A few weeks back, I had written about how my father joined the Indian Army.
For those who missed it, let me give you a quick recap.
My father was born in 1947 in a small village in Tamil Nadu called Maangudi, which meant a dwelling place for deer. Back then it had around 15 houses, and today it probably has sixty.
Parthibanur was the nearest small town, and for the villagers of my father’s time, there was no life beyond Parthibanur.
By profession, my ancestors were shepherds. Kind of like Santiago in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, except we were better flirts and better husband material.
When my father entered PUC, which was equivalent to 12th standard then, his father gave him a simple offer.
“You clear PUC, I will let you study. If you fail, you help me with the 200 goats we have.”
If this had happened today, my grandfather would have been accused of putting too much pressure on a teenager, and the school may even have sent my father for trauma counselling.
But this was 1965, when people were tough and practical. If you passed, you continued to study and if you failed, the goats were waiting.
Unfortunately, my father failed PUC, and on the day the results came, he borrowed Rs 10 from his cousin sister and ran away from home.
With Rs 10 in his pocket, my father reached Madurai, saw a queue where able-bodied men were being selected for the defence forces, stood in that line, and joined the Indian Army in 1965.
Years later, in 1972, he would marry my mother, and in 1975, I would be born in Jamshedpur.
That is how I got my name and that is how I got my life as well.
And that is why sometimes I sit quietly and wonder: what if my father had not left Maangudi? What if he had stayed back with the goats?
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Families are shaped by events that happen in them. A property dispute, a love marriage, a feminist daughter-in-law entering into a patriarchal family, a land bought at the edge of the city just before the Airport is announced…it can be anything.
Our family was shaped by one failure. Because let us be honest, if my father had stayed back, he would have inherited the goats, and passed them on to me later.
And if I had inherited the goats, my LinkedIn profile today would not say ‘Founder of Firestorm Internet.’ It would say: Managing Director, Maangudi Goats Private Limited.
Don’t laugh at me. In my earlier article, I had already done the math and proved beyond reasonable doubt that those 200 goats would have multiplied many times to become 1,008,320 goats by 2026.
At the conservative price of Rs 15,000 per goat that translates to Rs 1,512 crores.
Today, instead of writing articles and hoping they would go viral, I could have been giving interviews.
“Mr Rajan, how did you build your goat empire?”
I would lean back and say, “It was not easy. We started with just 200 goats.”
The interviewer will continue, “And then what happened?”
“You know me…I believe in unlimited love, so I let every goat mate with the other.”
My method of making money based on ‘pure love’ will become a massive hit.
I would get called for conferences. My story of 200 goats to Rs 1,512 crores may even become a case study at IIM Ahmedabad.
Harvard Business Review would write: “The Maangudi Model: How the Rajans turned bleating into billions.”
But thanks to my father’s lack of vision, none of this happened. Instead of joining the army, he should have taken the goats to the pasture lands that lay sprawled just beyond the village fields.
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Before we see what my life could have been if my father stayed with the goats, lets see how my life transformed because he decided to leave his village.
It was very normal that my grandpa told my dad, “Okay, studies are not happening. Come, take care of goats.”
And to be fair, there is dignity in the goat life as well. But my father looked at the life waiting for him outside the village and decided he make a run for it. Which I thought was also fair.
I don’t think he knew what he wanted…he only knew he didn’t want the goats. However rich his that decision could have made his son fifty years down the line.
My father didn’t have a plan on what to do. All he had was that Rs 10….and I am guessing that was his plan.
Today, if I have only Rs 100 in my pocket, I won’t even leave my apartment. At max, I may go till the lift and come back, and I am sure by then I may be left with only Rs 50.
But he left his village. Look at how brave he was – no Google Maps, no mobile phone, no way to share his location with his parents, no way to send back a “reached safely” message.
That one act changed all of us.
Before my father left Maangudi, his world was probably till the edge of the small town called Parthibanur. After he joined the Army, his world became bigger – different states, languages, food, people, clothes, and different ways of living.
One village boy who could have become the owner of 200 goats became an Army man, and because of that we became an Army family.
And because we became an Army family, my mother brought us up almost single-handedly for long periods. And because she brought us up like that, we became her little jawans.
And because we became little jawans, I learnt to wash my own clothes, iron them, make rotis, make tea. Basically I became the proverbial cockroach – difficult to beat, unless you place me upside down on my back, in which case I can’t get up.
Life is connected in such strange ways.
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Now let’s look at what could have happened if my father stayed back to tend to the goats.
People think being a shepherd means standing majestically in a field while your goats are eating grass round you. I doubt it is that easy.
I have no experience…but common sense tells me that goats are geniuses. They are independent animals with no respect for hierarchy and with their own approach to life. Why else do you think we call Messis and Ronaldos of the world the GOAT?
Let us assume that despite knowing that it is going to be difficult, my father decides to not leave Maangudi. He either accepts his fate, or has a bigger plan…and joins my grandfather in the family business.
He wakes up early every morning, not because of Army discipline, but because he has to take the goats out to breakfast before the sun gets harsh. There won’t be any weekdays or weekends…for the goats will have to eat daily.
The grazing ground will replace the parade ground and instead of the roll call, it will be the goat count.
Over the years, my father would know every goat by face, he would know the lazy goat, the adventurer goat, why …he would even know which goat was dating which billy goat (the male goat).
My father would probably have become a respected man in the village. He would understand land, season, animals, patience, and because of all the time he would spend away from humans, he would understand the power of company.
And when the time was ripe, I would be born as the son of a goat man. I know the name is not as catchy as Spiderman, Ironman, Aquaman, etc…but then ‘goat man’ isn’t that bad either.
As ‘goat man’ he may even have had a chance to join the Avengers and save the World. After all men and women named after animals are the world’s superheros – Spiderman, Antman, Batman, Wolverine, Catwoman, Falcon, Hawkeye, etc.
Or maybe he could have been a super villain as well like Doctor Octopus, Lizard, Vulture, Rhino, Chameleon etc. If you didn’t understand these names…don’t worry. You aren’t young anymore.
As for my name…it could have been different.
Because my father had joined the Army, moved to Jamshedpur, and perhaps become more patriotic or more ambitious about secularism, he decided to name me Jamshed Velayuda Rajan. It is one name trying to represent many religions.
But if my father had stayed back in Maangudi, I would have been named ‘Aadu’ Rajan, which when translated from Tamil to English means ‘Goat’ Rajan.
My childhood would have also been different.
In real life, my Army man father was absent for long periods of time. If he had stayed back with goats, he would have been physically present.
But physical presence is not the same as availability.
He won’t have been able to tell his 200 goats, “Today I will spend quality time with my son, so please manage yourselves.”
So instead of waiting for my father to return from a border posting, I may have waited for him to return from the grazing lands.
My skills would have been the same…well, almost. Since my dad was an Army man, order had value in our house.
Shoes had to be polished, clothes had to be folded, beds had to be made, time had to be respected, work was worship, no work was beneath you…these were just some of the values we learnt.
And in the goat universe, I would have learnt the same skills but in different context.
But the biggest change would have been Rekha – I doubt I would have met her if my father had stayed back with the goats.
If my father had stayed with goats, maybe I would have married someone from a nearby village.
A nice, hardworking, practical girl who knew how to herd goats. She would know how to bargain with fodder suppliers, and also know which goat gives good milk.
And since she would be my wife, she may even occasionally say: “Don’t stand like that…..go and close the gate before the goats escape.”
So maybe even in the alternate universe my wife would still have been my boss. Some things are universal. But she would not be Rekha.
If I was into goats, my children would have also had different lives.
Rhea may not have gone to study culinary arts. Instead she may have started a company that sold goat milk and gourmet goat cheese in the nearby town of Parthibanur.
Ritwik would also be different. In the goat universe, instead of reading books about ISIS and asking complicated questions, he may have been sitting on a rock naming goats after world leaders.
“This one is Churchill because he looks stubborn.”
“This one is Stalin because nobody likes him but everyone is scared.”
“This one is Elon Musk because he keeps trying to jump over boundaries.”
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If my father had stayed back with the goats, I may have become a very different man – maybe more rooted, more practical.
Maybe I would have understood land, seasons, animals, and silence better than I understand how to build websites, and how Google search works, and why my wife is angry when she says, “Nothing.”
But I am not sure it would have been a better story than the one I have today.
Because if my father had stayed back, he may not have become the father I knew.
The father I knew was shaped by leaving the village – by the Army, by discipline, by distance, by border postings…and by carrying a life much larger than the one Maangudi had planned for him.
Staying with the goats would have been safe, but safe lives rarely become family legends.
Sometimes one man has to fail an exam, borrow ten rupees, walk away from two hundred goats, so that fifty years later his son can sit in front of a laptop and wonder what would have happened if he had not.
Every family has one decision that changes everything. In ours, it was my father deciding that uncertainty was better than inheritance. And that ten rupees was enough to buy a different future.