Tolerance: Indian Style

However, what stands out as a huge example of tolerance, can be seen in some real life stories.  Mr Sarath babu, is today, a king in the food market in India, with sales turnover running into millions of US dollars.  

Some years ago, his mother made a living by selling iddlies in the slums of Chennai, India’s fourth largest metropolis.  With the very meagre income, she was able to make her son study upto the school final level, and borrow a huge amount of money to finance her son’s education in a very famous engineering college in Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu’s second largest city, with a huge engineering base, and thriving industries). 

Not satisfied with his engineering education, Mr Sarath Babu went on to do his Post-graduate diploma in business administration from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, reputed to be the best B-school in the entire Asia-Pacific region.  Its products get multi-billion salaries, all over the world.

Mr Sarath babu, is today, the proud owner of a hotel chain.  He has still not forgot his roots, and his thatched hut is intact.  What stands out is the tolerance of his mother, who made it possible. 

There are hundreds of such stories.  Parents would go without food, but educate their children.  They would pool all their resources, even mortgage their entire property, to finance the higher education of their children.  The Government has made life easy for the middle-class, or even the promising poor, by giving educational loans, which can be repaid after the beneficiary gets a good job.

There is this story of a post-master in  a small village.  This gentleman, retired a few years ago, and with the meagre pension that he got, was not able to finance the engineering college education of his only son.  He had married off his two daughters, but his son was yet to settle down. 

The wife chipped in, started a small cafeteria, selling vegetarian food items to the local population.  As numbers grew, the money started coming in, but the family took it on themselves to not concentrate too much on the business, as it would distract their attention from their son’s education.  They made just about the money needed to finance his education.

The son came out with a Gold medal in mechanical engineering from the prestigious Anna University, Chennai, and won a scholarship to study further at the University of Stanford, USA, with full fellowship.  Today, the son is so well settled in the US, and has taken his parents along with him to that country.  

Such real life stories are monotonously true of the other India.  There is a huge profit to be made by selling a huge variety of goods and services to this class of Indians, who earn 500 US dollars or much less, at current prices, per month, and aspire to live better.  Certain foreign companies have understood this fact, and are milking the market.  However, the local companies do not lag behind.

There are hundreds of thousands of people, who live life as it comes.  They tolerate corruption, violence, deceit, lack of good drinking water, power cuts, and what have you.  The summer months — April to June every year, in India, is horrible.  Very few can afford to live in hill-stations at this point in time.  Yet, the summer months open up a huge number of coaching classes in the metros.  Spoken English, swimming, dancing, carnatic music, instrumental music, and even “sloka” classes (slokas are derived ancient Vedic literature and the slokas have huge religious meaning), keep increasing day-after-day.

India is such a fascinating place, of really fascinating people.  In the years to come, we will have the second India, trying to catch up with the rich India.  From this very act, there will be many more stories of tolerance, yet again.