To

Amma

who has been the gentle

wind in our sails

Udharet-atmana-atmaanam na-atmaananam-avsaadyet

Aatmaiv hiyatmano bandhuraatmaiv ripuraatmanah

One should lift oneself by one’s

own efforts and should not

degrade oneself; for one’s own Self

is one’s friend, and one’s

own Self is one’s enemy.

– Bhagvadgita 6:5

Koi urooj de na zawaal de, mujhe sirf itna kamaal de

Mujhe apni raah mein daal de, ki zamaana meri misaal de

Teri rehmaton ka nuzool ho, mujhe mehnaton ka sila mile

Mujhe maalo-o-zar ki hawas nahin, mujhe bus tu rizq-e-halaal de

Mere zehn mein teri fikr ho, meri saans mein tera zikr ho

Tera khauf meri nijaat ho, sabhi khauf dil se nikaal de

Teri baargaah mei ae khuda meri roz-o-shab hai yahi dua

Tu rahim hai tu karim hai, mujhe mushkilon se nikaal de.

Do not grant me success or failure; grant me only this miracle

That I follow your path and be an example for mankind.

Shower me with your blessings; may my hard work be rewarded

I crave not for wealth, just grant me what is due to the honest

May you always dwell in my thoughts, may I feel you in my breath

May your fear be my freedom, may I be free of all fears

In your court Lord Almighty, from dawn to dusk I pray

You are merciful and generous, deliver me from my hardship.

– Allama Iqbal (Sir Muhammad Iqbal)

PREFACE

‘Tell me, Sir, in which field could I make a great career?’ the child asked.

The father replied: ‘Be a good human being. There is a huge opportunity in this area and very little competition.’

This book is the result of the personal experience of being a child of one such father. It is a biography of my genes. Seeing him live was like reading an uplifting story and reading his diary was a pilgrimage. Those are the sources of my work.

The diary begins with a quote from S. Radhakrishnan: ‘Let no one look upon work as a burden. Good work is the secret that keeps life going. While one should not hanker after results, life without work would be unendurable.’

That work which we fill our time with gives us reward, remuneration and restlessness. It produces conflict, it offers choices, it throws up challenges and produces many dilemmas.

Amid a dual quest for material prosperity and mental peace, what can provide an anchor to individuals and institutions? What can serve as a guide as we navigate through turbulent waters, both in personal and public life?

Every incident in the book is from real life and it powerfully underscores the role of core values in life. It is possible to prosper in the world, especially in a developing country, where there is a revolution of rising aspirations and cut-throat competition, and yet preserve one’s principles. Paying the price for adhering to those principles might seem painful, but that is like the pain that a mother feels while bringing new life into the world. It is inescapable, it is joyous and it is the axis around which the world moves.

Honesty and truth are not merely ideals that remain elusive. They form the survival kit of many whose lives don’t seem extraordinary because they are not popular. Their stories are not heard because they haven’t been written about. These are stories that represent an era, an entire generation. These stories are not over. Every generation will need these stories when it has exhausted its amoral quest of pure materialism or reached the apotheosis of its permissiveness and compromises.

These ordinary lives may not be well known or heroic in popular perception. In their own limited world and for those who come in contact with such men and women, such people are individuals who have lived life on their own terms. They have faced trials and tribulations, traumas and triumphs but remained afloat because they had a hard inner core. They may not be icons, recognized and idolized. Their life inspires because it is a vindication of certain lasting values that survive in every society. Such lives provide hope and keep us connected with the unseen forces that govern us.

There are many in every society who ‘think’ with their heart and ‘feel’ with their head. They keep working silently, selflessly, sedulously. They could be around us helping the marginalized; they could be away from the public gaze tilling soil or tending trees; they could be unidentified pillars of the system; they may be those writing but not being read; they could be waging little battles unrecognized. These are the people who rise above their situations, unmindful of their own struggles. They hear the unspoken and respond before being beseeched. Happiness is not a goal for them; it is their attainment. They have attained a balance between shahi (having the resources to fulfil one’s desires) and fakiree (the ability to rise above the trap of such desires).

My father, Bauji, was one such individual. He had a story; it was his life. It is not easy to be critical of your parents while narrating their story, just as they seldom critically evaluate their children. A certain degree of subjectivity is part of that relationship. Otherwise, parents would be like fictional characters whom we analyse and whose characteristics we describe.

Like Bauji, we all have stories; not all of them are told in public. They are preserved in households and narrated in families and mohallas as tales of inspiration. These stories are relevant. Their relevance keeps growing as the stories spread and lead to more conversations between parents and children.

These conversations are important for individual relationships, for families, for societies and for systems. Parents, priests, scientists, academicians, managers, administrators and leaders must engage in such conversation in order to maintain their social contract. A well-meaning conversation can never be a challenge to authority.

This book is an attempt to rekindle that conversation.

1

JOURNEY

The train was about to leave. He was truly on the horns of a dilemma. The steam engine had sounded the whistle indicating the train’s imminent departure. This shrill cry of the engine was enough to raise his anxiety. He was not prepared to leave his son alone in the train. After all, the boy was just nine years and two months old and returning to school for the first time after the short winter break.

It was about ten at night. After a day-long journey in the train from Vadodara (Baroda those days) he and his son had just finished eating the food packed most reluctantly by his wife, who was torn between preparing for her son leaving for school and worrying about a daughter, who lay in her hospital bed fighting a terrible typhoid. The ailment was grave but the doctor’s prognosis made it graver. The family was not sure whether they would be able to get the girl alive from the hospital.

Sitting in that train with me, my father found it difficult to eat his dinner and the thought that he had left behind his daughter battling a deadly disease, which was known to be severe on children, made his stomach churn. My sister was just about thirteen. As a nine-year-old, I was barely conscious of my father’s troubled mind. In fact, I was nervous about returning to a boarding school where students were subjected to bullying and torment.

There was a long journey ahead. After a full day, we had just made it to Bombay (Mumbai now) and changed trains for Poona (now Pune). The train that we were on would get us to Poona early in the morning and there we were to board another train for Miraj, where the broad-gauge line terminated those days. At Miraj, we were to finally board the train that would take us to Belgaum, where the military school was located. The place is now known as Belagavi. The town had always been a bone of contention and associated with intermittent strife between Maharashtra, that claimed it, and Karnataka, to which it belonged. By changing the name of the town, the state, perhaps, asserted its right.

My father, we called him Bauji, could not decide whether to continue his journey with me, or leave me to undertake that long journey by myself and return to a daughter who he hoped would remain alive till his return. Fearing the worst, he didn’t want that return to be delayed. He had already suffered the loss of his first child many years ago and, even though generally a stoic, he didn’t want to go through silent suffering at yet another loss. The thought of his wife struggling alone with a hospitalized daughter, with two other school-going children to mind, was uppermost in his mind. However, he was not sure whether his son would be able to manage the changing of trains by himself and reach school safely. After all, children getting lost was not something that happened only in films and Fagin was not a character confined to Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. Here was the twist in the tale. A daughter in distress and a son left a possible vagabond. He could not decide which way to go.

The train sounded the second whistle. He had to take a call quickly. He looked at his son’s sleepy face in the dimly lit compartment. The longing look on his daughter’s face as he had left the hospital that morning kept flashing in his mind. The son seemed engrossed with what awaited him in school; the daughter’s emaciated looks were too expressionless but haunting. His heart swelling with emotion, my father looked at the man seated opposite in the compartment and asked him where he was going. ‘Belgaum,’ the man replied. ‘This was a godsend,’ my father thought and immediately implored him to safely take me to Belgaum. Without knowing the stranger’s name and without inquiring any further, Bauji handed me over to a co-passenger and deboarded. With yet another shrill whistle, the train chugged out of the platform and all that I could see through the iron bars of the train window was a familiar figure quickly walking away and disappearing in the dark.

I was too preoccupied with my anxiety about what awaited me at school and could be least bothered about my immediate uncertainty. Overcome with weariness and somewhat lost in my fearful thoughts, I dozed off. The train reached Poona in the early hours of the morning. With the help of my new-found escort I got into another train without much waiting and reached Miraj in about five hours. My escort was a doctor from Belgaum and was travelling with his friend. I don’t exactly recall what we did during the couple of hours that we waited before boarding the metre-gauge train at Miraj, which was scheduled to reach Belgaum around 2.30 in the morning. That was the tricky part. How would I go to the school at that hour?

The school was about 3 km from the station and I was without any money. On reaching Belgaum, my benefactor took me to his house in the night, gave me a decent breakfast early in the morning and came all the way to drop me and left after safely depositing me with the hostel superintendent, Gundoji M. Desurkar, who was the custodian of our belongings and us.

My guardian angel for thirty-six hours was gone. I have never met him again, nor known about him. My father was too distracted to ask him his name or take his address. My benefactor was, perhaps, persuaded by my father’s helplessness and the goodness that he might have intuitively grasped on the stranger’s face. It was his implicit faith in humanity that guided him to forsake conventional caution and the good man had responded amply. I don’t remember if he too bothered to ask me my father’s address. He simply left asking me to write to Bauji that I had reached safely. That was a strange communion of goodness, without caution, without dialogue and without the expectation of gratitude.

That is what Udai Singh, my father, was made of: tonnes of goodness and a fair measure of credulity. We knew him from what he did, not what he said. He was a man of few words, and fewer friends. I inherited his neatly bound (he was very fond of covering his books with brown paper and taught us to cover our books and notebooks with the polythene recovered from shopping bags) collection of Kabir’s verses with an introduction by the famous Urdu poet Ali Sardar Jafri. Among the many verses that he underlined, the one that he was fond of repeating often was:

Kabira khada bazaar mein, mange sabki khair

Na kahu se dosti, na kahu se bair

What Kabir said meant that being in this world, he seeks everyone’s well-being as he is neither attached to anyone nor does he bear any grudge against anyone. No wonder, Bauji had hardly any friends, but what we always wondered was that he had no malice towards anyone, not even those who had deprived him of the riches he was born to and robbed him of his childhood.

I was introduced to my father after he passed away in 2003. I had left home for hostel in August 1966, when I was not yet nine and remained away till I was in the final year of my postgraduation. From 1977 to 1979 I stayed with him but that was the time when I was full of my friends, my follies and my fondness. Father was someone who left for work early in the morning by bus and returned home after a long day’s work and a longer journey from Faridabad to East Patel Nagar in Delhi. There was very little interaction with the man who provided for all our material needs and who I thought was not equipped to cope with my intellectual quest or emotional wandering. In 1979, I joined State Bank of India as a probationary officer and left for Damoh. Six months later when I returned, it was only to go to the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy in Mussoorie for my Indian Administrative Service (IAS) training. Two years later, my father became a grandfather to my sister’s son and voluntarily retired from active service in 1982 at the age of fifty-eight.

He started writing a diary about four years before he passed away. That diary, which I have inherited, is my introduction to my father. That diary was his resolve to ‘utilize his time fruitfully’ and a means to effortlessly recount the ‘successes and failures’ of his life in which, according to him, he found little ‘sympathy or support’ from anyone except his saviour who showed him ‘limitless kindness’. On the very first page of his diary he says that ‘the hardship that he faced since his childhood ended in 1982, when he gave up his job.’

Sahib ke darbar me, kami kahu ki nahi

Banda mauj na pabhi, chook chakri mahi.

There is no shortage of anything in the court of God

If I do not get his favour, the fault is in my service.

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PHOTOGRAPHIC INSERTS

Bauji’s first photo. Seen here with his Master’s degree

Bauji and Amma in Baroda in 1965. Even though they had been married for twenty years, this is the earliest photo of them as a couple

1995: Bauji and Amma at the golden anniversary of their wedding

The author seen with his brother in Pashabhai Colony at Vishwamitri, Baroda, in 1964. This is how we bathed every day

1967: Bauji (right) at the airport prior to his departure for his only official foreign trip

Bauji in his hotel room in Yugoslavia in 1967

Bauji with Ms Tichy in Czechoslovakia

The author’s civil marriage in Gorakhpur on 10 March 1980 with the parents looking on

Bauji had great affection and respect for Novel and gave her the mantra of ‘Om Namo Shivai’. Bauji and Amma with Novel and her parents

Bauji and Amma with Novel’s parents

Bauji with his only granddaughter Avny

Bauji on the roadside with grandchildren Avny and Abir in Kasauli

Badijiji as an army doctor

Amma and Bauji feeding the birds at Currumbin bird sanctuary in Australia

Bauji and granddaughter Avny feeding a kangaroo in Australia, 1996

Bauji and Amma with their four children, their spouses and grandchildren in Jind in 1988

Bauji participated in our music programmes and enjoyed them immensely

Buddhi with his Buddha

Amma and Bauji in Holi colours

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing the acknowledgements is the toughest part of writing a book, and tricky as well. It is hard to recall all those who helped you in its completion. It is even harder to forget them.

I owe this book to Bauji. Isn’t that like saying we owe the creation of the universe to the Almighty? I owe it to Amma, as much, who filled in the details in the events that Bauji had not fully described in his diary just as she filled in many gaps in him and his life.

Novel played her part with utmost objectivity, which was sometimes uncomfortable and irritating but which ultimately contributed valuable changes and enriched my effort. Our daughter Avny, son Abir and his wife Pooja turned out to be enthusiastic supporters and important critics and commentators. My brother Rajendra, sisters Shakuntala and Malti, and their husbands Gian and Harish suffered the tedium of going through the manuscript and providing useful insights. While talking to them, I remembered Kabir for his words of eternal wisdom:

I am obliged to numerous friends: Prashant Mahapatra, Ahmed Javed, Samir Mathur, Chhatar Singh, Satya Sheel, Lira Goswami, Veena Nanda, Raajaysh Chetwal, Ravi Mohan Sethi and (the late) Gajendra Haldea (he listened to the manuscript even as he battled with his failing health) for acting as incredible sounding boards and providing critical feedback.

No book is ever complete without experiencing the harsh gaze of the editor. Antony Thomas was perceptive and dispassionate as an editor should be and Siddhesh Inamdar meticulously kept masterminding the process leading up to the final output. To them, to HarperCollins and to all the unnamed readers who hold this book in their hands, all that I can say is:

To the Unknown Hand that helped me in writing the manuscript and to Sant Kabir I owe immense gratitude and acknowledge it wholeheartedly, which cannot be summed up except in his own words:

INDEX

Aaj Kal

Aanchal mein kyoon baandh liya mujh pardesi ka pyar

accountability

Ae mere watan ke logo

agricultural production and productivity

agriculture mechanization. See also Hindustan Tractors Private Limited

Alembic Group

Alha and Udal, story

Allah Baksh

Ambedkar, B.R.

Amin, Indubhai Bhailalbhai

Anokhi Sajaa

April, Martin

Ashokbhai

Augustin, Rose

Axis powers

Babur

Badarpur, Delhi

Baiju Bawra

Bakshi, Mr

BanasthaliVidyapith

banks’ nationalization

Bansi Lal

Barari, Mr

Barmacide Feast

Baroda West, parliamentary constituency

Basavraj

Battle of Britain

Belgaum military school

Bhagwat Dutt

Bhagwati (Billo)

Bhagwati Prasad

Bhalla, Mr

Bharatiya Janata Party (Jana Sangh)

Bhardwaj, Captain

Bhatia, Baldev

Bhatnagar, Mr

Bhatt, Premchand

Bhooribai

Binaca Geetmala

Birla, B.M.

Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act, 1886

Bissa, Mr

Bol radha bol sangam hoga ki nahin

Booth, Mr

Bose, Subhas Chandra

bribery and corruption

British rule

Brno, Czechoslovakia

Central Research Institute

Chahoonga main tujhe saanjh savere

Chaklala, Rawalpindi

Champaner, Gujarat

Chand Bardai, ‘Prithviraj Raso’

Chandra Bhushan

Chandra

Chandubhai

Chhote

child marriages

China–India war, 1962

Chip Chap Valley, Aksai Chin

Chokshi, N.D.

Churchill, Winston

cinema, should propagate social values

City and Guilds of London Institute

Clifford, Mr

competition

Congress

constitutional propriety

contentment

corporate structures

Crabattery, Colonel

Crime Investigation Department (CID)

Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC)

Dainik Bhaskar

Dalai Lama

Das, G.K.

Data Ram

denial and repression

Deshbandhu College, Kalkaji, New Delhi

Desurkar, Gundoji M.

Devi Lal

Dhaund, Maharashtra

Dholpur, Rajasthan

Do Aankhen, Baraa Haath

Dosti

Dostil, Mr

dying declaration

economic liberalization

Eicher Motors Limited

Eicher Tractors

electricity generation, installed capacity

electricity, per capita consumption

Emergency

engineering industry

Escorts Limited

Fairdeal Engineering Works

five-year plans

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

food shortages

Fort William Depot

freedom movement

Frick India

Gaekwad, Fatehsinh

Gandhi, Indira

Gandhi, K.L.

Gandhi, M.K.

Gandhi, Rajiv

Gayatri mantra

general elections

1951

1957

1967

George V, King

Germany’s invasion of Poland

Gharelu Library Yojna

Gokhale, Hari

Golding, Mr

goodness at work

Green Revolution

Grenadiers Regimental Centre

Gujarat Agro Industries Corporation

Hansa Tools Industries, Surat, Gujarat

Hemant Kumar

Hindu College, New Delhi

Hindu rate of growth

Hindu-Muslim relationship

Hindustan Earth Movers Private Ltd.

Hindustan Tractors (Tractors and Bulldozers) Limited, Vishwamitri, Baroda, Gujarat

Hindustan Tractors Limited (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertakings) Act, 1978

Hoffman, UK

honesty

housing and civic facilities

Hum bekhudi mein tum ko pukare chale gaye

Imperial Wireless Chain

imports

generating sets

restrictions by the government

thread rollers

tractors and bulldozers

Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR)

industrial relations

Industrial Revolution, India had missed the advantage

industrialization

Industries (Development and Regulation) Act, 1951

insurgency, North-East

intuition

ISGEC, Yamunanagar

Jacob, Rose

Jadeja, General Rajendrasinhji

Jafri, Ali Sardar

Jai jawan, jai kisan

Jaitley, Arun

Jeevan Kutir ka Geet

Jenner, Edward

Jind, Haryana

Johnson, Lyndon

joint family system in India

Kabir

Kala Paani

Kamla

Kapoor, Raj

Karnal District Rural Development Agency

Kataria, Mr

Kedia, V.K.

Kelvinator

Kesarlal

Khanna, Naman

Kheda, Gujarat

King George Royal Indian Military Colleges

Krishnan, Mr

Kulkarni, P.S.

Lal Chand

Lal, Laxminarain

Lala Ram

land ceiling laws

landholdings, shrinking

Lavasa, Abir

Lavasa, Anita

Lavasa, Avny

Lavasa, Ishwar Singh

Lavasa, Novel

Lavasa, Pushpa (Phoolabai, Amma)

Lavasa, Rachit

Lavasa, Rajendra (Raju, Bhaisahab)

Lavasa, Udai Singh (Bauji)

birth

contentment

diary

‘duty first’

early life

early riser

education, journey to Europe

faith in God

faith in humanity

far-sightedness

hardships

health

hearing problem

helpful

Hindi lover

honesty and steadfastness

moved to Faridabad from Baroda marriage and pension; minimalistic

orphaned life

passed away

philanthropy

premonitions in dreams

professional integrity

punctuality and discipline

retirement

simplicity, truthfulness, and fearlessness

soft-hearted

unemployment

unorthodox ways

values

Laxmi Vilas Palace, Baroda, Gujarat

Lekhram, Pandit, Shrishti ka Itihas

Lhasa rebellion, Tibet

life expectancy

literacy rate

Lukhy

Mahendragarh, Narnaul

Mahendragarh public library

Make in India

Management–labour relations

management practices

Mangeshkar, Lata

Mani, R.S.

Mao Zedong

Mata Din

Meenaxi

Mahmud Begada, Muslim sultan

Mehta, Jivraj Narayan

Mehta Motors

Mehta, Sanat

Menon, Krishna

Merchant of Venice

military schools in India

Moliere, The Physician in Spite of Himself

Motokov Praha (Zetor) Czechoslovakia

Muhammad Ghori

Namku Chu River

Nanak Ram

nanha munna rahi hoon…..,

Naqvi, Corporal

Narang, G.C.

Narayan, Jayaprakash

Narbada

Nasirabad

Nathu La, Sikkim

National Ball Bearing Company (NBC), Jaipur

National Smallpox Eradication Programme

Naubat Rai

Naxalism

Nayak, Mr

Nayak, S.P.

Nehru, Jawaharlal

New Industrial Township (N.I.T.) Faridabad

Non-Alignment Movement

non-cooperation movement

North-East Frontier Railway

Ochterlony, David (Nasir-ud-Daula)

onion crisis in India

Operation Gibraltar

Padh, Harish

Padh, Malti

Padosi

Pakistan and India, war, 1965

Pakistan Army

Palwal, Haryana

Panchmukhi Shiksha

Panchsheel accord

Parikh, Mr

Parmanand

Partition and communal violence

Pashabhai Colony

Pashabhai Patel & Co., Bombay

Patel, B.D.

Patel, Chandrakant

Patel, Ghanshyambhai

Patel, Neerubhai

Patel, Niranjan

Patel, Pashabhai

Patel, Rameshbhai

Patel, Rashmikant

Patel, Vallabhbhai

Patil, V.H.

Pavagadh

Jain temples

Kalika Mata temple

Pediwal, Mr

Phool Chand

Phoolabai. See Lavasa, Pushpa

plague epidemic in Nasirabad, 1860

Polak, C.E.

politics

Pollock, Wing Commander

pollution

postal system

poverty alleviation programmes

poverty and deprivation

power shortage in Haryana

Pradip, Kavi

Pratap Bhogilal

Premchand

Premier Automobiles, Maharashtra

Prithviraj Chauhan

Public Law (PL 480) wheat import from United States

public sector

Quit India Movement

Rachitech Engineers

Radhakrishnan, S.

Radhe Shyam

railways network

Rajagopalachari, C.

Rajan, Mr

Rajmahal

Ram Sarup

Ramalingam

Ramayan for children

Ramses V, King

Ranchi

Rasuli

river ecology, impact of urbanization and industrialization

roll call system in military schools

Royal Air Force

rural mechanization via joint ventures

Sainik Schools Society

Sampoornanand

Samyukta Vidhayak Dal

Sangam

Satyarth Prakash

Sayani, Amin

Sehgal, Mr

Shah Alam II

Shantabai

Shanti

Shastri, Hiralal

Shastri, Lal Bahadur

Shriram Mills of Bombay

Sikkim

acceded to India

Singh, Chaudhary Hukam (Barkhandi sahib)

Singh, Kalyan

Singh, Kesar

Singh, Mohan

Singh, Mohinder

Singh, Parvinder

Singh, Shankar

Singh, Umrao

Singhal, Shyamji

Sladak, Mr

SMS Medical College Jaipur

Sobjohn, Lieutenant Colonel

social values

Socialist Party

Son of India

Stark, S.J.M.

State Bank of India, Damoh, Madhya Pradesh

Stevenson, Robert Louis

Subhash

superstitions

Swatantra Party

Taneja, Gian Prakash

Taneja, Harsh

Taneja, Shakuntala (Badijiji)

Tansen

Tapti

terrorism

thermal efficiency

thread rollers

Tibet, Chinese assertion

Tichy, Mr

Time and Motion study

Tito, Marshal Josef Broz

tractor manufacturing

Tractors and Bulldozers Private Ltd. See Hindustan Tractors Limited

trade unionism

Triloki Nath

Tripartite Pact

Trivenibai

Tulsidas

United Nations Security Council

Upkar

urbanization

Vadodara (Baroda)

formally acceded to the Dominion of India

Vaid, J.C.

Vanraj Chavda, Rajput king

Vastacyil, Mr

Veera

veil

Vidyaben

Vikram

Vishwamitra

Vishwamitri river

Vivekananda Rock Memorial

Walton, Lahore

White Revolution

work culture and professionalism in London

World War I

World War II

Yugoslavia

Zbrojovka Brno, Czechoslovakia

Zetor Tractors Limited, Czechoslovakia

About the Book

The world consists mainly of ordinary people leading simple lives. Their stories remain unheard as they haven’t been written about. But their lives inspire because they are a vindication of certain lasting values that survive in every society and keep us connected with the unseen forces that govern us.

In An Ordinary Life, former Election Commissioner of India Ashok Lavasa tells one such warm story. He weaves the experiences of his father, Udai Singh, into the narrative of a fast-changing India to show how his Bauji’s principles served as a moral compass in his life — and can in ours too. Through a series of incidents, he explores the virtues of honest living and illustrates that it is possible to prosper in a world of rising aspirations and cut-throat competition while preserving one’s ideals.

Reflective and philosophical, An Ordinary Life is imbued with the grounded wisdom of an earlier Indian generation and its way of life, which is both ordinary and extraordinary, unique and universal at the same time.

About the Author

A sports enthusiast, an avid reader, a passionate traveller in love with nature, a compulsive writer who has an eye for photography, Ashok Lavasa is also a former civil servant.

He was born in Jaipur, received his primary education in Gujarat, completed his schooling at the Belgaum military school, studied at Delhi University for his master’s in English literature, obtained his MPhil from Madras University and went to Southern Cross University in Australia for his MBA.

An IAS officer of the 1980 batch, Lavasa served in various capacities in his cadre state Haryana and in the Government of India. He was Secretary in the ministries of Civil Aviation, Environment, Forest & Climate Change, and Finance. After retiring as the Finance Secretary of India, he served as one of the three Election Commissioners of India overseeing the 2019 general elections. He resigned from the post in August 2020.

He is currently Vice President of the Asian Development Bank in Manila, Philippines.

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First published in India in 2021 by

HarperCollins Publishers

A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India

www.harpercollins.co.in

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Copyright © Ashok Lavasa 2021

P-ISBN: 978-93-5422-317-4

Epub Edition © June 2021: 978-93-5422-423-2

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

Ashok Lavasa asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Cover design: Gavin Morris

Cover image: Unsplash

www.harpercollins.co.in

HarperCollins Publishers

A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India

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