Are we asking for enough ?

Ask and you shall get

Seek and you will find

Knock, and the door shall be opened.

The question is, do we ask? Do we seek? Do we knock?

I know one person—just one person—who did, who still does: My role model for life, my father.

Born in the pre-independence era my father was the second youngest amongst ten siblings. My Great grandfather was a rich farmer and owned acres of land in pre-independence India. The 1947 partition dealt a blow on the family and like most other Hindu families they had to leave everything and run for their lives. My great grandfather and my father’s elder brother were killed in the riots and all their wealth was plundered.

My grandfather restarted his life in independent India as a clerk in the State Bank of India, bringing up nine children with a meagre salary. Despite being a sharp kid, my father had to choose vocational schooling like his other brothers to make himself quickly employable to support the family. 

After struggling for couple of years in early 1970s he took up a job with a paper manufacturing factory in Maharashtra. Both me and my brother grew up in this small cosmopolitan township built next to a paper factory. 

In spite of having built a good facility, the owners of the factory didn’t pay really well and it was difficult to give a good lifestyle to the children or to fund their higher education. But my dad, who couldn’t fulfil his dream of becoming a graduate engineer, didn’t want his children to meet the same fate. 

He was very enterprising and kept looking for opportunities to supplement his income. The factory had defined general timings (7.30 am to 12 noon & 2 pm to 5.30 pm) for his kind of work. And he always kept wondering how he could make use of the remaining hours in the day. 

The Government had started promoting other industries to develop the location as an industrial township and were building infrastructure but were struggling to find qualified contractors who could take up quality construction jobs. My father took the necessary approvals from his current employer and pounced on the opportunity to bid—and won his first small civil construction job. He took a loan from a local branch of a nationalised bank to fund his supplementary business. As the business grew, he created a small team of professionals and delegated the work to them. 

His day would start at 4 am and after his regular chores, he would be out for work at 6 am. After supervising his team, he would head to the factory sharp at 7.30 am. While all his colleagues came home for lunch and a good nap, he would be supervising his team. This generated some additional income for the family, but it wasn’t steady income, as it depended largely on the bidding, which was now getting very competitive with other large players entering the fray. Expanding it would have meant compromising on his current job, which he couldn’t dream of doing, since the owners had been kind enough to give him permission to venture into his side business. So, he eventually handed it over to my brother, who is still running it.

Those were the days when there was no telephone or internet. The only source of communication with the outer world was letters. Once while socialising with some of his friends in Mumbai, he realised that all his work-colleagues back home were saving their earnings in banks which paid meagre interest rates, while in cities like Mumbai, there were many opportunities to invest in financial instruments which could earn better returns. But he didn’t understand finance. Instead of giving up the idea, he took up a certification course in financial management and spent his evenings studying!

Once he had the certificate to back his credentials, he started investing money for his colleagues in better investment avenues. The word of mouth spread and so did his network and he became extremely popular in the industrial township. All employees, whose money was in savings bank accounts started flocking to him for investment advice. And he suggested them Postal saving schemes and Equity linked saving instruments for better returns. He kept cross-skilling and up-skilling himself to keep himself relevant and updated in his game. Meanwhile he earned three job extensions and retired at 66. 

I’ve always seen him work passionately and work hard. He always rose to whatever challenge came his way, never backing down. Starting the day at 4 am, ending it at 10 pm, finding ways to enhance his skills and grab opportunities to reinvent himself to build social networks. But for his hard work and stretch besides his core competency, his children wouldn’t have completed their higher education, let alone enjoying the luxuries of life.

My father is 76 today and he hasn’t changed a bit. His day still starts at 4 am and after his regular chores he helps my brother in his business. And his passion for learning new skills and challenging himself is growing with every passing day.

He is currently focussed on technology. I have been strictly instructed by him to ensure he has the latest smartphone. He judiciously carves out an hour or two each day learning new apps. No conversation between us is complete, until I answer some of his queries on using a particular app. He diligently proceeds to note all the steps and then practice them offline. He went paperless four years back and today all his important documents are stored on Google Drive. He uses PayTM for all his utility bill payments. All this at 76!

The other day he called me to understand how he could move to smartphone banking. I am now engaged in teaching him that! He says Modi wants digital transformation and he needs to stay abreast to do his bit. 

Most people stop learning at exactly 50 years of age because they've been fighting loss of learning since they were 35. They stop asking, they stop seeking, and they stop knocking on the doors of opportunities that life brings their way. 

There is something this old young man is teaching us. Age is just a number.  

Consider this: the world is under lockdown, but the cosmos is not. The Universe is always open and free. Always willing to serve us. Forever benevolent, kind, and supremely generous. Always blessing us with much more than what we ask for. But the question is this: From our own selves and from the Universe, are we asking for enough?

That is the question I silently ask myself, every time my father’s time-worn, work-hardened face appears in my head. And every time—every single time—he smiles.