Legacy: Letters from eminent parents to their daughters

by Menon, Sudha

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 fo
r 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.

  For me, the experience of heading an organization that has been home to some of the most dynamic working women in this country, was a journey of learning. Maybe growing up in a family with almost no women made me gender neutral in the way I looked at women in the work place. I think in the quest for seeming politically right, we have built a lot of biases into our workplaces, without realizing it. A lot of times this is because we perceive a situation different from the way the women see it.

  A lot of times a woman, I suspect, is given a different set of responsibilities not because she cannot do it, but because of someone’s belief that it is not right or fair for her to be asked to do it!

  My first lesson in understanding that a woman looks at this differently came in 1996 at ICICI. I was the Chief Executive Officer at that point and it worried me when women employees would take late night flights back home or if they worked late into the night at office. At one of the meetings with the team, which included a sizeable number of women, I raised this concern and asked them about how secure they felt. All I got in return were blank stares; none of them even responded to my query. I realized then that it was best to alleviate our own anxieties about the perceived risk instead of limiting what the women colleagues were capable of doing.

  Women have different approach to risk and their jobs and we (society or men in the organization) unnecessarily build stereotypes around them.

  At ICICI, we did nothing special to get the equations right. We were gender neutral from the recruitment stage itself. But the honest truth is that not every man has the same mind and so the balance gets skewed occasionally. Somewhere we let biases get in and the only way to avoid this is by being constantly alert and to not let that happen. The answer lies within us, not outside.

  At ICICI, once the merit process was put in place, there was never any question of gender inequality. We had a merit and performance-based ranking of employees which was reviewed every year and people got responsibilities that they were capable of taking on. When this is done, you get to a situation where you are not conscious of a gender mix at the table at all and that is when you can say your organization has truly become gender neutral. It took us about three to four years to reach there, but it was well worth it. Despite the debate about the need for affirmative action at the work place, I am convinced that a ‘no affirmative action’ policy is the best way, but we have to make sure we too have a neutral mind while doing so.

  Often, quick affirmative action is very risky and holds the danger of creating a hostile situation for the women colleagues at the work place. In the long run, I can say only merit works.

  Ajnya, when I see you with your children, I often recall my own childhood. Sometimes I may differ with you about your rather strict ways of parenting, but I also know that it is right for you to be firm with the children. It is only the grandfather in me that makes me question that.

  Growing up, you have had your grandparents and your parents push you to take on leadership qualities and in many ways you did, displaying a fondness for experimenting with various things, such as learning Japanese, when it was not fashionable to do so. Your mother has a strong mind of her own but she has chosen to take on a supportive role in our family. She raised you and your brother and maybe you take after her. She made it her full-time job raising our children and you are doing it now. I see how supportive you are with everything that your husband and children do. And I admire the way you facilitate everything by having a very clear demarcation of responsibility in running the house.

  Ajnya, you have learnt a lot of things about life from just watching your parents and your grandparents and I hope you realize that your children will learn their attitudes by watching their parents handle life. Children pick up from the parents their attitude towards the immediate family and their relationship to the larger community around them. How you treat the people around you will have enormous bearing on the minds of your own children and I know you will remember this at all times. The same applies for ethics and integrity too. Children look at their parents for pointers on this and what they see becomes embedded in their subconscious.

  I would like to end with this thought that parents expose their children to several aspects of life and are unable to expose them to other aspects for various reasons. I think parents will do the greatest service to children if learning from seeing is encouraged. Lead your life as you would want your children to lead their life and watch them become maturer for it.

  In the end, I want to say that I could have regretted that you did not follow a career path but I actually look at your decision to concentrate on your family with a tremendous sense of admiration. Nothing is more powerful or more worthy of pride than the sense of somebody’s conviction and the courage to follow one’s own heart. I’m proud of you.

  Lovingly,

  Dad

  Mallika Sarabhai

  allika Sarabhai is a multifaceted woman, a restless, vibrant soul unwilling to be caged in by boundaries and societal restrictions. Her interests are many. She is dancer, choreographer, social activist, writer, publisher, and commentator. But more than anything else, she is a human being whose heart beats and feels for the women of our country, the unsung majority who live in rural India and silently suffer the indignities that an uncaring society heaps on them. Over the years, she has worked relentlessly opposing crimes against women through her dance-dramas, mobile dance troupes, traveling through rural India spreading the word against female foeticide, child marriage, and maternal mortality, among others.

  Mallika herself grew up in a family of very strong women including her danseuse mother, Mrinalini Sarabhai, her aunt, freedom fighter Capt. Lakshmi Sehgal, and her great grandmother, a feisty woman who once single-handedly mollified and made friends with a rampaging mob working in the fields of the zamindaars, who attacked her home during the Moplah Rebellion in Kerala’s Malabar region in 1921. The Nair widow waited for the mobs to arrive, cooked a meal for them, and sent them home, mollified.

  The biggest influence on Mallika’s life was and continues to be her father, eminent physicist and the father of India’s space programme, Dr.Vikram Sarabhai from whom she got the gift of enduring positivity. At his insistence she did a business management degree from IIM, Ahmedabad so that she would help him set up great institutions that would exist without material considerations such as income and profit. He never lived to see his daughter give shape to his vision but over the last three years, Darpana, an organization that her mother founded, has been steered by Mallika who has made it a hub for catalyzing social change through art.
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  Mallika is remembered for her inspiring role as Draupadi, in Peter Brook’s ‘The Mahabharata’ which ran for five years, first in French and then English, performed in France, North America, Australia, Japan, and Scotland. She has, since then, made several hard-hitting solo theatrical works, including Shakti: The Power of Women, all of which talk about the inherent strength of women.

  This poem was written to her unborn baby some two decades ago. Anahita is now part of Darpana and a keen dancer herself, who accompanies her mother, and sometimes her grandmother too, on stage.

  FOR ANAHITA

  A lullaby

  The mother hums while rocking a cradle. She stops, peers in and sings:

  Don’t sleep yet my little girl

  For I have a story to tell.

  A long one perhaps, a hard one too

  But a good one that you will tell your bitiya.

  There is a world around—

  A world of fools and knaves

  Of frightened men and mindless women.

  They see us first as women

  Not people, not humans, not normal;

  Girls, women, bitches, whores,

  Other’s wealth, burdens.

  Soon to be gotten rid of.

  They’ll say you’re a curse

  An unproductive mouth to feed.

  They’ll try to starve you, burn you,

  Keep you out of school.

  They’ll try to keep you scared

  And away from knowledge and power.

  But they don’t know the secret

  That I shall tell to you.

  The world had changed around them too

  But they don’t see it, so blind with fear

  But you must know that you CAN

  You can work, and fight, and talk

  And dance, and learn, and sing.

  All by yourself

  Without their help

  Without their permission

  Or blessings, or guidance.