The way our father shaped us, we didn’t...

“The way our father shaped us, we didn’t crumble”

It is a little strange to be back in the SCMHRD (Symbiosis Centre for Management and Human Resource Development) campus after so many years because I remember this complex being constructed. And Dr Mujumdar and Vidya ma’am; these are names, these are people, who we have known for decades. And Dr Mujumdar was a giant in our childhood years—not only because of his achievements but also quite literally, because he was so tall for us tiny kids back in the day. Every now and then, there were Symbiosis staff parties and we would meet Dr Mujumdar and he would ask us some questions like what are we studying, which class we are studying in—it was an annual ritual we went through, and it was always special.

Sometime in 2000-2001, I must have been about eleven years old, my father had sent my mother and sister off to Lonavala for a yoga retreat. And the big question was what to do with me, because I had my summer vacations. So, as usual, since my connection with my father was always through his work, I ended up going with him to his office. And we would come to this Hinjewadi campus, where the construction was underway. It was wonderful to run about, trying to discover the place.

You’ve all heard already about his many professional achievements, so I’ll talk about the man called M.S. Pillai. In 1983, he got off a train at a place called Chengannur, Kerala, so my maternal grandmother could see him. He had already arranged his marriage with my mother and naturally, grandmother wanted to see her prospective son-in-law. Grandfather was his superior in the Indian Air Force, and was very impressed with the story of this man—born in a village, washing cows as a young boy, going to a government school and somehow managing to get into the Indian Air Force, doing his MA, MBA, LLB—he was very impressed and wanted his daughter to marry this MS Pillai.

So, my grandmother got a telegram (she was in Kerala at that time), saying “R.B. Pillai and friends visiting”. She had no idea who this R.B. Pillai was (he turned out to be a common friend between grandfather and my father). My mother was a Chemistry graduate and she was standing in the garden one day when she saw this group of men walking towards the house. Her first impression was that they had come to collect a donation or seek charity for some local event or the other. So R.B. Pillai and friends arrived and my grandmother and mother had no clue that this is my father “seeing” my mother. Suddenly it is announced that they are to be married. In the event, she actually ended up seeing him only on their wedding day, at the wedding pandal, where my mother’s extended family were quite horrified because my father came from an impoverished rural background.

My mother was raised by her parents not in extravagant luxury, but with a degree of comfort and as the soul-focus of all their attention and affection. So her family was stunned—and not in a good way— that this strange man was the bridegroom they had chosen for mother.

After they were married, father brought my mother to Pune and they ended up in this place in Chandannagar, where my mother discovered that she did not even have a proper bathroom. She told us stories about how she had to adjust with a single saree for an entire year. She washed the saree and then would wear his trousers and shirt and wait till her own clothes dried and then drape the same saree again. That was the life she was suddenly dropped into while he went off to work.

Picture the scene—she is a young, twenty- something year-old-girl, with two children who arrive soon and she had to negotiate a life she was hardly prepared for. So, for all the willpower that father had, he met his match in his wife, because even when her relatives kept telling her things like, why don’t you leave him, you don’t need this marriage, you can come back, she said no, “The marriage is done and I am in this with him and I am going to make a success out of him”.

My father taught in Symbiosis for a while and left Symbiosis briefly and had a consultancy company. At that time my sister, Indrani, was very young and he was making heaps of money. It was 1989-1990 and he was bringing in about Rs.25,000 a month. He had started in 1968, with Rs.90, as an 18-year-old and his first raise was to Rs.96. So, Rs.25,000 in 1989-90 was a substantial sum. He was making money and mother could have draped herself with silks and pearls and gone back to all her family and said, ‘Look the joke is on you now’. But, she looked at him and told him, “This is not something you are enjoying— you want to teach, go back and teach. My children and I will manage.” If she had not allowed him to pursue what he sought at that time, he may never have become the Prof. M.S. Pillai that we all know.

He was very pleased when he went to Mumbai, to my sister’s new apartment. Years ago when they had an argument, my sister had declared that she will one day have a sea-facing apartment, in Mumbai and he had said that he would like to see how that happens

It wasn’t easy. My sister was very good at hockey and was asked to go for extra lessons in school on weekends—my mother had to sit her down and say, “This is the money we have, we can’t afford to do this, your father is not here, your younger brother needs to be taken care of and I can’t take you for you extra classes”. You can call them sacrifices or another variant of that feeling, but it was telling us, “Life is not going to be some sort of cakewalk. Your father comes from a certain background and your mother comes from a certain background-we have one grandfather who is an illiterate farmer in Kerala, where another grandparent would read the heaviest of books and try and tell us its stories”. So, we grew up with these mixed influences around us, but also with two exceedingly strong people who were determined to triumph against the odds.

Sometimes it led to funny situations. I was perhaps ten years old when my school invited my father as a chief guest for its annual day. My headmistress summoned me to her office and asked me his full name. To which I answered, “Professor M.S. Pillai”. But, she knew that already obviously—she wanted to know what the ‘M’ and ‘S’ stood for. I said I had no clue, because I was ten years old and I only knew him as this man who came home late at night, when sometimes we saw him or we didn’t.

I was born when he was 40 years old and my earliest memory of him is of a man with grey hair and lots of students around him. He was a father but also always “M.S. Pillai”. Meanwhile, mother became the pivot of our life; she was the one who managed to not only raise two kids, not only enabled him to build his career, not only relinquish any ambition she might have had, any desires and dreams she might have had, channeling all her energy towards him and towards us instead. Now he is gone, but she was always more than half of the equation—what you know of him is about 40 per cent—60 per cent is my mother.

The moment my father passed away, we were enveloped in goodwill and support—the guard at the apartment complex was completely taken aback. He was taking entries of all the visitors coming in and when it crossed 1000, he finally threw his diary aside.

The number of people who came home, who helped us with the formalities and other paperwork thereafter, it was overwhelming. We would have crumbled, but because of my mother’s strength and because of the way our father shaped us, we didn’t. All of his students and people he knew in his professional life surrounded us and helped us to get through that time. It is goodwill; I hope we will have for the rest of our lives as well.

One consolation we do have is that towards the end of his life, as my mother said, he died a happy man. He was born a farmer’s son and in the final years of his life, was farming in his Talegaon property, near Pune. He was born to be a teacher and the night before he passed away, was writing a speech to address five thousand teachers at a conference which MIT was hosting. These were the things he loved—the things that made him.

He was very pleased when he went to Mumbai, to my sister’s new apartment. Years ago when they had an argument, my sister had declared that she will one day have a sea-facing apartment, in Mumbai and he had said that he would like to see how that happens. And that day when he went to see her new place, she, in fact, did acquire a sea facing apartment—she did it by her own effort, with nobody to help her. She fought her own challenges and made sure that she was earning enough to rent that apartment. My father walked into the apartment and had tears in his eyes. She was little flabbergasted and had said, “You come to my house for the first time and you are crying!” It turned that it was tears of joy. And he was also very happy with what I was doing, so, on the whole, he was proud of us—a happy father too at the end of a long and rewarding professional life.

On the whole, he went away a fairly satisfied man. There were, of course, more things he wanted to do. But as I was telling someone the other day, God doesn’t give even M.S. Pillai a hundred per cent of what he wants!