Legacy: Letters from eminent parents to their daughters by Menon, Sudha (electric book reader .TXT) 📕

our own effort to build our careers. It is up to you to make your destiny, she would say and your aunts and I took it to heart and never gave our parents any cause for complaint on this count. I can see that at a young age, you are already so conscientious with your work for the sake of learning.

Sometimes your mother and I worry that the level of affluence that you are born into, is very different from what we had, and could end up being a handicap for you instead of being your strength. That worry shapes a lot of decisions that your mother and I keep making, including the way we seek to live our lives a few notches below our monetary capability. It also shapes, among other factors, how we think about the concept of inheritance. We are very clear, Anna, that while ensuring your education and basic comfort, we will use most of the wealth that god blesses us with, to drive various causes impacting the less privileged. This is why we have a very active program for making sure that we keep doing a lot with the wealth that’s created, on an on-going basis though wonderful organizations like the Akanksha Foundation schools in Mumbai and Pune, The Research Society for the Care, Treatment and Training of Children in Need of Special Care, the Jai Vakeel School for the Mentally Challenged, GiveIndia, the YMCA Boys’ Home and Vocational Training Centre in Andheri, and the Tata Medical Centre and Cancer Patients Aid Association in Kolkata.

Giving as a way of life and a path to happiness is something we would wish for you to eventually adopt. I have seen too much conflict arising out of money. There is a sense of entitlement that arises among inheritors that often distorts their relationships with their parents and siblings and wrecks families. That wealth also creates the illusion that there is no need to push yourself since you know your parents have made enough for you. I’ve seen this in large business families, and even with friends.

The reason we want you to be a giving person is not because you will see it publicly acknowledged, but because you will feel that it’s the right thing for you.

My dear Anna, I have said a lot, but I realize how small we all are in front of God’s bigger picture and how little is really within our control. So, let me end by first thanking God for blessing me with you. I love you very dearly and everything I have said is because of that love which makes me want everything for you. I would like to bless you from the bottom of my heart with all my prayers, hope that you find true and lasting happiness in your life, and bring great joy to everyone around you.

With lots of love and best wishes,

Your Dada

Capt. Gopinath

t is hard not to be touched by Capt. Gopinath’s restless, infectious energy, his seemingly endless optimism, and his sheer positivity.

Over my years as a business journalist, I have followed his life through the pages of newspapers, admired his courage and determination to tread where most men with an eye on the balance sheet would never dare step, and blessed him for making air travel less of a luxury for us, mere mortals. But for Air Deccan, air travel would have continued to be out of bounds for the bulk of India’s population.

I met Capt. Gopinath in the chic lounge of a five-star hotel at a stone’s throw away from Mumbai’s international airport, one late evening last year. It was one of those sweltering evenings in the city and while I, anxious that I would be late, arrived before time, he was caught in traffic in south Mumbai. In the forty-five minutes that I waited, I realized what it is that has made him a much-respected and admired figure in India and, indeed, elsewhere in the world.

Capt. Gopinath is a man of remarkable humility, a man who does not hesitate to say sorry if he has goofed up or inconvenienced anyone. There are few men of his stature and achievements who would even think of apologizing for keeping somebody waiting. He kept up a steady update via text messages, telling me about his whereabouts and expected time of arrival. It is not difficult to imagine where the airline that he started, got its work and service ethic from!

Despite the fact that he set up an airline business whose market capital touched US$1.1 billion in just four years of its launch, Capt. Gopinath is a remarkably grounded man, very much connected to the way the masses in India live. As I listened aptly, fascinated by the story of the humble village school teacher’s son from Karnataka who joined the army, reinvented himself as farmer, and then a serial entrepreneur, we gorged on a plateful of samosas and a sumptuous Indian spread of fiery, spirited Indian curries. Capt. is as feisty and spirited as the Indian curries that he has a fondness for.

Capt. is also a self-made man with a piercing intelligence, greatly interested in the lives of those who touch him. He is also startlingly well-read. To be in his company is to be exposed to the thoughts and quotes of some of the world’s greatest minds. He reads voraciously, a habit whose seeds were sown in his childhood when his father home-schooled him and read to him about the lives of great leaders.

When I met him that evening, he was in the midst of hectic negotiations to restart Air Deccan, the airline that he had sold to another private airline. That deal had disappointed him because he felt the buyer had not done justice to his brand and kept up the spirit of the enterprise that he has started.

I asked him if it did not scare him