“Filling the unforgiving minute”

Rudyard Kipling’s poem If was one of my grandmother Khorshed Javeri’s favorites. She had a framed copy of it hanging in her study and recited it to me as a child. I was always in awe of her immense memory, her ability to recall a poem she had learnt as a school going child and effortlessly remember the words 70 years later. When I moved to London to attend university I would often get WhatsApp messages (always ending with "Love, Nans” in case I didn’t know who it was) asking me to look up a poem she had suddenly thought of, which she wanted to re-read. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of English literature and a voracious appetite for reading, whether non-fiction books on law and politics, or easy-reads like Jeffrey Archer and Agatha Christie. Some of my most cherished childhood memories are of her telling me stories before bed, spinning fascinating tales while I listened captivated.
Coming back to If, the reason I mention it here is because she embodied its words: "If you can fill the unforgiving minute/ With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run —/ Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it,/And — which is more — you’ll be a man, my son!”

Khorshed Javeri with Natalia Bilimoria

As a child I had no clue my grandmother was such a trailblazer. All I knew was that she was a lawyer and as she was my favorite person I guess that meant I would become a lawyer too. While growing up I found out she was not just a lawyer, she was so much more. Parsiana has already published an article on her many achievements (see "Spirit of steel,” July 7-20, 2021), so I won’t reiterate them here. What I will say is, despite my grandmother being an award winning student at university, the first woman in the Tata Administrative Service (TAS), a director of Citibank India in the 1990s, and a regular columnist with The Economic Times for decades, she remained humble and gentle, dedicating her time and expertise to many philanthropic causes, including active involvement in the Education Audiology and Research Society (EAR) and the J. J. Dharamshala as a trustee, as well as donating the proceeds of the sale of her books to help educate underprivileged girls.
She treated everyone with respect and kindness. She endeared herself greatly to her staff, involving herself in their lives and celebrating their birthdays with cake and flowers and even sagan. She was able to transform from a fiery lawyer with a quick wit and a sharp mind to a loving friend and relative who could spend hours on the phone, listening to people’s woes and making them feel heard and appreciated. With her empathy she was able to relate to all sorts of persons, and when she passed away the comment we heard most often was how much they would miss talking to her on the phone and seeing her friendly face.
I always told my friends that my grandmother had a more active social life than I, her 20-something granddaughter. I was only half-joking. After my grandfather passed away, she made it her mission to be as busy as she possibly could. She immersed herself in the Willingdon Club Senior Citizens’ subcommittee, organizing events and coordinating functions as though she had spent her life socializing in a ballroom as opposed to strategizing in a boardroom. She learnt to play Mahjong with her friends. She wrote books which would be re-printed due to high demand, and articles which would be circulated across social media. She reacquainted herself with her TAS colleagues, and collaborated with them to tackle social and economic shortcomings in India. She became a world traveller at 80 years of age, visiting Spain and Portugal, as well as Sri Lanka, with her Rotary club. She made annual 20-hour trips to America all on her own to meet her son, with trepidation, understandably, but also with courage and determination.
The one thing my grandmother never lacked was determination. She always told me I could do anything I set my mind to, and there is no doubt she believed that of herself. She became the most influential person in my life without me ever realizing. She helped me write my first cheque, fold my first bed-sheet, bake my first cake and write my first story. She gave me my fierce independence and enduring ambition. She never let my self-belief waver because her belief in me never faltered. In school we had to write an essay about our role model; without hesitation I wrote about my grandmother. In job interviews when I was asked why I wanted to be a lawyer I always said it was because my grandmother was one. I was born with the immense good fortune to have such a loving presence in my life who never took no for an answer, who never backed down from a challenge and who never let success make her lazy or arrogant. Hers is a story of triumph, one of grit and strength of character. So, years from now, when my children ask me for a bedtime story, I won’t have to make up tales of wonder, I can just tell them the story about the real-life superhero who raised me, my grandmother.