Free Legacy: Letters from eminent parents to their daughters by Sudha Menon Page A

took her to some of the biggest educational institutes in the world, including the Cambridge University. And yet, he says in his letter, he is glad they had the courage to let her find her own wings and take off in pursuit of her dreams.

    My dear Karuna,
    As always, it is a pleasure to write to you, this time especially so since you have now embarked on the next phase on your voyage of scientific discovery. In your fellowship at Harvard where you are working on Hematology and Oncology, I am sure you will put both your medical training and research orientation, acquired at the Cambridge Medical & PhD programme, to good use.
    Your mother and I have watched you with pride over the last decade and more, from the time you were just another schoolgirl at Maneckji Cooper School in Mumbai to the education odyssey that has taken you through the International Baccalaureate programme at the United World College, USA, the Medical and PhD programs at Cambridge University, and now to the super specialization and post-doctoral training at Harvard.
    Your travels around the world and your life experiences have made you a mature, wise woman, leaving me with little scope for sermons. Still, I would love to leave you with a few of my thoughts, which I am hoping you will assimilate into your own worldview. Over the years, you have developed a healthy respect for our own academic and business accomplishments, a better understanding of our roots, and of our journey to the current state of relative success, and I am sure this will inspire some of your future thoughts and actions.
    My own family came from a little village called Vadiveeswaram in the Nagercoil district of Tamil Nadu. My paternal grandfather, Ganapathy Iyer, was the headmaster at the local village school. But even though he was a working man, he never had enough money to feed and clothe his fourteen children. It was left to his eldest son Natarajan, my father, to take up the responsibility of pulling out the family from their abject rural poverty to a life of dignity in the city.
    You knew your grandfather very briefly and I probably never told you about the tribulations and aspirations of the young man who did so much, not just for his family but also for industry and society. Having managed to get himself a BSc (Physics) degree from St Joseph’s College in Trichy, he moved his large family to Kolkata when India was in the midst of getting her independence from an oppressive regime. Always a curious scientist—I suspect you get your interest in science and research from him—he co-founded Waxpol Industries in collaboration with the Garg family and went on to get many industrial chemical discoveries to his credit. Even today, people remember the famous Waxpol Car Polish and the industrial greases and lubricants that he created. Such was his simplicity and passion for work that he called himself Chief Chemist instead of Director (Technical) of the company.
    His humility was something he passed on to all of us. His friends were ordinary people that he worked with and so it was with us. Having discharged the eldest son’s responsibilities by taking care of his parents till their demise, ensuring good marriages for his seven sisters, and jobs for the three brothers, Appa moved his little family of four to Ranchi to set up the Waxpol factory there and thus found the time to indulge in his many talents.
    In Ranchi, our school-going days were spent in the company of the simple folks of Tatisilwai where we lived in the only brick house that the village could boast of. But our relative prosperity did not stop us from mingling happily with the village kids, indulging in hearty games of gilli danda. Appa was a passionate follower of the Ramakrishna Mission and he made sure that his entire family participated wholeheartedly in the Seva Kendra that he set up outside our family compound. Each evening, it became our duty to gather the village kids and feed them milk after which we would all join