Once, during his school days, when he was a year shy of their completion, he found himself accompanying his father to his work place that nestled in a (then) wooded and picturesque part of a suburb in Mumbai. His father, a bigwig in the company that employed more than four thousand people and enjoyed a significant place in the private sector showed his son round the factory. That was his first ever exposure to a manufacturing unit and it was love at first sight. The visit was a pleasant experience for him.
As if he had felt the fascination the factory held for his son, the father let the boy accompany him there several times thereafter. The visits turned out to be a turning point in his academic life. They roused his interest in industry in general and manufacturing and engineering in particular, and led him to choose such subjects as are essential for a course in industrial engineering. Until then he was at his wit’s end as he considered the question of ‘What should I become?’
His academic performance had always been brilliant and was a cause for delight to his teachers, and, of course to his parents. In fact, he had never given any occasion for anxiety to his parents on that score. His college provided an enabling environment to its students so that they gave full play to their skills and talents. He involved himself deeply in extra-curricular activities and at his father’s instance practiced Yoga zealously. The practice had a salubrious effect on him, physically and mentally. His father was optimistic that a well-disciplined body and mind would stand his son in good stead as he would seek to complete his studies in a reputed university abroad, and later on begin his career most suited to him. And the son did not belie his father’s hopes.
A twenty-year stint in the US made him enviably prosperous and that was enough to decide him to come back to India for good and invest a sizeable chunk of his resources in a venture to be set up in one of the southern states which had always been an economic laggard in spite of the fact that it boasted a highly educated workforce.
Alas, even as he warmed to his work, he found himself ensnared in a cobweb of government regulations, political interference, bureaucratic indecision and formidable trade union highhandedness, not to speak of corruption that he encountered at every step.
He realized that his application for setting up a manufacturing unit in the state moved from one table to the other at a snail’s pace. He came to know to his consternation that in order to precipitate its movement he should unstintingly keep the bureaucratic and political palms greased!
All this was something he had never bargained for. The atmosphere, vitiated by village-wide, town-wide, or districtwide, and at times statewide hartals, repulsed him. What is more, the enthusiasm with which he came to India gave way to disenchantment. When last seen he was checking in for a U.S. bound flight in Mumbai!
