Rohan R. Rao

Have Passion!

It was probably the April of 1974. Bangalore was getting warm and gulmohars were blooming at the IISc campus. I was the only girl in my postgraduate department and was staying at the ladies’ hostel. Other girls were pursuing research in different departments of Science.

I was looking forward to going abroad to complete a doctorate in computer science. I had been offered scholarships from Universities in the US. I had not thought of taking up a job in India.

One day, while on the way to my hostel from our lecture-hall complex, I saw an advertisement on the notice board. It was a standard job-requirement notice from the famous automobile company Telco (now Tata Motors). It stated that the company required young, bright engineers, hardworking and with an excellent academic background, etc.

At the bottom was a small line: “Lady candidates need not apply.”

I read it and was very upset. For the first time in my life I was up against gender discrimination.

Though I was not keen on taking up the job, I saw it as a challenge. I had done extremely well in academics, better than most of my male peers. Little did I know then that in real life academic excellence is not enough to be successful.

After reading the notice I went fuming to my room. I decided to inform the topmost person in Telco’s management about the injustice the company was perpetrating. I got a postcard and started to write, but there was a problem: I did not know who headed Telco.

I thought it must be one of the Tatas. I knew JRD Tata was the head of the Tata Group; I had seen his pictures in newspapers (actually, Sumant Moolgaokar was the company’s chairman then). I took the card, addressed it to JRD and started writing. To this day I remember clearly what I wrote.

“The great Tatas have always been pioneers. They are the people who started the basic infrastructure industries in India, such as iron and steel, chemicals, textiles and locomotives. They have cared for higher education in India since 1900 and they were responsible for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Science. Fortunately, I study there. But I am surprised how a company such as Telco is discriminating on the basis of gender.”

I posted the letter and forgot about it. Less than 10 days later, I received a telegram stating that I had to appear for an interview at Telco’s Pune facility at the company’s expense. I was taken aback by the telegram. My hostel mate told me I should use the opportunity to go to Pune free of cost and buy them the famous Pune saris for cheap! I collected Rs 30 each from everyone who wanted a sari. When I look back, I feel like laughing at the reasons for my going, but back then they seemed good enough to make the trip.

It was my first visit to Pune and I immediately fell in love with the city.

To this day it remains dear to me. I feel as much at home in Pune as I do in Hubli, my hometown. The place changed my life in so many ways. As directed, I went to Telco’s Pimpri office for the interview.

There were six people on the panel and I realised then that this was serious business.

“This is the girl who wrote to JRD,” I heard somebody whisper as soon as I entered the room. By then I knew for sure that I would not get the job. The realisation abolished all fear from my mind, so I was rather cool while the interview was being conducted.

Even before the interview started, I reckoned the panel was biased, so I told them, rather impolitely, “I hope this is only a technical interview.”

They were taken aback by my rudeness, and even today I am ashamed about my attitude. The panel asked me technical questions and I answered all of them.

Then an elderly gentleman with an affectionate voice told me, “Do you know why we said lady candidates need not apply? The reason is that we have never employed any ladies on the shop floor. This is not a co-ed college; this is a factory. When it comes to academics, you are a first ranker throughout. We appreciate that, but people like you should work in research laboratories.”

I was a young girl from small-town Hubli. My world had been a limited place.

I did not know the ways of large corporate houses and their difficulties, so I answered, “But you must start somewhere, otherwise no woman will ever be able to work in your factories.”

Finally, after a long interview, I was told I had been successful. So this was what the future had in store for me. Never had I thought I would take up a job in Pune. I met a shy young man from Karnataka there, we became good friends and we got married.

It was only after joining Telco that I realized who JRD was: the uncrowned king of Indian industry. Now I was scared, but I did not get to meet him till I was transferred to Bombay. One day I had to show some reports to Mr Moolgaokar, our chairman, who we all knew as SM. I was in his office on the first floor of Bombay House (the Tata headquarters) when, suddenly JRD walked in. That was the first time I saw “appro JRD”. Appro means “our” in Gujarati. This was the affectionate term by which people at Bombay House called him.

I was feeling very nervous, remembering my postcard episode. SM introduced me nicely, “Jeh (that’s what his close associates called him), this young woman is an engineer and that too a postgraduate.

She is the first woman to work on the Telco shop floor.” JRD looked at me. I was praying he would not ask me any questions about my interview (or the postcard that preceded it).

Thankfully, he didn’t. Instead, he remarked. “It is nice that girls are getting into engineering in our country. By the way, what is your name?”

“When I joined Telco I was Sudha Kulkarni, Sir,” I replied. “Now I am Sudha Murthy.” He smiled and kindly smile and started a discussion with SM. As for me, I almost ran out of the room.

After that I used to see JRD on and off. He was the Tata Group chairman and I was merely an engineer. There was nothing that we had in common. I was in awe of him.

One day I was waiting for Murthy, my husband, to pick me up after office hours. To my surprise I saw JRD standing next to me. I did not know how to react. Yet again I started worrying about that postcard. Looking back, I realise JRD had forgotten about it. It must have been a small incident for him, but not so for me.

“Young lady, why are you here?” he asked. “Office time is over.” I said, “Sir, I’m waiting for my husband to come and pick me up.” JRD said, “It is getting dark and there’s no one in the corridor. I’ll wait with you till your husband comes.”

I was quite used to waiting for Murthy, but having JRD waiting alongside made me extremely uncomfortable.

I was nervous. Out of the corner of my eye I looked at him. He wore a simple white pant and shirt. He was old, yet his face was glowing. There wasn’t any air of superiority about him. I was thinking, “Look at this person. He is a chairman, a well-respected man in our country and he is waiting for the sake of an ordinary employee.”

Then I saw Murthy and I rushed out. JRD called and said, “Young lady, tell your husband never to make his wife wait again.” In 1982 I had to resign from my job at Telco. I was reluctant to go, but I really did not have a choice. I was coming down the steps of Bombay House after wrapping up my final settlement when I saw JRD coming up. He was absorbed in thought. I wanted to say goodbye to him, so I stopped. He saw me and paused.

Gently, he said, “So what are you doing, Mrs Kulkarni?” (That was the way he always addressed me.) “Sir, I am leaving Telco.”

“Where are you going?” he asked. “Pune, Sir. My husband is starting a company called Infosys and I’m shifting to Pune.”

“Oh! And what will you do when you are successful.”

“Sir, I don’t know whether we will be successful.” “Never start with diffidence,” he advised me. “Always start with confidence. When you are successful you must give back to society. Society gives us so much; we must reciprocate. I wish you all the best.”

Then JRD continued walking up the stairs. I stood there for what seemed like a millennium. That was the last time I saw him alive. Many years later I met Ratan Tata in the same Bombay House, occupying the chair JRD once did. I told him of my many sweet memories of working with Telco. Later, he wrote to me, “It was nice hearing about Jeh from you. The sad part is that he’s not alive to see you today.”

I consider JRD a great man because, despite being an extremely busy person, he valued one postcard written by a young girl seeking justice. He must have received thousands of letters everyday. He could have thrown mine away, but he didn’t do that. He respected the intentions of that unknown girl, who had neither influence nor money, and gave her an opportunity in his company. He did not merely give her a job; he changed her life and mindset forever.

Close to 50 per cent of the students in today’s engineering colleges are girls. And there are women on the shop floor in many industry segments. I see these changes and I think of JRD. If at all time stops and asks me what I want from life, I would say I wish JRD were alive today to see how the company we started has grown. He would have enjoyed it wholeheartedly.

My love and respect for the House of Tata remains undiminished by the passage of time. I always looked up to JRD. I saw him as a role model for his simplicity, his generosity, his kindness and the care he took of his employees. Those blue eyes always reminded me of the sky; they had the same vastness and magnificence.

(Sudha Murthy is a widely published writer and chairperson of the Infosys Foundation involved in a number of social development initiatives. Infosys chairman Narayana Murthy is her husband.)

Article sourced from: Lasting Legacies (Tata Review- Special Commemorative Issue 2004), brought out by the house of Tatas to commemorate the 100th Birth anniversary of JRD Tata on July 29, 2004.

APJDR A P J Abdul Kalaam’s Speech in Hyderabad”I have three visions for India. In 3000 Years of ourhistory, people from all over the world have come andinvaded us, captured our lands, conquered our minds.From Alexander on wards. The Greeks, the Turks, theMoguls, the Portuguese, the British, the French, theDutch, all of them came and looted us, took over whatwas ours. Yet we have not done this to any othernation.We have not conquered anyone.We have not grabbed their land, their culture, andtheir history and tried to enforce our way of life onthem. Why? Because we respect the freedom of others.That is why my first vision is that of FREEDOM. Ibelieve that India got its first vision of this in1857, when we started the war of independence. It isthis freedom that we must protect and nurture andbuild on.If we are not free, no one will respect us.My second vision for India is DEVELOPMENT. For fiftyyears we have been a developing nation. It is time wesee ourselves as a developed nation. We are among top5 nations of the world in terms of GDP. We have 10percent growth rate in most areas. Our poverty levelsare falling. Our achievements are being globallyrecognized today.Yet we lack the self-confidence to see ourselves as adeveloped nation, self- reliant andself-assured. Isn’t this incorrect?I have a third vision. India must stand up to theworld. Because I believe that, unless India stands upto the world, no one will respect us. Only STRENGTHrespects strength. We must be strong not only as amilitary power but also as an economic power. Bothmust go hand-in-hand. My good fortune was to haveworked with three great minds. Dr. Vikram Sarabhai ofthe Dept of space, Professor Satish Dhawan, whosucceeded him and Dr Brahm Prakash, father of nuclearmaterial. I was lucky to have worked with all three ofthem closely and consider this the great opportunityof my life.I see four milestones in my career: Twenty years Ispent in ISRO. I was given the opportunity to be theproject director for India’s first satellite launchvehicle, SLV3. The one that launched Rohini. Theseyears played a very important role in my life ofScientist.After my ISRO years, I joined DRDO and got a chance tobe the part of India’s guided missile program. It wasmy second bliss when Agni met its mission requirementsin 1994. The Dept of Atomic Energy and DRDO had thistremendous partnership in the recent nuclear tests, onMay 11 and 13. This was the third bliss.The joy of participating with my team in these nucleartests and proving to the world that India can make it,that we are no longer a developing nation but one ofthem. It made me feel very proud as an Indian. Thefact that we have now developed for Agni a re-entrystructure, for which we have developed this newmaterial. A very light material called carbon-carbon.One day an orthopedic surgeon from Nizam Institute ofMedical Sciences visited my laboratory. He lifted thematerial and found it so light that he took me to hishospital and showed me his patients. There were theselittle girls and boys with heavy metallic calipersweighing over three Kg. each, dragging their feetaround.He said to me: Please remove the pain of my patients.In three weeks, we made these Floor reaction Orthosis300-gram calipers and took them to the orthopediccenter. The children didn’t believe their eyes. Fromdragging around a three kg. load on their legs, theycould now move around. Their parents had tears intheir eyes.That was my fourth bliss!Why is the media here so negative?Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize ourown strengths, our achievements? We are such a greatnation. We have so many amazing success stories but werefuse to acknowledge them.Why?We are the first in milk production.We are number one in Remote sensing satellites.We are the second largest producer of wheat.We are the second largest producer of rice.Look at Dr Sudarshan, he has transferred the tribalvillage into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit.There are millions of such achievements but our mediais only obsessed in the bad news and failures anddisasters.I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israelinewspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks andbombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas hadstruck. But the front page of the newspaper had thepicture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years hadtransformed his desert into an orchid and a granary.It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke upto. The gory details of killings, bombardments,deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried amongother news.In India we only read about death, sickness,terrorism, crime.Why are we so NEGATIVE?Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessedwith foreign things?We want foreign TVs, we want foreign shirts. We wantforeign technology.Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we notrealize that self-respect comes with self-reliance?I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 yearold girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her whather goal in life is. She replied: I want to live in adeveloped India.For her, you and I will have to build this developedIndiaYou must proclaim. India is not an under-developednation; it is a highly developednation.Do you have 10 minutes? Allow me to come back with avengeance.Got 10 minutes for your country? If yes, then read;otherwise, choice is yours.YOU say that our government is inefficient.YOU say that our laws are too old.YOU say that the municipality does not pick up thegarbage.YOU say that the phones don’t work, the railways are ajoke, The airline is the worst in the world, mailsnever reach their destination.YOU say that our country has been fed to the dogs andis the absolute pits.YOU say, say and say. What do YOU do about it?Take a person on his way to Singapore. Give him aname-YOURS. Give him a face – YOURS.YOU walk out of the airport and you are at yourInternational best.In Singapore you don’t throw cigarette butts on theroads or eat in the stores.YOU are as proud of their Underground links as theyare. You pay $5 (approx Rs 60) to drive throughOrchard Road (equivalent of Mahim Causeway or PedderRoad) between 5 PM and 8 PM.YOU come back to the parking lot to punch your parkingticket if you have over stayed in a restaurant or ashopping mall irrespective of your status identity.In Singapore you don’t say anything, DO YOU?YOU wouldn’t dare to eat in public during Ramadan, inDubai.YOU would not dare to go out without your head coveredin Jeddah.YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the telephoneexchange in London at 10 pounds (Rs 650) a month to,”see to it that my STD and ISD calls are billed tosomeone else.”YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 km/h) inWashington and then tell the traffic cop, “Jaanta haimain kaun hoon (Do you know who I am?). I am so andso’s son. Take your two bucks and get lost.”YOU wouldn’t chuck an empty coconut shell anywhereother than the garbage pail on the beaches inAustralia and New Zealand.Why don’t YOU spit Paan on the streets of Tokyo?Why don’t YOU use examination jockeys or buy fakecertificates in Boston???We are still talking of the same YOU.YOU who can respect and conform to a foreign system inother countries but cannot in your own. You who willthrow papers and cigarettes on the road the moment youtouch Indian ground. If you can be an involved andappreciative citizen in an alien country, why cannotyou be the same here in India?Once in an interview, the famous Ex-municipalcommissioner of Bombay, Mr Tinaikar, had a point tomake. “Rich people’s dogs are walked on the streets toleave their affluent droppings all over the place,” hesaid. “And then the same people turn around tocriticize and blame the authorities for inefficiencyand dirty pavements. What do they expect the officersto do? Go down with a broom every time their dog feelsthe pressure in his bowels? In America every dog ownerhas to clean up after his pet has done the job. Samein Japan. Will the Indian citizen do that here?” He’sright.We go to the polls to choose a government and afterthat forfeit all responsibility. We sit back wantingto be pampered and expect the government to doeverything for us whilst our contribution is totallynegative.We expect the government to clean up but we are notgoing to stop chucking garbage all over the place norare we going to stop to pick a up a stray piece ofpaper and throw it in the bin. We expect the railwaysto provide clean bathrooms but we are not going tolearn the proper use of bathrooms. We want IndianAirlines and Air India to provide the best of food andtoiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering atthe least opportunity.This applies even to the staff who is known not topass on the service to the public.When it comes to burning social issues like thoserelated to women, dowry, girl child! and others, wemake loud drawing room protestations and continue todo the reverse at home. Our excuse? “It’s the wholesystem which has to change, how will it matter if Ialone forego my sons’ rights to a dowry.” So who’sgoing to change the system? What does a system consistof? Very conveniently for us it consists of ourneighbours, other households, other cities, othercommunities and the government. But definitely not meand YOU. When it comes to us actually making apositive contribution to the system we lock ourselvesalong with our families into a safe cocoon and lookinto the distance at countries far away and wait for aMr Clean to come along & work miracles for us with amajestic sweep of his hand or we leave the country andrun away. Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears werun to America to bask in their glory and praise theirsystem. When New York becomes insecure we run toEngland. When England experiences unemployment, wetake the next flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf iswar struck, we demand to be rescued and brought homeby the Indian government. Everybody is out to abuseand rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding thesystem. Our conscience is mortgaged to money.Dear Indians, The article is highly thought inductive,calls for a great deal of introspection and pricksone’s conscience too…. I am echoing J F Kennedy’swords to his fellow Americans to relate to Indians????”ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BEDONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERNCOUNTRIES ARE TODAY”Lets do what India needs from us.Forward this mail to each Indian for a change insteadof sending Jokes or junk mails.Thank you,Dr Abdul Kalaam(PRESIDENT OF INDIA–Hi: Passing this message wont assure u any success in yur job lovelife etc.. BUT IT WILL IMPROVE THE WAY WE LIVE N IMPROVE OUR ATTITUDETOWARDS OUR INDIA”JAI HIND”