Family ties and business

Having grown up in an education-focused, private-service-destined environment, I didn't have a clue until recently about the special kind of fuel that drives the merchant class of the nation.

 The Marwari-Gujarati-Sindhi commune - them scientists should do a gene investigation in order to identify that strand which infuses them with such sound business sense. Buying land worth crores of rupees, with the acute sense that it is going to be worth crores more in five years, is their daily nasta.

In my family, education is supreme and we worship the Chitragupt bhagwan, a being who was thought up by Brahma for the express purpose of keeping records of all creatures on earth - of their deeds and misdeeds - and then based on those deciding who should be allowed to go to heaven, who banished to hell. So no feats of bravery, spiritual purity or wealth creation for us. We are the diligent, academic, prudent and stern keepers of dharma.

Anyhow, speeding back to the present - my family is stuffed to the brim with people who have won accolades for their academic brilliance. From childhood on, I have been hearing that we don't have the 'business mindset', in various degrees of condescension of tone.

So the 'business mindset' was something which I associated with mercenary behavior, the tendency to sell the shirt off the back of your best friend, if circumstances so dictated.

As time passed, and Manmohan S and PC made it easier for folks with ideas to set up shop, young India started to count unlikely entrepreneurs, not necessarily from a business background, among their role-models. Yet, these were of a very different ethos than the traditional gujju business families, which young India still didn't know much about. To hell with generalizations, suffice it to say that I didn't.

And then came Levers and rural Maharashtra. Businessmen of every shape, size and ethnicity have been the pain in my back-side for the last two years. (By the way, I say this with affection in case any of you happen to be reading this). The interaction is complicated, with many nuances to our relationship - we are business partners, we are fencing foes, we are sparring bedfellows. And through all of this, I have been fortunate enough to learn so much of how a business family in India lives, feels and carries on traditions which seem unthinkable to us - service folks.

The camaraderie - I have never seen such fast friendships - you put your money where your words are. I don't remember the last time I spoke with friends I used to play hide-and-seek with. These men do. They may not reminisce about those days, because they have no reason to. They never moved away, so nostalgia does not come into the picture at all. Instead they talk about the ventures they are jointly part of - where one of them is the money-bags, the other the brain or arms.

The olde world families - Women cook. Men make money. Period. Let me tell you, those saas-bahu serials with the joint family set-up may seem alien to us - of the nuclear families and not-knowing-our-cousins-well-enough upbringing - but you walk into a Marwari household, and there are bhabhis and dewars and rich-ghee-laden mid-day meals jumping at you from every nook of the three-storied mansion (with a floor for every brother, but a common kitchen and washing place for the women). And what's more, I have encountered more than once the astonishing phenomenon of two sisters being married to two brothers, which puts a more intense spin on the concept of families getting married here in India, and not individuals. When providence is so fortunate as to have two sisters sharing the same kitchen, peace reigns in the household and that, I believe, is one of the most prominent reasons for this twin-marriage culture in the first place.

Not only do they live together, cook and eat together, they seriously look out for each other. I mean, seriously. Many a distributor have I appointed where the investor is putting his money behind our business in spite of having a growing set of ventures of his own, in order to provide a set-up for his brother's son to look after once he graduates from the local college with a B.Com degree. These men and women treat their familial obligations with such solidity, 'extended' family is not part of their vocabulary. They may curse and fault their nephews with vehemence the same as they would do their sons, but when it comes to putting food on their tables and bringing up their children, it is all one big gently-simmering cauldron without borders.

Entire towns are beneficiaries of such generosity, extending to blood and non-blood relations - like the brother of the husband of the daughter of your sister. I kid you not.

I look at my own narrow horizon of interest and the difference is stark.The generation which precedes me is still way better in terms of maintaining relationships and active involvement in the pursuits of family members, but on a tangential note, I can't help but acknowledge that the tight-knittedness which my ancestors had built with their relations is dwindling with each passing generation. Although like development and fashion, even this could follow a cyclic of its own - with Facebook and WhatsApp and Twitter, our children stationed across continents could know more about the daily struggles of each other than I did of my cousins a thousand kilometers away.

And on another tangential-reverential-must-be-said note, while most of us submit to a changing world, there are a few who change it forever. The world is mourning one such maverick and I do hope Mr Chitragupt opens the Pearly Gates for him.