The class of 2006 at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, received this speech on “Defining Success” from Subroto Bagchi, COO of MindTree. July 2, 2004.
In a family of five brothers, I was the final child of a part-time government employee. My father was a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa, and it is my first memory of him. As far as you can imagine, it was and still is the back of beyond. Water did not flow from a tap, there was no neighboring elementary school, and there was no electricity. I was therefore homeschooled and did not attend school until I was eight years old. Every year, my father used to be transferred. The family migrated from place to place, and my mother would easily set up an establishment and get us going because the family’s goods fit in the back of a jeep. She was matriculated when she married my father and was raised by a widow who had fled East Bengal as a refugee. My parents laid the groundwork for my life and my values, which have shaped who I am now and greatly influenced my definition of success.
Defining Success
The government gave my father a jeep because he was the District Employment Officer. The jeep was parked at our home because the office did not have a garage. My dad refused to take it on his way to work. He reminded us that it was the government’s vehicle, not “his jeep,” and explained that it is a costly resource provided by the government. On regular days, he would stroll to his workplace, insisting that he would only use it to explore the interiors. Additionally, he ensured that we could only sit in the government jeep when it was motionless.
That was the lesson we learned about governance in our early years; some business managers never learn it.
The jeep’s driver received the same level of respect as any other employee in my father’s workplace. We were trained not to address him by name when we were young. Whenever we were to address him in public or privately, we had to add the suffix “dada.” I taught my two little kids the same lesson when I got my car and a driver named Raju was hired. As a result, they have grown up calling Raju “Raju Uncle,” which is somewhat different from many of their friends who call their family drivers “my driver.” I shudder whenever I hear that term from someone who is enrolled in school or college. The lesson was important to me; you should show more respect to small individuals than to large ones.
“Respecting your subordinates is more important than respecting your superiors.”
The family would gather around my mother’s chulha, an earthen hearth she built at each posting location where she would prepare meals for the family, to begin our days. Neither gas nor electric stoves were available. Tea kicked off the morning ritual. Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman’s “muffin” issue, which was delivered a day late, while the brew was being served. Much of what we were reading was unclear to us. Even though I went to an Oriya-medium school, the English I speak now had something to do with the ritual, which was designed to let us know that the world was bigger than the Koraput district. We were instructed to fold the newspaper properly after it had been read aloud. Father gave us a straightforward lesson. “You should leave your toilet and your newspaper the way you expect to find them,” he used to remark.
That lesson focused on being considerate of other people. That is the fundamental principle upon which business is built.
It was rare for government homes to have fences. Together, Mother and I gathered twigs and constructed a modest fence. My mother never slept afternoon. She would pull out her kitchen tools and use them to excavate the stony, white ant-infested area. We put up flowering shrubs. They were destroyed by the white ants. After my mother mixed the ash from the chulha with the soil, we replanted the seedlings. They flowered this time. My father’s transfer order arrived at that moment. Some neighbors questioned my mother about why she was going to such lengths to make a government home look nice and why she was sowing seeds that would only help the future owner. My mother said that she did not care that she would not get to see the flowers blooming. “Every time I am given a new spot, I have to leave it more lovely than what I acquired, and I have to produce a flower in a desert,” she stated. My first lesson in success was that.
“What determines success is not what you make for yourself, but rather what you leave behind.”
India was engaged in combat on both fronts while the conflict continued. The phrase “Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan” was created by the then-prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, who inspired a sense of patriotism among the populace. I did not know how I could participate in the activity, apart from reading my mother the newspaper. I would therefore land up close to the University’s water tank, which fed the town, every day after reading her newspaper. I used to spend hours beneath it, thinking that I had to keep an eye out for potential spies who may come to contaminate the water. I used to fantasize of catching one and how the press would write about me the next day. Unfortunately for me, I never had the opportunity to see a spy in action because they avoided the tranquil town of Bhubaneswar during the conflict. That deed, however, opened my imagination.
“Imagination is vital.” We can construct the world we envision, and if we can do so, other people will live in it. That is what success is all about.
My mother’s vision deteriorated during the ensuing years, but she gave me a broader perspective that allows me to view the world and, I believe, allows her to see through my eyes as well. Her vision worsened over the following few years, and she underwent cataract surgery. I recall her being shocked the first time she saw my face clearly following recovery from her surgery. “Oh my God, I had no idea you were that fair,” she said. Even now, I am still rather happy with that praise. She suffered a corneal ulcer within weeks of regaining her sight, which caused her to become blind in both eyes overnight. It was 1969. In 2002, she passed away. She was blind for thirty-two years, but she never once grumbled about her lot in life. I once asked her whether she saw darkness since I was curious about what she saw with her blind eyes. “No, I do not see darkness,” she said. Even when my eyes are closed, all I see is light. She swept her room, laundered her clothing, and practiced yoga every morning until she was eighty years old.
Success, in my opinion, is about feeling independent and seeing the light instead of the world.
In the many years that passed, I matured, went to school, entered the field, and started to forge my path in life. When fourth-generation computers arrived in India in 1981, I finally discovered my life’s purpose in the IT sector after starting as a clerk in a government agency and progressing to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group. Life brought me everywhere; I traveled the world, worked with amazing people, and took on difficult tasks. While I was stationed in the United States in 1992, I discovered that my father, who was retired and lived with my older brother, had been hospitalized at Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi due to a third-degree burn injury. I took a plane back to take care of him; he was bandaged from head to toe and stayed in serious condition for a few days. The Safdarjung Hospital is a filthy, inhumane place where cockroaches are common. The sisters in the burn ward, overworked and underfunded, are both victims and perpetrators of the most dehumanizing aspects of life. When I noticed that the blood vial was empty one morning while caring for my father, I requested the attending nurse to replace it out of concern that air would enter his vein. She told me straight out to do it myself. I was hurting, frustrated, and angry in that terrible theater of dying. “Why have you not gone home yet?” my father whispered to her as he opened his eyes after she finally gave in and arrived.
This man was near death, but he was more worried about the overburdened nurse than about his health. His stern demeanor astounded me. The following day, my dad passed away.
“I discovered there that there is no limit to the extent of your compassion for another human being or the extent of the inclusion you can foster.”
My dad was a big supporter of the British Raj. He had serious doubts about the post-independence Indian political parties’ abilities to run the nation. He found the Union Jack’s lowering to be a depressing occasion. The complete reverse was true of my mother. My mother, a schoolgirl at the time, garlanded Subhash Bose when he left the Indian National Congress and arrived in Dacca. She joined an underground group that taught her how to wield swords and knives, and she learned how to spin khadi. As a result, the two people in our household had different political perspectives. Both the Old Lady and the Old Man disagreed on important worldly matters.
“We discovered the value of debate, the importance of having a diverse outlook, and the strength of disputes.”
Success is about the development of cognitive processes, discussion, and continuum, not about the creation of a final, dogmatic end state.
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