Saloni Meghani

A series of decisive moments have affected the life and times of R. Gopalakrishnan, the executive director of Tata Sons

A lovely thing to see:
through the paper window's hole,
the Galaxy
— Haiku master Issa Kobayashi (1762-1826)

The Japanese haiku is particularly well suited to express the flash of insight encapsulated here. James Joyce made such moments of revelation, or epiphanies, popular as a literary tradition. Mathematician Archimedes ran out naked from his bath crying ‘Eureka!’ after being struck by a principle of physics.

R. Gopalakrishnan, executive director, Tata Sons, also has what he calls his "click-click" or A-Ha moments.

He has a mental picture of the human mind as a 10-digit combination lock, to which the owner does not know the key. "Life is a search for this number," he says. "For a two-digit key, you can start from 00 and try the combinations to 99 and get a click somewhere. But a 10-digit combination is vastly more complicated. Adding to the complexity is the fact that this number is different not only for each individual but also for different subjects in the same individual. When the penny drops for me in a matter of spirituality may be different from when it drops in the matter of management."

One of Mr Gopalakrishnan's relatively recent A-Ha moments has, however, had an all-encompassing impact on his worldview. A downpour confined him to Tata Power’s Walvan guesthouse, where he was visiting with a friend he had lost touch with for 35 years. In a conversation that followed, his friend told him of his tie-up with an Australian oceanographer who, based on his experiences, had developed a theory about the role of turbulence in physical systems.

"Most of the time we try to suppress, manage, minimise or remove turbulence. We do this, for instance, in the transmission system of an automobile or in its suspension system. This oceanographer, however, believes that nature does not manage turbulence; it leverages it. The oyster shell is an example of this principle. It has a spiral form on the inside so that the animal can manoeuvre the turbulence the water brings in."

Mr Gopalakrishnan says this while tracing the grooves inside the cut oyster shell he has in his office. Pretty much like the surfer who does not try to tame the waves but rides them, and the skier who skis down the slope because he cannot change the mountain. Or like water that never comes down in a straight line but meanders.

"I realised then that efficiency means going from point A to point B in the shortest, straight line. Our conditioning makes us look for the most efficient way to do things. But nature looks for the most effective way."

Mr Gopalakrishnan wonders whether the spiral vortex is a better inspiration for life than linearity. "The environment is an external force that deflects our lives constantly and being on the straight and predictable line is the exception, not the rule." He remembers instances where his own life seemed to go off the planned track. But with hindsight he knows that going with the flow then had turned out very well in the larger scheme of things.

When Mr Gopalakrishnan was 16 his family moved out of Kolkata, where he was born and raised. He was set to shift to a hostel to finish his studies. But the large house from which they were moving out was under litigation. His father asked him if he would manage the legal procedure and dispose of all the furniture at the auctions after the family left. "When you are 16, going to furniture auctioneers, the Calcutta high court and the lawyers, instead of meeting up with friends, is no fun. But this experience may well have given me an early sense of responsibility."

Going to Saudi Arabia as the chairman of Unilever for the region at the age of 45 was another such breakthrough in his career. He was to take over around the time when war clouds were looming large over the Gulf region. "People back home thought I would die. This was a very unusual way to get started and my initial reaction was, why me? But my tenure in that area changed my whole perspective professionally. I realise that only with hindsight."

While he does not doubt that it is important to live with chaos and uncertainty, he feels that everyone’s journey should be towards the vortex of life’s spiral. For him at the central calm eye lie his values and spirituality.

"It is this calm eye that everyone approaches asymptotically. This means that we are always striving to reach it but we never arrive at the destination. All religions tell you this very thing in their own way. But then they start prescribing rituals. Here, you may or may not choose to follow."

Mr Gopalakrishnan himself has no inclination towards mindless observances. But he doesn’t reject them altogether either. "I am an agnostic as far as rituals are concerned," he says. He came to this conclusion at the age of 11, when he had his thread ceremony. He was told to do whatever the conducting priest did. If the priest muttered something, he repeated it. He was so engrossed in emulation that when the priest scratched his ear, he followed. "I realised then that I could carry the copying to a fault. But it would not have been polite to say I would not do anything he did either."

However, spirituality, Mr Gopalakrishnan believes, lies beyond rituals and ceremonies. "I believe in God and karma. Every day you enter credit and debit notes into your account and your conscience carries out the reconciliation periodically. The ‘chief auditor’ looks at this statement on judgement day. In your next birth, you get a second chance to correct things you didn’t manage well. While fatalists would see this as an excuse to give up, for me life is a set of options. What you do with the consequences of your choice determines the next account."

So fascinated is he by the choices that guide people’s lives that he has been reconstructing the A-Ha moments of his ancestors for a book tracing his family history. He vividly remembers the experience that set off his curiosity along this track.

"In 1984, I visited Vilakudi, my village in Tamil Nadu, after 30 years. I entered the Brahmin quarters of the village not expecting to recognise anybody. An old widow emerged from her thatched house and asked if I was looking for someone. I was surprised to see recognition dawn on her as she remembered my father's face. Before I knew what was happening, many distant cousins had swarmed around me. They opened the village temple behind my grandfather's house and held a special aarti for me. In that cavernous temple, with the bells clanging, I realised that this was where my family had prayed for 200 years. It was a click-click moment. Since then I have traced my family back to 1836 and written out 10 chapters of this book. I am hoping that my grandchildren will read this book and learn about how life was back then."

That he wants to leave behind his A-Has for future generations is no surprise. Sharing his moments of clarity and perspective with younger people is something Mr Gopalakrishnan has always cherished. In fact, his urge to provide 'clickable moments' for others is so strong that he would have liked to be a teacher and writer.

"The gravitational force towards teaching has been around right through my career, whether as a college student teaching underprivileged schoolchildren or an executive mentoring younger generations. I like to aggregate knowledge, not just in me but others as well, and share it. Even though you can’t pour a few glasses of water into the ocean and pretend you have enriched the ocean, if everybody pours into the ocean a few of the drops are sure to touch the boats."

But Mr Gopalakrishnan does not recommend pedantic sound waves for the ideal impact. He believes that he can touch a meaningful chord in someone else's mind only by involving them in experiences and anecdotes.

It is in this light that many of us reading this article may have our own A-Ha moments.

Uploaded on January 5, 2004