Jayant Sathaye

In mid-1962, I was suddenly bundled into a second class (that time there were three classes) compartment and sent off to Hyderabad. Khushroo Talathi was already there and so I simply followed him everywhere including the dining room. When I came home after 6 months, they asked me why I ate non vegetarian food and I asked them – What is non vegetarian? Big surprise – I was supposed to be vegetarian but no one said anything beyond that first question! So, I drifted between non vegetarian and vegetarian all through school life as and when I felt like it. School was cool and I didn’t realise how cool till many years later! Friends were friends and never any airs from anyone!

I kept on drifting without making any deliberate conscious choices, Sanskrit vs Telugu, Osmania Matric vs ISC, Mathematics vs Biology, BSc vs Engineering, Metallurgical vs Mechanical.

Drifted into IIT Madras from 1972-77. In the final year consciously applied to IIMs and to Tata Steel and BARC. The dates were clashing and chose to go to Tata Steel for an interview and came crashing down to Earth – not selected. Lesson learnt – pure technical knowledge does not matter, EQ and who you know matters!! In any case, I have never been very good at judging people all my life!!

Joined Usha Martin and then suddenly decided to leave and join Mishra Dhatu Nigam to learn about superalloys. Learnt another lesson – most government projects at that time were not commercial but designed for skimming away. There was no work and so I wrote to a Professor at University of British Columbia with a suggested project. He said – come and also arranged for an assistantship! I paid the bond amount to Midhani and left.

I came back two years later and worked mostly in the engineering steel industry and learnt some more lessons – some of which are – the Japanese methods of standardisation are a way of making donkeys perform like experts, life is an open book examination and continuous acquisition of knowledge is important but that only application of knowledge brings success, and success means different things to different people.