caption that sounds interesting but
that’s the kind of half truth
advertising sometimes teaches us the
whole truth is that I have no great
secret to share
and my diversity is very limited and
best what I want to be saying today will
be a tribute to my mentors and some
other important influences in my life
since theatre has been a major influence
let me express my own personal sentiment
by quoting a line from a play it’s from
a streetcar named desire by Tennessee
Williams in which the character Blanche
says I’ve always depended on the
kindness of strangers
one such stranger is my role model he
was born in Italy he has a CV that will
make most of the series pale in
comparison he was a painter sculptor
architect musician mathematician
scientist engineer inventor and
anatomist botanist geologist and a
writer he conceptualized a helicopter in
the calculator though he lived in the
15th century two of his works the Mona
Lisa and the Last Supper are among the
most famous paintings of all time his
drawing of the Vitruvian Man inspired
the graphic for this model you know he
is right Leonardo da Vinci is my iconic
mentor he was what is known as a
polymath that is someone who is
multifaceted and has a vast knowledge in
many diverse subjects the concept of a
polymath thrived during the Renaissance
in Europe based on the belief that
people must enhance their knowledge to
the maximum extent possible in as many
subjects as possible in both the arts
and the sciences
since it’s extremely difficult to
achieve excellence in multiple fields
the word polymath also has a slightly
unflattering connotation as a jack of
all trades and a master of none in fact
someone asked me a little while ago why
I chose to become an actor in a
screenwriter
despite being qualified for other
professions but I suppose it must have
all started with me as a kid sitting in
a dark cinema watching all those
wonderful images and stories unfold on
the screen and also the fact that I made
my first stage appearance at the age of
five and I haven’t stopped since
despite the butterflies in the stomach
each time I step on stage I guess we
performing artists are born masochists
incidentally my first starring role was
in the third standard and the st.
Francis DeSales school in Nagpur in a
play called the real princess I played
the king’s daughter years later in high
school I played a dancing Fisher woman a
cross-dressing I suppose came naturally
to me but that is not to say I have a
gender bias
I have also played male characters but
seriously I do believe in equality and
theater has been something through which
I’ve always tried to express my views in
fact last September a play that I
directed was chosen to commemorate 50
years since the decriminalization of
homosexuality in the UK and we stated
that the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in
London but coming back to life in school
since even the Battle of Waterloo was
won on the playing fields of Eton why is
it that some students emerge more equal
than others when it comes to
extracurricular activities like sports
music drama and public speaking while it
can be attributed to inborn talent or
DNA I think it also has a lot to do with
the atmosphere of facilitation and
encouragement provided by grandparents
parents teachers during this formative
stage in one’s life
I call them the bedrock mentors and
since I enjoyed doing plays and watching
movies and reading books I expressed a
desire after high school to either study
English literature with the ultimate aim
of doing a doctorate and teaching or to
go to the Pune Film Institute my
maternal grandfather davon Shah was a
screenwriter himself and being a
frequent collaborator with the legendary
filmmaker V Shantaram he called upon
some stalwarts of the film industry to
give me career advice but ironically
these well-meaning elders sold me the
merits of a secured technocratic career
vis a vie an unpredictable artistic one
surprisingly I agreed without too much
fuss maybe because this sagacious advice
came from people are held in high esteem
one could call them venerable mentors
incidentally a dear friend of mine in
school who was also my peer mentor first
planted this da Vinci thought in my hand
and I remember feeling wistful when he
told me that he would be graduating in
the arts so with slightly heavy heart I
embarked on a journey to study
mechanical engineering and the national
institute of technology into our Kela
with the promising future option of
joining the family business and setting
up a scooter factory but am I finally
err one of my seniors was also a peer
mentor convinced me to take a business
school entrance exam and I was selected
for the MBA program in neck salon in
Jamshedpur and I grabbed the opportunity
so much for scooter manufacturing I must
mention here that theater cinema and
literature continued to fascinate me and
I kept enhancing my knowledge of the
arts even as I was specializing in
technology and business and there were
enough opportunities to do so both on
the campus and outside of the townships
thanks to some chance meetings with
accidental Mentors
and I was fortunate in this because I do
believe that the human
must be high on all educational agendas
if we are to equip young people for the
economies of the future today some of
the best companies consider empathy
creativity and communication as the most
important soft skills for employability
and these are all qualities cultivated
by the arts and so in a similar vein
Theater became the mainstay of my own
personal development process to
understand the human condition and to
this day it has been a preoccupation
along with everything else that I may
have done now let me tell you about an
incident without which this tribute to
my mentors would be incomplete it was
towards the end of my last term at XLR I
and the only remaining academic
milestone was the wiva a faculty member
who I suspect had some issues with me
was on the panel I was a bright enough
student and I thought I acquitted myself
pretty well in the in the wine bar until
I was told that I was one of only two
people at the Institute who would be
subjected to what was known as a Reviva
two years of a delightful academic
experience who were reduced to
despondency and a sense of low self
esteem and then whether it was the grand
design of Providence or the
decision-makers at the Institute I’ll
never know but the Reviver panel
consisted of a meek faculty member of
the production department the Dean of
XLR I who was a Jesuit priest and
professor Baldev Sharma was a legend in
the field of organizational behavior who
incidentally was a great admirer of my
work on stage so the production
professor asked me about the functions
of the D G snd that is the directed
general of supplies and disposal we used
to be the centralized procurement
division of the government of India
I know that now but then
so the other says I already was this
time I really genuinely messed up the
wiva I just completely blanked out and
then I stuttered and said that it has
something to do with salvage and
reclamation which obviously was a
ridiculous answer so we had a stunned
panel for a moment and and then came the
good-natured laugh with Professor Sharma
and he said Akash you’ve always had a
great sense of humor in a way you’re
right it has something to do with
Salvage and reclamation what not as my
turn to get stumped and for some reason
the others on the panel thought it
prudent not to disagree with his cryptic
comment so the rest of the wine have
been meant in blur and when the word it
came out that I had passed it came with
a remark with said weakness none
observed now this could well be a case
study about a resentful supervisor
subordinate struggling for approval and
an empathetic boss who believes that
despite the failings there is potential
in every human being but another reason
why I mentioned this episode is because
it exemplifies an ethics debate in
society and organization was dr. Baldev
Sharma morally right in showing grace
and letting me get away with my moment
of incompetence I’d leave that for you
to judge but for me he will always
remain what I have termed as The Artful
mentor and then after my MBA I moved to
Bombay and joined Tata Motors I worked
there for eight years reporting to some
of the finest corporate heads in the
Tata group and they were my first
vocational mentors paternalistic in
their management style meanwhile I had
already made inroads into the Bombay
theatre scene and soon I met Saturday of
Dubey one of the best theatre gurus in
the country who took me under his wing
and he was a game-changing mentor for me
and this was around the time that
Jennifer and Shashi Kapoor build the
profes theater
which became my second home as it were I
got drawn into a spate of frenetic
theater activity that consumed many
hours a day but it was all a purely a
labor of love in fact in all these years
after nearly a thousand performances on
stage in India and abroad I’ve hardly
ever earned any money from the theater
eventually my work in the theatre did
lead to assignments in films and
television and I got a chance to work
with creative vocational mentors the
who’s who of the film industry and this
sort of fulfilled my early schoolboy
aspiration of being in the movies though
it was without the formal education at
the Pune Film Institute and parallelly I
will also took a part-time sabbatical
for my MPhil and PhD and became an
adjunct faculty member at the Tata
Institute of Social Sciences and this
also sort of fulfill my foremost
aspiration of doing a doctorate and
teaching though it wasn’t in English
literature like I tell people in my
vocational counseling sessions be very
careful about what you want because you
might get it frankly I believe I’ve had
all these diverse experiences because of
a series of Lucky accidents much like
what Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland that if you
don’t know where you’re going any road
will get you there of course down this
road there were opportunities then I
waned off to coach Shakespeare there is
a tide in the affairs of men which taken
at the flood leads on to fortune and we
must take the current when it serves or
lose our ventures but having said this
there is one guiding principle that I
believe in that the ideal vocation is
one where you get to do something that a
you passionately want to do and be that
you are very good at doing it’s a
combination of both these factors is
what they call juggle Burnley in Indian
classical music
and it goes beyond what Walt Disney said
then if you can dream it you can do it
but only if you are good enough to do it
and in the end you need to be blessed
with the right mentors they are the
angels who give you wings and this is
the first time I’m making this
presentation it’s part of a research
project that I’m involved in and I call
this model mentor officers thank you
very much ladies and gentlemen
[Applause] [Music]