RAJAN'S BLAZER
Pic.: Internet
A very
sharp intellect and a very sensitive heart. To me, these two fundamentals form the
cornerstone of fine education. If one’s mind is sharp and heart is sensitive,
supple, the other attributes follow. Yes, I think, they really do.
Two days ago, my wife and I were watching some videos relating
to our present RBI Governor, Dr. Raghuram Rajan. “This is what I call good
education,” my wife remarked. Dr. Rajan was answering school children. He made economics
sound so simple!
Till then, both my wife and I hadn’t paid any serious
attention to Dr. Rajan’s educational background. Now, we did…
Dr. Rajan was born in Bhopal on 3rd Feb. 1963.
He went to a local school over there. Theirs was a Tamilian family and his
father was a senior officer in Intelligence Bureau. From standard seventh to
twelfth, Dr. Rajan studied at Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram (New Delhi). He completed
electrical engineering from IIT, Delhi and post-graduation in Business Administration
from IIM, Ahmadabad. He was a Gold Medalist at both these coveted institutes. Finally,
he got his Ph.D in Management from MIT Sloan School of Management.
All work and no play? Not at all. Dr. Rajan played tennis
and squash… He was brilliant in quiz and appeared in many TV quiz contests
during eighties… He has a keen interest
in Marathon and did run the 2015 edition of Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon…
At the age of 40, Dr. Rajan became the Chief Economist at
the International Monetary Fund (IMF). At 50, he was appointed as 23rd Governor of
RBI… and, it has been already announced that he would take over as the Head of
IMF when its present chief, Christine Lagarde, steps down in 2016.
Well,
of all the people around us, how did Dr. Rajan come up in my blog, today? Let
me tell you why…
One of my twelfth-standard students has a great circle of
friends and they love going out… A couple of them (their parents, to be
precise!) own farm houses or holiday homes in hill stations around Mumbai. So,
whenever they get into a mood, they go and enjoy there for a couple of days…
My student’s parents keep complaining about it… But, friends
are friends, you see. So far, parents have not been able to make him understand:
“Son, let not your friends decide your priorities… You cannot build a great career
if you get carried away by your friends like this.”
Today, my young student had turned up without doing the
homework…
“Why, what happened?” I asked.
“I had been out, sir,” he replied.
“Where?”
“Lonavala.”
“With whom?”
“My friends.”
Lonavala is a great place to be with your buddies when it
rains outside. If parents and teachers think, you cannot make a great career if you
ignore it now, you can neither make the most of your youth and its fun if you
ignore it now… The logic seems straight.Right?
I did not deliver a long sermon to my students, this
morning. Just told them that I would be blogging about Dr. Raghuram Rajan…
“Who?” I could read that on many faces…
After
he became the Governor of RBI, on his visit to alma mater, Delhi Public School (R.
K. Puram, New Delhi), Dr. Raghuram Rajan was given a memento – a beautiful
blazer. The school and the student both knew the significance of that blazer.
In his speech that day, Dr. Rajan told the assembly of faculty, parents and
students that though out his seven-year studies in DPS, he managed with only a
sweater… For, his parents couldn’t afford to buy a blazer for their son!
“Buddy, my pop has a bungalow in Lonavala. Let’s go… The
homework can wait!”
GERALD D’CUNHA
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