An Indian who made us proud

 An Indian who made us proud

(Written in September 2012)

Some days ago a 90 year old man passed away.  A legend, who created national institutions, and who made us feel proud of being Indians.

Twenty years ago (April 1992), while my parents were confined to a hospital in Ahmedabad after a horrific road accident, my wife and I got away for a day to visit her alma mater at Anand.  IRMA was an institution that Verghese Kurien had created, and we spent a pleasant morning there, with my being shown around a well-maintained campus, and my wife being warmly greeted by her professors and invited into their houses, while I tagged along.  

But the high point of our visit was in the afternoon, when we went to the Amul Milk Plant.  We were met in the lobby by a young man, who welcomed us warmly, but told us that we would have to wait at least an hour (or more) for a tour of the plant.  Meanwhile he had to accord priority to another group.   This Very Important Party turned out to be a busload of village women, children and a few men,  the families of the Milk Producers who gave life to Amul.  The shareholders.  I was delighted.   Here was a place where we English-speaking, non-resident rootless cosmopolitans (*) had to make way for those who were the real stars of the Amul show.  Among all the wonderful things about Amul and Dr Kurien with Tribhuvandas Patel and HM Dalaya, this was another little gem.

Our young host, concerned about our having a long wait ahead of us, asked if we might be interested in joining the group, but warned us the tour would be in Gujarati.  We agreed immediately, and attached ourselves to this excited crowd.  While the gleaming machinery and the processes of pasteurization and churning and dehydration etc were interesting to see (at least to the vestiges of the engineer in me), it was far more fascinating  to feel the thrill in the air, to observe the excitement of the children on their tour of a local version of Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory.  Here they were with their parents and aunts and uncles, rushing to see the tins of powdered milk being sucked up a chute, sealed and dropping down another before being stamped, wrapped and packed.  I don't think I have heard a happier sound in our country than that of the women chattering excitedly as they observed the journey of the buffalo milk which they had supplied, through the various vats and tubes and tins and packs, transformed into a variety of dairy products and sent on their way to market, to market.

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[(*) in '92, I was an NRI, and had lived more years of my adult life abroad than in India; Hindi didn't trip off my tongue easily any more, so I was indeed  at that time a "bezrodniy kosmopolit"]