Yasaswy was an extra-ordinary visionary

V Pattabhi Ram

The iconic N J Yasaswy, the man who co-founded ICFAI, the Rs 5,000 crore value proposition is no more. If there was someone who oozed optimism, big-time thinking and who dared to execute them irrespective of opposition it was Yasaswy.

He touched my life tangentially and I have been richer for it.

During my industrial training I was fed on a daily dose of his brilliance that when I qualified I gave up the opportunity to work in plum jobs in the public and private sector (six job offerings in some of India’s top companies) to join his organization; not ICFAI. I spent a little over a year with his consulting and other engagements, had minimal interaction with him as his priorities lay elsewhere, but made a few friendships that lasted a life time. I was extremely rich by the off-beat experience there and till date have not regretted the choice.

Later, as a freelancer, writing columns and stories for a city magazine I met up with him after a talk that he delivered at Chennai, wrote an article, which he apparently liked so much that he invited me to write a book that would chronicle the growth of ICFAI. Yes, by then he had moved his full energy on the fledgling institution that over the years grew to become a monument of what ambition can deliver. That was my first book.

Since then I had been in touch with him on and off; people said that it was difficult to work with him from close quarters and that I was lucky because I worked with him from a distance. He was charismatic, a great motivator who had his limitations but when the balance of life is measured I would vote him as a visionary who lived his dream and was years ahead of his time.

Widely read, he was a mesmerising speaker who could hold the audience in thrall. He once told me when we were at the lounge in the Chennai Airport that so much can be done but there is only so much time to do it. On another occasion he said that economic liberalization was the best thing to have happened to the country and to him and that in 1992 he decided that he would spend all his time in transforming CFAI into a large institution.

Yet behind that ferocious ambition was a simple man. He once invited me to lunch at his home and I watched with rare astonishment him picking up his plate post lunch and washing it.

He indicated people should work till they turn 70. He has left long before that and leaves behind a huge network of educational institutions that will stand testimony to the adage, “What can be imagined can be achieved.”

In one week we have lost two icons.