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Kudos to women's power

Dr Dhananjay (Jay) Datar

Women are excellent managers by nature and can become successful entrepreneurs. They have the essential abilities for a business like saving for the future, practical thinking, meticulous planning, timely execution and making any task successful and enjoyable. On March 8, every year, on International Women’s Day, women are celebrated and encouraged for empowerment, but I don’t feel any need to do that because every woman is like a powerhouse that provides continuous energy and inspiration.

For me, my source of inspiration is my mother. She inculcated in me the qualities like honesty, hard work, determination, patience and perseverance and lived her life with these virtues. She had a great fighting spirit. I still remember a lot of incidents of her strong willpower. During my childhood days, once my father became unemployed for more than six months. He spent his entire savings earned from the previous job for the household. Unfortunately, a time came when he became penniless. He candidly confessed this to my mother. She thought for a moment and vowed not to let her family go hungry even once. She had the habit of saving small packets of rice and lentils for any unexpected or adverse situation. That evening she prepared a meal from it and served us. The next day, my father got a call from another overseas employer and was asked to join immediately. My mother calmly handed her gold chain to him and told him to sell it to collect the required money for his journey. My father joined duty immediately, but before leaving, he requested a nearby grocery shop owner to supply rations of two months to our family on credit. He assured the person of settling the entire bill once he had got his first salary. A woman can save her family in every calamity. She never gives up easily.

Another woman to whom I owe my gratitude is my wife Vandana. She has always supported me and stood firmly behind me in every challenging situation. A couple of years after our marriage, realising her talent and skill in house management, I insisted she joins the business. But she thoughtfully declined the proposal as she had to fulfil the duty of a housewife first. She assured me that she would join the business at an appropriate time in the future. True to her words, she joined our company only when our children became independent. She proved her mettle with equal devotion. As a result of her disciplined financial planning and prudent decision making, our company achieved 400 per cent growth and that too during a challenging time when the business sector was passing through a global recession. Women have the willpower to turn anything from impossible to possible.

I like an apt quote by Nancy Rathburn- A strong woman understands that gifts such as logic, decisiveness and strength are just as feminine as intuition and emotional connection. She values and uses all of her gifts.

Dr Dhananjay (Jay) Datar is the chairman and managing director of Al Adil Trading