Chapter 4: My Father: Entrepreneur, an Incessant Lover...

It was the fag end of February. While my 2^nd STD end exams were fast approaching, my father went hunting for his next business venture. I genuinely believe that my father is one of those Bill Gates or Buffet or the Ambani type. The only difference is he didn’t make so much money. To quote a few similarities, he didn’t do his schooling (heard Dhirubhai Ambani is just 3^rd STD pass (pass or fail who cares)), didn’t do his engineering (while Bill Gates was thrown out in between for low grades from Harvard, Buffet’s application was rejected). I am pretty much sure that I would have probably been in one of those biggest mansions shaking hands with Gates, Buffet, Tata or Ambani every other day, signing deals worth thousands of crores, making speeches to the board of directors to just do the things I wanted, (and probably politics also in the long term??. Ok lets just stop fantasy here), had I known some of these stories before my 2^nd STD final exams. But God had other plans (or was it my father?). Also my father lacked a few qualities these people had, which some might argue as the edge they had over my father (The ‘scholars’ just want a chicken’s hatched egg’s leftover(s) to prove that we are wrong and their theory is a treatise).

My father is a businessman and the business I am talking about is a Baker’s shop. Yes, the famous Iyengar’s Bakery. This was his second attempt, since he had given up the same due to a spinal cord surgery four years earlier. Nevertheless, we were the masters in the art of baking and so not really too much risk was involved. Since huge competition already existed in Bangalore, he went searching for a new place to take-off. Having gone round the state and a few other states, he finally chose a place called Kothacheruvu, a small village in Andhra Pradesh (I think this is what people call business trips today or at least go for a trip in the name of business). This is probably called identifying the market in managerial terms, which my father had just like the bigwigs I mentioned earlier. Once he started his business, he also started selling beverages, chats and snacks (expansion of business??). Though his Telugu was bad, started learning by conversing with people (he in fact sent me to a Telugu medium school too). And I heard it is called adaptability to the necessary environment culturally, economically (he sold all his products at a price we Bangaloreans would have envied). But there are quite a few things that he didn’t possess, which probably made him what he is today. We didn’t patent the products, say the cakes, pastries, buns etc (unlike Bill Gates did for (‘his?’) Microsoft). We neither copyright protected our methods, when we came up with the best products. And finally, we didn’t apply for a trademark registration; say for the Iyengar’s brand. Seriously, just as Nike or Puma is the name you go after if its apparels, Iyengar's is the name for baked products. For more details, please visit any of our outlets in Bangalore or outside, by just searching on Google. So, in totality my father didn’t know how to monopolize on his business venture and hence he probably failed in reaching greater levels of success and money making abilities.

But, after seeing him for long and having developed the ability to think, I have come to believe that my father’s principles were way beyond these worldly aspirations. Interestingly, not just my father but the entire community of bakers, probably are ‘the Ubuntu’ type. They believe in a free world, just like the Linux guys. They provide joy by giving great quality food and don’t even claim the accolade that comes along. They are all humanitarian giants. Jokes apart, the only problem is that charity is still not visualized as a plausible business model (Seriously, the way the world is going, I start thinking that some day even charity will turn itself into some form of business with all these Harvard and IIM guys out there to suck money even from empty thrash bins).

Coming back to the main stream, I was pretty much happy that my exams would be skipped due to this shifting. But, my mother was very much convinced that education is the only precious jewel, bereft of theft, while my father wanted his son to be provided with the best of facilities and environment to achieve the goals (whether his son had a goal or not is altogether a different issue).  It is quite normal that a married woman thinks in terms of money (precious), gold (jewelry) and safety (theft) about education while a philosopher has different perspective to it altogether. So I had to sit through addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, poems, rhymes, computers, kaccha and pucca houses, etc before the day arrived. With all this preparation mentally, my mother was actually protecting me physically by way of cough syrups, sweaters (its amazing that students get fever and lose health during summer, actually considered to be the healthiest season), monkey caps etc. (My mother would have scored a hundred even in her sleep had she given my exams.) And so, I finally wrote my exams well (lets not get into a argument over the definition of well. Also I am playing safe by saying wrote well, not scored well!!!).  And on the day I finished my exams, I saw a huge truck in front of our house, being loaded with all the furniture, utensils, television sets, clothes, cupboards and much more.

Finally, we were moving out of our place, our very own state. Probably a warm welcome awaited us in the new place. Just before closing this chapter, I have little thought. My father was a contented rickshaw driver before this new journey began. The only reason he changed his profession was to facilitate better support for my education. The love that every father showers on his child is but natural. But to see them struggle to make way for our dreams, sacrifice their interests for our upbringing, reminds me of beautiful little story:

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard.  Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass."  "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply.  "We're raising boys."