I stand on the shoulders of giants

With the certainty of a fast approaching graduation, I contemplated, many months ago, offering up my verbosity for the ceremonial class speaker tryouts. But after careful consideration (and realizing that making it past my far more talented classmates was a virtual uncertainty) I decided to renege on my decision to relegate my propensity for pedantry to a different medium. Another important factor is that I hold a rather uncommon personal view on the experience and the following piece is an exercise in clarifying and organizing my own thoughts on graduating from my MBA program.

Many years ago, a young man, ran away from both home and an oppressive social system to the closest urban metropolitan area in search of work. After years of manual labor he rose through the ranks to being a clerk in a British coffee factory. My grandfather had little to no formal education when he became a clerk and was mostly a self-taught manager of men and money. Those were less crowded times in tiny second tiers in India - birth control and nuclear families were a thing of the distant future. And so it was that my grandmother and he gave birth to 8 children. They themselves had never completed high school but were determined that at least some of their children would. Of course, patriarchal societies being what they are, that benevolence was reserved for their first male child. And from then, curiously, the same luxury was afforded to the women that were born afterward. Education has that uncanny ability embed equality in even the most archaic of monoliths. My uncles, after studying high school in the local language (Thamizh) would go on to college where the medium of education was English. They spent 75% of their first year in college teaching themselves English and the remaining 25% learning the material taught in the courses they took. They did well enough, considering, gaining admission into the top engineering programs in the state and finishing at the top of the class or near there. Pretty commendable considering they woke up and quite literally had to milk the cow before making their morning coffee.

My Mother was one of the women who benefited from that singular stroke of luck of having been born after my uncles. It was her brothers’ insistence that enabled her admission into medical school and eventual enrolment into the state government medical cadre. Not long after graduating from college she was also married off to my dad, who I hear was a wonderful man, but passed away five years later leaving her with a rather rambunctious four year old – me. She would then, to either escape the despair or build a better future for her son, immerse herself in acquiring additional degrees and her work (both government service and private practice). Those were not particularly easy years for women in India, more so for a single, educated doctor who was fairly apolitical and a high performer at work. She pulled through, on the power of persistence and the support of that ever present bulwark – her family. She eventually retired as the Head of the Department of one of the most prestigious medical institutions in her state. Not too shabby for the daughter of high school dropouts.

It is against these accomplishments that I measure my own and I always find that I must temper my exuberance. Do not misunderstand what I just said; I do not carry the burden of their accomplishments on my shoulder. On the other hand they have taught me react with humility to the momentous occasions in my life. Like sir Isaac Newton once said “If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants….”. I have been blessed with many giants in my personal life and over my last two at Anderson I have been blessed with way more than I ever anticipated. You all have expanded my view, altered my perceptions and taught me where my blind spots lie. If I have seem distant or self-absorbed at times it is only because I seek to absorb and analyze experiences from within rather than leaving them without having altered myself at all. Thank you for everything you've taught me and I hope to pay it forward for years to come.