A tale of good tidings

Julio Ribeiro

Ever since I undertook to write a weekly column for The Tribune, I have developed a new discipline that I did not possess earlier. The first decision to take before I sit to write is what topic I should choose for the week. At the year’s end, the choices that bob up in the mind’s eye are: the mayhem unleashed by majoritarian forces of destruction; or the repeal of the farm laws, so swiftly enacted in the interest of the grand dramatic gesture, like demonetisation was announced a few years earlier!

Seeing the big strides the girls of the majority community have made, the fences are slowly being crossed.

But I will avoid that temptation, keeping in mind my Prime Minister’s advice to ‘be positive’ at all times. He kept to that line a few days ago by emphasising the need for unity to keep the country progressing, but his followers went about creating mayhem in BJP-ruled states with the tiny Christian communities as easy prey and his Bangalore South MP Tejasvi Surya admonishing Muslims and Christians to return to the Hindu fold to avoid the worst, I presume.

So, to be positive, I shall talk about an individual from my city of Mumbai who is helping the less fortunate to strengthen and lift themselves from the ranks of the deprived to that of the haves.

Every year around Xmas, Leena Gandhi Tewari, chairperson of a family-owned pharmaceutical company, USV Pvt. Ltd., hosts a dance, drama and prize distribution event in a packed auditorium in the city’s suburb of Bandra. The emancipated are girls whose parents are employed as domestic help or drivers or security guards and stay in a slum near Vakola.

Leena’s grandfather Vithal Gandhi had set up this company after completing his studies in the US seven or eight decades ago. Hailing from Ratnagiri in Maharashtra’s Konkan region on the country’s western coast, Vithal Gandhi was attracted to the freedom movement led by the Mahatma and other stalwarts of those times. He was elected MP from one of Mumbai’s six constituencies, but he did not forget to consolidate the company he had established.

He married Dr Susheela, one of the first women doctors and gynaecologists of the time. Dr Susheela encouraged women to study, become independent and think for themselves. Her granddaughter, Leena, is one such woman who has made the doctor proud, though today the good doctor is not around to relish the fruit she had planted! Leena set up the Dr Susheela Gandhi Centre for Social Development in Vakola, hired English, maths, science, and IT teachers to supplement what the girls had been taught in school, hired dance and drama teachers to introduce them to a cultural study beyond school and build their self-confidence and arouse their latent interests.

Dance was a great draw. The girls loved it. Drama lessons followed. Spoken English classes were taken by Leena herself. Her husband, Prashant Tewari, who manages the business in his capacity as the company’s Managing Director, chipped in with his favourite subject, maths! Leena had met Prashant in the US, where both were doing their graduate studies at the same time.

The personal involvement of husband and wife in the mental and social development of the girls gave a quantum boost to the CSR (corporate social responsibility project). Soon, the parents got interested and involved in their children’s advancement and there was a demand from male siblings of the girls for inclusion in the scheme. Leena decided to take in a few boys and has started with six of them.

She has also finally succeeded to get a few Muslim children to join. The few Muslim families in the slum were at first suspicious, but seeing the big strides the Maharashtrian girls of the majority community have made, the fences are slowly being crossed.

I have been attending Leena’s yearly event for 10 years or more. Last year, she cancelled the show, but this year, she showcased it online. One girl from the first batch to join, Yogita Kamble, got her MBA degree with honours! Leena employed her as a management trainee in her own company. The girl’s sister, also an MBA degree holder, got employed in another private company. A boy, who had been recently included, completed his IT studies from the NIIT and was picked by Infosys as a trainee operations executive. Three other girls have graduated and two of them are preparing to compete for admission to the MBA course.

Leena Gandhi Tewari has shown what a well-intentioned woman of compassion and a social conscience, wanting to share her good fortune with others less privileged, can achieve if there is a stirring in the heart to give back to society the blessings she herself has received because of a privileged birth.

Her mission in life is to motivate the underprivileged to dream and break the shackles of poverty through their own efforts and the use of their own natural talents. What they needed was a friendly push that this good lady so willingly provided and the girls so eagerly accepted.

Leena knows each girl in her centre by name. She knows their respective parents, particularly their mothers. I would not be surprised if she has visited their homes. She would have no hesitation in doing that as Leena is a remarkable human being. I am sure there are many more such women and men in our beloved country. They should emerge from the woodwork and share their stories for others to emulate.