I received an award from the India Business Group recently. The UK India relationship has held a special place for me since working in the US Congress as Navdeep Suri the now Indian Ambassador to UAE will recall.
The Congressman I worked for tried valiantly to warn the US President and State Department of the terrorist activities of India's neighbour and the nuclear proliferation to North Korea. But the Clinton White House was deaf. I've not done more important work since. That was 1994. We also blocked those who sought to divide India further.
At 29 the UK Foreign Secretary asked me to join the UK India Roundtable to advise the Prime Minister's of both countries on policies for closer ties. I still think they chose me by accident as I sat next to bank CEOs and Professors and industrialists as the youngest member there. I sought more Indian immigration to the UK and still do. No brainer. After all, what did my parents ever do for Britain but work tirelessly in manual jobs others were too proud to do?
The Department for International Trade at the recommendation of Lord Bilimoria asked me in 2005 to become a British Government Dealmaker for them to bring the best entrepreneurs and technologies of strategic importance to the UK from India and establish their HQ and secure jobs and investment into the UK. I said no. I need to focus on my then newly founded hedge fund I told them. I can't live on public service alone. I kept saying no.
The British Government has a way of persisting. I'm glad they did! That role expanded to today my covering all Asia Pacific. Whilst I'm poorer financially for it as my focus moved from my business to my country, as my Department for International Trade colleagues keep reminding me (and they literally laugh as they do!), there are more important things than the money in your pocket. I'll make it up to my wife and boy am sure.
So UK India from university over 20 years ago to today is indeed a special relationship for me...politically, commercially and philanthropically. I won't say I am humbled, because it was all along my duty to do all this as my family always taught me from when I was a child...pro patria is character. Duty is love as I tell my wife when she asks if I do out of duty or love. And besides, all those all nighters that you don't see as you juggle Government and business simultaneously working two jobs basically on three time zones...well no one weeps for you when you get the awards. But you have...for behind every award there are untold tears. Aekta would always worry why I would still have another hour of work at my desk in India or Singapore or Hong Kong at the same time as she was going to bed in the UK ( do the maths). And I would recount that lovely Will Smith quote..."me and someone get on a treadmill and one of two things will happen, either they're getting off first, or I will die on there).
My uncle accompanied me on a couple of trips and thought I was mental...that from the most workaholic man I know. "why do you kill yourself?" He would echo my wife's concerns. "I don't know any other way" I always reply.
None of this you do for recognition, you couldn't sustain the years of toil without it, if it were for it. You do it because you can and believe in something, values, ideas that in a living room many years ago as a child your family told you about.
But it's bloody nice to get some recognition. So we shall celebrate over a quiet dinner and reminisce a while...for in the morning it will be back to work. And besides, never congratulate yourself too much...your choices and chances and circumstances were all good fortune anyway so thank the One you could be of use.
Thank you to the organisers for outstanding event with Home Secretary and to Nayan Patel for the kind backing. It's always lovely to be recognised and of course nice to tell your wife 'still got it baby' as I persuade her to stand as a Member of Parliament. But that's another story for another day...
