Whenever I think of my father, first thing I
remember is he dropping me to school on Saturday morning! Our primary school on
Saturday used to be early morning and so my father could drop me to school. I
always used to admire him carrying my schoolbag which he used to easily hold
like a carry-bag and that would still not touch ground! I used to find that bag
so heavy on my back!! His strength used to assure me that “all is well” and
till date when I look back he did many things with ease that I can only admire.
Just like many of you who have their fathers
as heroes, I also have many stories about him, but the one of those stories
taught me a few lessons in life –as usual in his inimitable style of action
speaking than words.
He worked with a large cooperative bank as a
head of Legal and Personnel after his retirement from Government job. It was in
eighties and though the corruption was not rampant it was there for sure. One
of the local politicians who was somehow associated with the bank had started a
racket of taking some money from people and assure them jobs at the bank. My
father had sensed this and outsourced the entrance examination to one of the
reputed banking institutes. He was aware that people who generally adopt this
kind of ‘money’ route never clear entrance exams on merit and he was bang on
target!
Once after one such recruitment drive, he
got a call from this politician. After the initial pleasantries, my father was
told to ‘accommodate ‘a few ‘needy’ people whom the politician knew. My father
politely said that he does not have any control over the exam results as it is
outsourced. After a bit of cajoling, the politician got extremely annoyed. He realised
what my father had done and he yelled, “Do you know to whom you are talking to?
I will send a truck-load of my men to kill you!” My father was quiet as ever
and replied, “You know the office address anyway and in case you need my
residence address here it is” and disconnected the phone quietly after giving
the residential address. When my mother heard about this, she was extremely
anxious. My father patiently explained, “It is just a threat. He would not do
anything. Why should he send a truck-load of men to kill me when only one or
two would be enough? He is just trying to scare me. Don’t worry and if he
really does something, the labour union would shut down the bank. They know
that I have always maintained absolute fairness in everything that we do with
the staff!” Nothing more was said….
When I look back, I admire his guts. Here
was a common man who had no backing of anyone and had family to take care. He
was completely unfazed and he never deviated from his path. Man of few words,
he had no bravado. Knowing fully well what was coming, he had outsourced the
exam and ensured that he did what was right with minimum fuss. Keeping the exam
in-house and then doing what he did was waging an open war which was
un-necessary. He was clearly focused on what he wanted and exactly achieved it.
Bravery is not about bravado. It is all
about anticipating avoidable risks, mitigating them without any bravado or
noise and just ensure that you do what is right. There was no fear but there
was no chest-thumping either. For him it was his routine duty and no-one could
come in the way of his duty! He remains my lighthouse whenever there is any
storm in my life!
