Page 16 - Demo

16 JANUARY’19-JUNE’19
THE REVIEW
PUNE AGM 2018
entrepreneurship. It’s the new career for Anglo- Indians; that’s what many people are going into. I think that more and more young people should go into entrepreneurship. My friend Colin Brown has several beauty salons in Nasik! Jason O’connor
of Mumbai is an entrepreneur in real estate in Mumbai. There are so many sitting in this hall itself. Preston Johannes: he’s a busy entrepreneur in Delhi. Entrepreneurship is very much on the move. Please don’t discourage those children; try to move them into some other field - but only if you are quite certain that they are not cut out for academics.
That brings me to the last point, which is to do with the Association and the community. This community, and therefore this Association, made a historic blunder. I am the successor to some great leaders: Sir Henry Gidney, according to
me, the most intelligent Anglo-Indian ever born. He had vision, but he was more intelligent than a visionary. Dr Gidney was born in the Railway colony of Igatpuri, and from there he went on
to other places. And I think that was part of his education: Igatpuri, Bangalore, Mumbai, and
he went to medical college in Calcutta, then he went abroad—that was his education. Mr Frank Anthony: If I desire to have one quality of Gidney, it’s his intelligence; one quality of Anthony, it’s his courage and his vision. When I am feeling a bit confused about what I should do, Mr Anthony looms large in front of me. He says, ‘What’s wrong with you? Go for it!’ The intelligence of Gidney, the courage and vision of Anthony, the softness and gentleness and the compassion of Major General Williams—a beautiful and wonderful human being who cared. He was really an officer and a gentleman. And Neil O’Brien—a person who had many boxing bouts with this President-in- Chief—his knowledge, what he knew, that was his greatest strength. And then Air Marshal Keelor: He is going to be 85 on the seventh of December, and his brain works like one of those jets that he
sat in; his mind works really fast, that’s his special quality.
But we have made a historic blunder, friends, as an Association and therefore as a community. Because according to me, no offence to the
others who have small groups in some states,
the Association is the community. The day the Association breaks up, dies down; the day the Association says, ‘We are south, you are north,
he is east, and they are west,’ the day we do all this, the Association is over and the community is over, the party is over. You’ll have your individual parties, you’ll have your individual things going on, but there will be no community. Because
we made a historic blunder: We did not think ahead. We did not engage our youth; we ignored our youth and pretended they were not going to live here... that they were all going to leave the country. And for me, that’s the historic blunder. We are rectifying this historic blunder. You saw for yourself the youth on the stage yesterday. They are coming in numbers - to our AGMs, NYMs - and getting more and more involved in Association and community matters. The historic blunder that the community made is now being rectified. So, youth, whenever you meet a senior person
or an older person, you’ve got to look into that person’s eye and say, ‘Thank you, you raise me up’. And whenever we older people look into a young person’s eyes, we should also say, ‘You raise me up; you inspire me, you motivate me, you are getting yourself more educated than me, you’re more focused than I was. I not just love you—because I’m your parent—I respect you.’
It’s time elders respected young people, just as young people should respect elders.
Friends, I have been really blessed in my life because I had a very open upbringing. I used to go to the puja in front of our home to help them with the bhashaan or visarjan. I’d finish off over there and then rush to church because it was a Sunday.