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BOOKS
Tycoon Not Typical
Memoir of a reluctant industrialist.
By Sanjoy Narayan
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ABUNDANT LIVING RESTLESS STRIVING: A MEMOIR
By Sohrab
P. Godrej (As recounted to B.K. Karanjia)
Viking
Price: Rs 495
Pages: 428 |
Sometime
in the mid-1990s, I witnessed an incident which, I later realised, offered
a deep insight into what Sohrab P. Godrej was all about. Already in his
80s, the venerable chairman of the Godrej group was at an official function
held at Mumbai's Godrej Bhavan when a company executive approached him
with a sheaf of papers that needed his signatures urgently. The papers
were obviously important enough for the executive to approach his chairman
as the function drew to a close. But Godrej's reaction was remarkable.
He waved away the executive, saying he had no time as he was already late
for another more important meeting. As it transpired, it was a meeting
of the Mangrove Society of India, and in Godrej's scheme of things that
took precedence over his group's own affairs. But then that's what the
late Sohrab Godrej was all about. Admittedly, a misfit in industry, he
himself remarks in his memoirs that the "stork brought him to the
wrong family". A reluctant industrialist, Godrej spent most of his
adult life fighting for causes far removed from what a hardnosed businessman
would be expected to be involved in. Like family planning, conservation,
environmental development, art and culture.
 Rich
in anecdotes, Godrej's memoir, as recounted to journalist and close associate
B.K. Karanjia, is more than an autobiography. Its broad sweep covers the
history of an industrial empire founded by Ardeshir and Pirojsha Godrej.
The young Sohrab, the eldest of three sons, was never really enthused
by business and his early years seem to have been quite miserable: a father
who didn't let him study the arts (he had to read science instead) and
insisted that he join the family karkhana, which made steel furniture,
soaps and locks. Sohrab would have probably loved to pursue his passions:
travelling the globe (which he did, including the Arctic and Antarctica)
and crusade for the causes that he believed so strongly in. The prelude
by Karanjia, who has written three volumes on the group, including a biography
of Sohrab's brother Naval Godrej, provides an insider's perspective of
the man, despite its somewhat hagiographical overtones.
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