Read Legacy: Letters from eminent parents to their daughters for Free Online

can’t create since to be able to create, you need reflection and isolation. On the other hand, if you are completely isolated, you become a sponge on society, living off it instead of giving back to it. So you must know how to strive a perfect balance between the two.
    Dear children, my father used to say that everything is rooted in action and that it is always better to lose yourself in action than in despair. The action in your life itself will then be the reward. The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson once famously said: ‘I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.’ My children, every moment, everything that you do—small, big, significant—must be enjoyed. Happiness and wealth is a consequence of your actions, your ventures.
    You should never be idle. Whatever you want to be in life, even if it were to become a cobbler, be the best one. Be obsessed with whatever it is that you want to do.
    Nobody owes you a free lunch. Inculcate an entrepreneurial spirit and learn to stand on your own feet. In a marriage today, you are more likely to survive if you have your own passions, hobbies and interests. Mutually respect each other. Keep yourself both interested and interesting. Find salvation in your work. We all have to work for a living, but regardless of what else you do, engage in physical labour every day. When I left the army, I soiled my hands every day in my farm, did hard physical work, milked cows, and mixed manure. Though over a period of time I took a divorce from that lifestyle, I know that the bricklayer, the welder, the mason, the waiter—these are the true sons of the soil.
    It is important to find good, meaningful work because it is integral to our happiness. Regardless of love, family, friendship, and other things in life, you will never be happy if you don’t have work. Make sure that the work must be one that enlarges the well-being of the community around you. Remember that your love for work should not be in conflict with the love for the community in which you have been raised.
    When you both were in college, I gave you the freedom to choose the subjects of your choice. I’m sure you remember what I had told you then: ‘While you are free to discover your passions, I won’t appreciate idleness of the mind and body.’
    Dear Pallavi, you went to the UK to do your masters in literature and while you were there, you were true to your word, working as a waitress in a restaurant to supplement the limited money I gave you. And you continued to do so for three years before leaving for Birmingham for a Masters in Media degree. Do you remember the day we were dining with the Chief Commercial Officer of Airbus, John Leahy and he offered you a one year global internship? You were confused and taken aback because your thesis was yet to be finished. I vividly remember telling you how it’s not important to have a degree but get the maximum experiences you can in your lifetime. And so you went and lived in France for a year, learning about another culture, another way of life. That internship enchanted you enough to make you want to do an MBA in Aerospace management. When I asked you to come back to India at that point, it was because I was starting my company, Deccan Air Cargo and Express Logistics, and I knew it would be a great way for you to learn about doing business in India—you saw the challenges, the joys and the frustrations of trying to float a start-up enterprise in this country.
    Despite having studied abroad and having been exposed to the best education models, I am convinced that life has been the biggest teacher for you. You were both born on our farm at a time when your mother and I were extremely young and just learning to handle the responsibility of two girls. You would accompany me on my bullock cart to the farm and into the village, learning to enjoy the greenery and fresh air, prancing around without shoes, and attending the