Tribute to The People Who Shaped my Life

 

I was born the seventh child of the family of eight children. It was a unique sequence: two daughters, two sons, two daughters and then two sons!

What I know of my father was what was told about him when I reached a certain age; he had died before I was four. I cannot even remember his face. The responsibility fell on the mother who had the grit and determination to face the problems of bringing us up.

My eldest sister (Akka) had been married off before I was born. My eldest brother died within two years after my father’s death.  The next elder brother, at the age of 15 became the family breadwinner.

We had a small restaurant business (fairly big for the small town) which was run by my brother Rathnam Anna. I used to be of some help to him beyond my school hours after I reached a certain age.

I enjoyed my school life. I was not the first in the class but very near the top. I was always confident that I could outdo the first ranker in many ways.

SISTER

My second sister Chellam was studying in a school in Madras. She was a brilliant student in school.  She would come home during vacations and would literally take charge of all of us. She was very strict and would make us do our routines without any letup.  It was she who brought a sense of discipline in our daily life.

She had developed a particular liking for me and would give me good books to read so that I could develop a personality. She went for college education with zoology as her main subject. Her record books were as neat as printed text books and the drawings she made were true to life.

All my elders had made sacrifices on my behalf. Ratham Anna would never question any of my needs and the sisters would bend over backwards to accommodate my needs. But it was Chellam who made positive contributions towards my development.

My schooling was with the only high school in town; the Board High School. Those days, it was eleven years of schooling leading up to SSLC, at the end of which a public examination was held. The school boasted of 50% results at the best!

The medium of instruction was Tamil. English was a language to be learnt. The school taught us very little of the grammar and literature. The students could at best write English by verbatim repeating what they had crammed up from the printed guides.

Chellam would encourage me to read and write English. She would make me read “The Hindu” Newspaper to improve my vocabulary. But still I had a long way to go!

I passed my SSLC with very good marks and got admitted to Loyola College for the two year Intermediate course with Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry as my subjects.

At this stage the family was going through extremely difficult times and my mother was very diffident about sending me to college. She wanted me to take a diploma course which would last about three years. Again it was Chellam who prevailed upon her to get me admitted to the college. She would insist, “He is very good in his studies. We should give him the best of education.”

In the first term I really struggled as I could not cope with the sudden switching over to English medium. Chellam used to write letters to me and would insist on detailed replies from me in English only. In the quarterly examination, I secured 198^th rank in a class of about 270 students. The principal read out the marks and commented “Needs a lot of improvement.” I really felt ashamed.

I slowly started putting in efforts to improve my rank; in the half yearly exam it was 109, in the first year end it was 53 and in the University exam, it was 24.

TEACHER

My school had a number of teachers and most of them were indifferent to the performance of the students. It was a coeducational institution with very few girls. Some of the boys were interested only in chasing the girls. By and large the atmosphere was not conducive to serious academic development.

When we reached ninth standard, we had a new class teacher Sivanesan. He was from the same town and had just completed his graduation in science. It was like a breath of fresh air to have him as the teacher. He studied the personalities of each student and would take great pains to discipline each student. He knew his subject well and was an excellent teacher. When handing over corrected answer papers, he would dwell upon the performance of each student in detail.

I became a sort of pet for him. He singled me out in the class and every mistake I made in my answers would be highlighted by him during the review. When we were promoted to the tenth standard, he went off for a year to complete his teachers training (B.T. those days) in Madras. During the entire year, he would write letters to me regularly and advise me on my studies and how I should conduct myself.

Later, he attended my wedding reception and still later, my son’s marriage. By this time, he had gone blind and needed help to move around. Later I learnt that he was in an old age home in Kanchipuram and that he died in the home itself.

He was one teacher I have taken as the “Guru” and can never forget.

FRIEND

Friends make a man. My school friends were more of playmates and there was no real friendship. Things turned in Loyola College. During the first few days of hostel life, I stumbled upon Madhavan. He was also a fresher doing commerce and was staying in a room not far from mine. It was sheer accident that we met (or was it providence?). In no time, we became thick friends and were called “Inseparables” by other classmates.

Madhavan was studious. Loyola Hostel Warden was very strict and at the time the study hour bell rang at 8:30 pm, all inmates would have to be in their rooms. Madhavan would be in his room at 8:15 and would meticulously go over the work assigned for the day. He never missed this even for a day. I would hang around with him till 8:15 and then go to my room to start my studies, a habit acquired from him.

Similarly in the morning, he would get up at the specified time and he used an alarm clock regularly. His next duty would be to go around and wake up the friends; I was mostly the first one to be called!

The two years I spent in Loyola Hostel was the most memorable period of my life. I learnt discipline from Madhavan in addition to studiousness.

Later Madhavan joined the Indian Revenue Service as an Income Tax Officer and lives a retired life now in Chennai.

Along with Madhavan, I had excellent friends like Ganapathi Subramanian and Sri Ramakrishna (a senior). None of them chose the engineering field and I had to reluctantly leave their company to join the Engineering stream in Guindy. Over the years, I have been able to maintain contact with Madhavan and his influence over me continues to this date.

BOSS

In my service in the Indian Railways, I had worked under many bosses. At least three of them have to be remembered here. The first one was Rajagopalan, my immediate boss in the Eastern Railway at Dhanbad. He was a bachelor and as I was also single, we shared the same living quarters for about a year.

He was meticulous in his work. He would go into the last details of any work to be done and taught me the basics of working in a Government organization by setting examples. On the day he returned after his marriage, I had left on transfer to Southern Railway. In a way, he was my first “Guru” in work ethics.

I was posted as Assistant Works Manager of Railway Signal Workshops at Podanur on transfer and reported to The Works Manager Ranganathan. He had risen from the ranks and knew how to impress people. He was a glib talker and could cover any subject as if he was an expert. He loved challenges and was always jumping from crisis to crisis and literally thrived on them!

We sat in the same cabin facing each other and I could watch all his maneuvering  without any hindrance. To quote an example of our conversation, one day he said to me, “The first time you face a labour agitation, you are scared. The next time you are confident of handling it.” I responded, “The third time you welcome it and the fourth time you organize it!” We both had a hearty laugh.

But he was never tolerant of excellence in his subordinates. He always wanted to be one up on others and earned as many enemies as friends. At a later stage, I took over as Works Manager after he moved out. We had a number of occasions to rub each other but once we left the organization, there were no hard feelings left.

The most important person I remember as boss is Joseph. He was the Deputy Chief Engineer controlling the Workshops from the Railway Headquarters at Madras. He was a tough task master and would demand continuous alertness from the officers working under him. He brought in many projects and executed them very efficiently and many times I had to work under great pressure to meet targets.

Later, he became the Chief Engineer and continued his work aggressively. On the day he retired, I had the opportunity to speak frankly about him. His dedication to work and insistence on the officers working under him to give their best was unparalleled. After I left Indian Railways on voluntary retirement in 1983, I maintained contact with him till he passed away around the year 2000.

COLLEAGUE

There have been many people I worked with in Railways and after I left the organization to start a business. Many of them had become personal friends and continue to remain so even after many years after my retirement. But there is one person who requires special mention as the one who changed my destiny.

I first knew Achuthan as a vendor and was skeptical of his capabilities and the quality of his products. He was operating from Calcutta and was running a small industry. My experience with Calcutta based businessmen was not very encouraging and hence I was wary of all of them. In course of time, I was impressed by his sincerity and promptness as well as quality of his products. About six years after I came to know him personally, I happened to spend a month in Calcutta doing a Management Development Programme in the Indian Institute of Management. I had the opportunity to move with him closely and we spent a number of evenings discussing matters of mutual interest. I had more or less become fed up with Railway Service and having experienced working in private sector and State Government earlier, I was itching to become an entrepreneur. Achuthan encouraged me and offered to support in case I wanted to come out of Railways to start an industry, even at the smallest level.

The idea was dormant for over five years and when  I finally  left Railways to start a business, Achuthan kept his promise and provided initial financial support and advice in running the company.

It is another story that the company took many years to come of age and by that time, Achuthan had left leaving me to handle it on my own. He had visions of expanding his business and I lost contact with him after he relinquished his position as director. Though his actual contribution to the company was not significant, it was he who was instrumental in my leaving the Railways and starting a new life at the age of 44.

Now I am over seventy and retired and when I look back, I wonder what direction my life would have taken in the absence of the people who shaped my destiny. I keep wondering…..

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