How would you expect a son of Gujarati billionaire with worth 6000 crore diamond business expanded to 71 countries, to be? A rich spoilt brat with no value or respect for money or people. Right?
But Savji Dholakia, proprietor of Hare Krishna Diamond exports wanted his son
to understand life and how the poor struggle to get a job and money. No university can teach you these life skills except experience”, as he told to The Times of India, in a telephone interview.
For this reason, he sent his son of age 21 years, Dravya Dholakia who is currently pursuing MBA in United States, to Kochi on June 21, 2016 to survive on odd jobs for a month.
He was left for Kochi with three pairs of clothes and INR 7,000 which was supposed to be used in an emergency only.
In the interview, Savji told about the three conditions laid down by him,
I told my son that he needs to work for his money and
he couldn’t work at a place for more than a week; that
he can’t use his father’s identity nor use his mobile phone nor 7,000 taken from home for a month.
Savji is the same person who hit the headlines in 2013 for gifting jewelry, cars and flats to his 1200 employees as a token of gratitude for their contribution in company’s growth.
The survival was difficult as the son didn’t know Malayam and Hindi is scarcely spoken in Kochi. For first five days, he had no job or place to live and was rejected by around 60 places while seeking job.
He posited self as a student of class XII born in a poor family of farmers in Gujrat. His first job was in a bakery in Cheranellor, then in a call center, an outlet of McDonald’s and a shoe shop and earned approx 4000 in a month.
Dravya told that
he “never worried about money” but there he “was struggling to get a meal worth Rs 40. I needed another Rs 250 per day to stay in a lodge”.
When asked who all he remembered from his trip, Dravya said
Quite a few. One elderly gentleman photocopier who don’t charge for the documents which needed to be photocopied. When I asked him for money, He said ‘you can pay me back when you get a job’; A Security Guard, when I learnt that I was without job, he offered me his home and food; and my more than 30 colleagues at the Aarya Hotel.
In his own words;
biggest thing he learned was was empathy. Often in life we are too harsh with people without being considerate of their circumstances. My experience taught me to value a fellow human’s suffering.