village to take over his business. That was the degree to which he respected education. What I carry from him is the legacy of education, the push to be a leader.

Though I looked up to and respected my father, it was my mother that I was closer to and I learnt many valuable lessons from. As it stands today, I am often credited with having mentored a handful of capable women at ICICI, into leaders who now steer various organizations. And while I insist that these ladies had it in them to become exactly what they wanted to be, my early brush with women and leadership came from my mother. She was an elected politician—a member of the district council—even before my father became one. It was only when my father decided to follow his business and also get more involved in politics (he went on to become Mayor of Mangalore) that she gave up her aspirations for and took a step back.

She had clear views on women, and the importance of them taking on leadership roles, in whatever manner or roles that they played. In her own family, she was the thought leader, the person everyone looked up to when there was a decision to be made. I think she was inspired by her own mother, your great grandmother, who raised me till the age of four. I still have faint memories of my time with her. I remember that she had a strong personality and that she called the shots in the family.

I see that sometimes in you. When you decided to put your career in law and microfinance on hold so that you could raise your children while your husband focused on his career in medicine, it reminded me a bit of my mother’s decision. But in your case, I’m sure we have not heard the last from you about the matter of your career. We know the efforts you have taken with your academics and we know one day all that will be put to good use.

There are other things that I picked up from my mother that you know are the foundations of the way we live our lives. One of the most important things she taught me is the value of saving for a rainy day and of living a simple life.

She was smart with money. During and after my engineering college, I would smoke cigarettes. She once asked me casually how much the cigarette cost and when I told her the price, she looked at me and said: ‘Do you know the principal sum a person would have to have in his bank to generate the interest that you are blowing away in smoke? For every box of cigarettes that you buy, somebody has to actually work hard to invest that money to get the paltry return that you are blowing away in smoke rings.’

My mother and I had this conversation during the time when annual salaries were less than Rs 10,000. So what she was saying was that if she saved Rs 3000, she would get an interest of Rs 300 and she was asking me to think about how much of that interest money I was smoking away.

That was the only conversation my mother and I had on the topic of my smoking. It amounted to simply this: what I was earning and how much of that I was sending up in smoke. That simple ‘ism’ stayed with me and for a very long time it was the single yardstick on which I took every spending decision.

You will remember the simplicity with which your mom and I raised you and your brother. You got only what we could afford and the rest, we explained to you, was something you would have to do without. I am glad to see you raising your children with the same values, even though, sometimes, I think you are much too firm and stern with them!

Another unwritten rule in the family, but one that was embedded deeply in all of us, was the importance of living honestly and without compromise on the values that we were brought up to believe in. My father’s career in politics never reached greater heights because he was incorruptible, too starkly honest to fit into the system. He opted out of the system that did not allow him to be the person he was and the ground rule at home always was honesty and the freedom to be forthright with our beliefs. That has been a guiding light in my personal and professional growth.

Your mom and I saw a streak of this, the ability to speak your mind without fear, when you were a teenager of just about 13 and we moved to Manila where I had taken up work. Do you remember the time, a few years later, when I decided to move to Indonesia on another project? We were taken aback and a bit shocked when you refused to accompany us. You insisted that you would finish your International Baccalaureate (IB) program in Manila since it was your final year and you said you preferred to stay with family friends and finish your course.

Even at sixteen you showed us not just that you had a mind of your own but that you had leadership qualities as well—you had, on your own initiative, found out everything about the way your course would be taught in Indonesia and told us it would be detrimental to your academic progress, if we insisted on taking you along.

That was just the beginning of your journey. While your mom and I came back to India after a few years, you decided to follow your interests which took you to the UK for a brief summer school at Oxford, and then to the US to explore your interests on your own. I think your fierce independence taught you a lot of life lessons that will not be forgotten and brought out your leadership skills too.

Your mom and I remember the time while you were the deputy at the women’s hostel at Smith College in the US and had to take a firm stand against the rampant partying and violation of rules that a few of the hostel inmates routinely indulged in. You were much worried about having to take a call on the issue. I remember the times you would call and discuss the issue with me but when you finally took action against the errant residents, it was entirely your own decision. It did not go well at all with everyone but you did not mind being temporarily unpopular. In the long run, you became a trusted and loved leader in the campus. Often, a leader has to take decisions that might not gain him popular votes but he has to do what he thinks is a good for the organization and for the larger community. I have learnt that it is possible to take charge of a situation and resolve it without aggravating hostilities. All you have to be is firm and stick to your decision.

This brings me back to the subject of your choosing to be a homemaker instead of following your career in law or microfinance that you followed for a short while. Often in the world, women who are homemakers are not given the same place in society that a working woman is given. Sometimes the work place is taken over by debates on gender inequality.