Last week I visited the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras campus in Chennai. I was truly intimidated by the grandeur of the campus. It was a place where I could not get an admission after my schooling. Yet, here I was, after many years, having a discussion with a senior professor about the process of being a visiting faculty for their new MBA course. It was an honor, and I hope to contribute more than what IIT expects. These thoughts are not about that. These thoughts are about my parents.
My father had 13-degree qualifications including a PhD and D.Litt and he was a teacher in the early and later parts of his life. My mother had 12-degree qualifications including 2 PhDs. Mother was a true educationist all her life. It has only been 27 months since I lost my mother and only 15 months since my father passed away. In all my excitement about taking up anything in any IIT, the only thought that kept coming back to me is that I wish I could call my parents and tell them the news which I could never do when they were alive – I am going to teach!? Not in some college but in IIT, the college with the best reputation in India and arguably the lowest student acceptance rates in the world. Whenever I have achieved anything else, the urge to call parents and announce it was not greater. Though it was just about telling them that I am going to do part-time what they have done almost all their lifetime. I have never felt the loneliness of not having the parents as much as I did.
In the teens we rebel against parents, in our 20s we care less about what they think of us, in our 30s we don’t want them to know too much of what we do, in our 40s we worry about what they might think of what we stand for. In our 50s we long for their validation of what we have become. As we grow, we tend to become a version of who our parents were. Think about it, it is not about where you end up but it’s about where you started in life. All our life, we tend to live with the need for making parents proud. Our kids probably think they will not have the same cycle. Rest assured; Life will come a full circle!
Capt Pappu Sastry/ CEO – ASL
