Retirement could be another beginning

hen I hear people wondering

about what they would do after
retirement, I think of my father.
For him, it has been an entirely different
experience. His life after voluntary retirement
has been so active that I don't think he has
ever quit worklife in the usual sense.
My father worked for a Central Government
organization for nearly 30 years. In the first
couple of months after leaving his regular
workplace, he had a tough time. Maybe,
unlike normal retirement, when you still
gradually prepare yourself mentally to hang
your boots, with VRS, things can happen
quickly and within no time you realize you
are without a job. So for the first few weeks
he worried about what to do with the long
hours of each day.

VOICES

Normally, after retirement, people tend to do

things that they always wanted to, but could
not because of demanding work schedules.
With my father, something similar happened,
though not in a planned way. He came from
a very small village in northern Maharashtra
where opportunities were limited, and
unfortunately, it remains that way even to this
day. He eventually migrated to Pune and
managed to complete his studies which
helped him get a decent job.
However, he knew that not everyone in his
village was going to get similar opportunities.
Knowing the harsh village life, he wanted to
make some opportunities available to at least
a few young people. If some of them managed
to come to cities like Pune, he knew they
could lead a relatively better life. Still, with
no education backing them, making people
work for someone else didn't seem a bright
idea to him.
While still in service in mid 1990s, he got one
of them to Pune and invested in a
commercial vehicle. Of course it was no
social service and the person he helped was
expected to repay the amount invested.
Think of the difficulties a new and not so
educated person can face in getting a bank
loan, and you can see it must have really
helped. My father repeated this with another
person and yet another. He was investing to
get families a better life in the city. By God's
grace it worked, and it worked so well that

over the next 10-15 years, by the time he

took voluntary retirement, he managed to get
around 30-35 youngsters to Pune. They
worked, providing passenger and commercial
vehicle services to organizations in and
around Pune.
When he retired, these seeds that he had
sown during his earlier days were ready to
bear fruit. There were many people who were
now well settled and held him in high regard.
Someone suggested to him that as he had
spare time, could he organize and streamline
the business that all these commercial
vehicles generated? It made sense, because
though they were all settled in Pune, the
people from his village, though street smart,
didn't have the skills to negotiate directly
with companies for contracts. They were
always at the mercy of middlemen.
Father decided to get involved and manage
the business. He got all the guys together
under a single name and started to interact
with companies, signing contracts on their
behalf, maintaining relations and ensuring
better service levels. Simple things like
offering uniformed drivers, maintaining clean
vehicles and getting the drivers trained on
basic etiquette reaped rich dividends. It also
helped that the city was growing rapidly.
There was a steady demand for these services.
As business grew manifold in the last four
years, it has been a win-win situation all the
way for every one involved. Many people
who had not even completed secondary
education are proud owners of multiple
vehicles, have their own houses in the city
something difficult today even for the
educated lot and their kids go to decent
schools.
I feel my father, today, has the satisfaction of
taking people along as he himself created a
new life for himself. And as I saw this
happening over the past few years, I do feel
that retirement need not always be the end of
something. In all probability, it could be an
altogether new beginning. It all depends on
how you look at it.

Tushar Patil,
Solar Business
Development

24

Educating Parents

n a recent visit to my son in the

US, I watched the acclaimed movie
3 Idiots. All that depiction of "pursue
excellence and success will follow" provoked
me to do some hard thinking. I thought back
on my own education, my children's and my
role in it. At 61 years, my past life cannot
change but I hope a few lessons could be
learnt for new-age parents.
My father, a learned man, constantly pushed
me to study hard in order 'to get a good job'.
Padhoge nahin toh naukri nahin milegi was
the common song he sang along with all
parents of my generation. I heard the word
naukri emphasized so many times that I
began to believe that the day I got a good job
was the day I would reach nirvana!
Unfortunately, while only immersed in
studying, I missed out on other pursuits like
drama and sport, I think I'd have enjoyed.
To be honest, when I look back at my role as
a father, I admit I always wanted my son,
Puneet, to be an engineer. That is what he is
today. Successful and independent. Yet, I
sometimes get a feeling that he doesn't really
get a thrill out of what he does. I think hotel
management would have suited him better.
On the other hand, my wife was keen that
our daughter Neeti should pursue medicine
since she was a rank holder. But Neeti was
convinced that she wanted to be a chartered
accountant and joined the commerce stream.
We supported her decision and were proud
when she cleared her CA exams in the first
attempt when it takes several attempts/years
for others. We are happy that she's doing
something she loves.
But then, some things never seem to change.
When I look around at parents today, I find
that our relationship with our children begin
and end with their studies. We even discuss
school and tests and homework during dinner
and family leisure time.
While visiting my cousin in Delhi I witnessed
a similar dialogue which sounded like a case
for negotiation skills. My cousin promised his
son a motorcycle provided he scored "x"
percentage. It took me some effort to
convince them not to trade love and affection
with conditional transactions.

25

Our children talk of life in the

present and we, as worried parents,
talk of life in the future. The over
emphasis on studies for 15-20 years of a
child's formative years creates resentment
towards learning and parents. For weekend
recreation, parents prefer a mall or a
multiplex to a zoo, park, temple or museum.
In this process, everyone misses out on the
joys of parenting, of learning and of
childhood. My father always doubted if I
would be successful in life. I wonder if I was
proving a point out of resentment while I
made my journey from trainee to CEO.
Every other parent wants their child to
pursue a degree in BE, MBBS, LLB or MBA
not knowing how lucrative and fulfilling a
career in event management, animation,
hospitality, pure sciences or the media could
be. And how about becoming entrepreneurs
instead of seeking jobs? If I had a choice
between a street-smart child with real life
skills and a book worm and class room topper,
I'd vote for the former.
I feel a higher degree of love towards my first
grandchild than I felt towards my own
children. I had no expectations. Did the
weight of making her successful now rest
with her own parents? I wasn't sure and so
I asked Neeti, my daughter who is not yet a
parent. Neeti felt that it is social pressure that
makes parents behave a particular way but
there are others who don't succumb. Citing
the example of her own husband, a creative
person in a non-creative career, she feels that
parents need to tap their child's strengths
during their formative years,
I now realise that we need to develop a
relationship with our children that is
independent of studies or career. With a little
time, love, understanding and patience, our
child's learning can give them a fully rounded
personality because like as Mark Twain said,
education should never get in the way of
learning. That's what's really important today,
either for-stress free school kids and their
parents or for successful professionals.

BMK Sethi
Corporate Advisor Projects

ond most of us remember James of

007 fame! Far away at Mussoori,
tucked in the Himalayas there is
another Bond Ruskin Bond, the gentle
writer, well known in the world of English
short stories.
These days, when speed reading and
impromptu emails constitute reading and
writing, and where newspapers are full of Page
3 material, Ruskin Bond's simple short stories
take us back to another India.
His perceptive stories look at small town
North Indian life, an English man blending
with the sights and sounds of a bazaar,
affectionately describing the people he comes
across. We meet common people in small
vocations who make up Indian life the
cobbler, the conman and many others. We get
to see their methods of earning a livelihood,
their enjoyments and things important in
their lives.

About
another
Bond

His characters celebrate friendship like

Somi, Ranbir and Suri, his heroes in one of
the stories. Told with an easy charm, his well
known stories like Time Stops at Shamli,
Vagrants in the Valley and The Night Train
at Deoli can be read with pleasure by people
of any age.
It was around 1990 that I came across Ruskin
Bond's books. By then, there was a surge of
Indian writing in English, and a renewed
interest in pioneers like R K Narayan. During
this period Ruskin Bond's books became a
steady presence in bookshops. Waiting time at
airports was a chance to catch up on reading.
There were no mobile phones or laptops and
the only way to kill time was reading! A
perceptive HR boffin in the company I
worked for introduced a tax free allowance
when on tour you were allowed to buy books,
the limit being "reasonable price". The
Higginbothams store at Chennai airport and
Sankars at Bangalore were good places for
browsing. On such trips, I became a Ruskin
Bond reader.
Born in 1934 and educated at boarding
schools during the Second World War, Ruskin
Bond had a difficult childhood. A father
working in the Air Force, a mother caught in
a social whirl. He remembers his father very
well and poignantly describes how a
schoolteacher carelessly lost a touching last

letter from him. Yet his approach to life is

very gentle. In 1947 India, the members of
the English community were given an
opportunity to go to their "Home Country",
travel expenses paid for by the government.
Though the teen aged Ruskin went to
England, in three years he came back to India
for good. At seventeen he won the John
Llewellyn Rhys Memorial award for The
Room on the Roof. In this book, Rusty, a
sixteen year old Anglo-Indian boy, runs away
from his tyrannical guardian and the tiny
European community to find excitement and
high adventure on the open road. This has
later been captured on TV as Ek Tha Rusty.
His books like Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra
show enormous concern for the environment.
They tell us about the wisdom of letting
nature be and of the damage caused by
mining. Trees and fruits are always there in
his stories jacaranda, laburnum, guava,
papaya, mangoes. And children who haven't
forgotten to enjoy them. Naturally, he is also
a very popular children's story writer. His
stories form part of the ICSE and CBSE
school curriculum and I feel many a child
would be dreaming of visiting him where he
lives.
Ruskin Bond has also won the Sahitya
Academy Award. Several of his stories have
been filmed. A Flight of Pigeons, his novella
was made into the film Junoon by Shyam
Benegal.
Much of what he says is about following your
own path and persisting in doing your own
thing in life. In the 1950s and 1960s India,
earning a living as a writer was not easy. The
earnings were small and the proverbial
editorial rejection slips many. This belief in
pursuing a passion, quietly and with
determination, also attracted me to his
writing. As he says it in his own words :
Hold on to your dreams,
Do not let them die.
We are lame without them
Birds that cannot fly.

S. Ramachandran
Chemical & Water

26

n my younger
years, I often
regretted that I
was not an explorer.
If only one could
have lived in those
centuries when
caravans traveled
the Silk Route or brave sailors discovered
new continents! Although I shiver at the
thought of extreme cold, even an Artic
expedition at the beginning of the 20th
century would have been okay with me.

Footloose
in Pune

With growing up came the realization that

there wasn't any place left to discover.
Imagine a modern day Stanley landing up
in Chandni Chowk and looking for David
Livingstone. Or someone trying out a new
migratory route from Mumbai to Patna or
Allahabad. Practically, every inch on this
blessed planet has been surveyed and
accounted for.
Still, on a December day in 1998, I was happy
when I checked the old TTK Pune Map and
couldn't locate Kondhwa on the southern
fringes. We were about to move in there to
live on the NIBM Road. Those days,
Kondhwa was like the American Wild West
where new settlers were coming in and
pushing back the frontiers. I would go for
long walks over brown hills still unclaimed by
buildings and feel privileged to set foot on
virgin land. Recently, when wanderlust
knocked again, I tried to retrace those steps
my caravan route to nowhere in particular:
whole hills dug up, ugly buildings squatting
on former winding trails and the withering
roar of vehicles. This brief expedition left me
with a sobering insight the meek certainly
won't inherit the earth. The builder has
already taken possession.
But it is difficult to break old habits. Behind
old Thermax House, embedded in the
compound wall, is a small gate. You climb a
few steps, open the gate, bend low, enter
shoulder first through the narrow exit and
step out on to Shivaji Nagar railway platform
No. 2. I did that on many winter afternoons.
After lunch, it was nice to stroll on the
platform usually deserted at that time, the sun
warming one's limbs and sometimes a late
Koyna Express awakening wistful memories of
earlier train journeys. Railway stations still
make my heart beat faster. They point to far
away places and the romance of misty
evenings at hill side towns. Stirring the old

27

longing for a life

elsewhere.

On the platform I would

come across faces grown
familiar over several
strolls the old maushi
curled up on a sheet on
the walk-bridge across
the tracks, asking again for money if you
paused to listen to her complaints; the man
without legs, strapped on a wheeled wooden
plank, moving with an amazing agility and
purposefulness that would make normal
people appear fit but faltu; and once in a
while a young man with meager belongings
waiting for any train that would take him
away. Weren't these lives as vulnerable as
on choppy seas or polar ice? I could as well be
seeing glimpses of another continent.
Those walks on the platform ended when we
shifted to the new corporate office, nearby.
There is no direct access to the railway tracks
and no people to watch and wonder. So, one
day on a whim, during the rainy season, at
lunch break, I walked out on to the PuneMumbai road in front of the office. Waiting at
the divider for another screaming line of
vehicles to pass, I thought of the adventure of
crossing the road and remembered Dorothy
Parker's matter-of-fact line that there are only
two kinds of pedestrians the quick and the
dead.
Across the road, by the side of the telecom
company building, I meandered into this quiet
lane. A two minute walk past a few trees and
apartment buildings, where the lane ended,
below the ghat, I discovered the river
flowing wide and full after the rains. Others,
who obviously had found the river before me,
stood there chatting. I didn't mind that at all.
I was only happy to have reached this quiet
river front, so near but far from the chaos and
clamour of the highway.
There I go again, day dreaming about those
brave ones who came paddling down the
river and discovered this town ringed by hills.
In this fantasy, there wouldn't be the sewage
that today swells the river, the plastic that
clutters its banks, and the debris dumped by
builders on its bed.
A.M.Roshan