When I was eight years old, Simran, my neighbor, told me that if you recite the Mool Mantra every day, God will bless you with everything you desire. So, I recited the Mool Mantra for the next 50 years without fully understanding it because it is in Punjabi. Anyway, by hindsight, it appears God was looking after me at every step in my lifetime, leading to total contentment and fulfillment of all desires beyond all my expectations.
My parents were illiterate. My mother only spoke Punjabi and my father could only read and write Urdu. I was admitted to Mrs. Julian’s elementary school, an Anglo-Indian, English medium school, she ran with her two daughters whom we all addressed as Roma aunty and Terry aunty. From the first day at school, right next to me sat Lalith, a Tamil boy whose father was a Barrister from London and mother a college graduate. Lalith lived one block from our apartment and we became lifelong friends and he became my English teacher and coach.
Lalith and I, coming from Mrs. Julian’s elementary school, got admission easily into La Martiniere for boys Calcutta, the premier school for English, Anglo-Indian boys with English teachers and affiliated with the University of Cambridge. To obtain your Senior Cambridge school certificate, you had to pass English language, English Literature, Maths, and Science subjects. With the British system of education in the colonies, if you failed in one subject, you had to take the following year’s exam to obtain your school leaving certificate.
Mr. Vyse was our English teacher and later became the school principal. He was not interested in teaching. Statesman, the daily newspaper, had a weekly column on Mondays, ‘The Week in Review’. In class, Mr. Vyse would read the weekly column and said we should write English the same way. He did not give us essay writing assignments because he would have to correct them. I did not read any books because there was nobody to take me to the library. I learned English by reading comics like Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, and Dale Evans. Lalith, my friend, excelled in English because of his parental help and guidance. In my final school exam, I got a D, the failing grade for the English language.
Macbeth and Merchant of Venice were the designated Shakespearian plays for the 1959 Literature examination. Shakespeare’s antiquated language was driving me crazy. But there was a silver lining. Lalith would prepare notes in plain English and give them to me. With his help, I could get a C in English Literature to pass the final school certificate examination.
I had no help available for my Maths and Science subjects. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. So, I invented a self-learning system. We used to have the annual exam in the chapel with all grades in the same hall. When I was in grade 8, I would get the question papers from the seniors in grade 9 and solve them in the coming years and be ready for the next year’s examination. This self-learning system was so successful that I obtained an A for all Math and Science subjects in the final school certificate exam. However, when the final exam results were announced, I failed the English language subject and got a second division.
The principal noted, “Had he secured better marks in the English language in the Cambridge School Certificate Examination, he would have been awarded a First Division pass.”
Mr. Vyse, who was the principal now, did not realize that he was our English teacher responsible for this outcome. But it appears God was looking out for me because there was no adverse effect in my life moving forward.
The self-learning system was so good that I got admission for Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; the premier engineering institution in India without coaching. Repeating the self-learning system at the Indian Institutes of Technology, they awarded me a full scholarship inclusive of tuition, room, board, and was the topper in the 1965 Electrical Engineering batch class. Again, God was watching out for me because, unexpectedly, I was awarded the best academician from Nehru Hall Residence in 1965.
For my Master’s Degree, I applied to Imperial College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Illinois Institute of Technology, and needed confidential recommendations from my professors. Mr. Gopal Ratnam gave me a four-line recommendation saying that Masters in Electrical Engineering education was available in India and there was no need to go abroad. He felt we had received a free engineering education paid for by the Indian government and were now abandoning our country. In the end, I only got admission to the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and my father had to get an 18% interest loan to fund my U. S. education.
In the IIT Dormitory, I was able to get a single room so that I could wash and dry my long hair and turbans on the weekends. For the long weekend during Thanksgiving in November, the Foreign Student’s adviser took us on a free bus trip to Washington DC and we toured all the important sights such as Kennedy’s Eternal Flame in the Arlington National Cemetery, Lincoln’s Memorial, Washington Memorial, Halls of Congress, the Supreme Court and the Smithsonian. At the Washington monument, there were two sets of bathrooms and drinking fountains, one set for Whites and the other set for Blacks only, showing that untouchability was practiced in the United States even though it had a fancy name—separate but equal. Back in Chicago, dark-skinned students were also called niggers.
After graduation, my immediate priority was to get a job because I had only $100 and did not want to burden my father with more loans. General Telephone and Electricals invited me for the first interview in a Chicago suburb.
The Manager said, “I like your grades and qualifications but you will have to get rid of your turban and beard.”
I was the first Sikh he had seen and thought I was a hippy. These conditions were unacceptable to me and I refused the job offer.
Mr. Jimmy Justice of Westinghouse Electric Research and Development Centre was in Chicago for campus interviews. Mr. Justice was an Englishman who had been recruited by the Americans from the British nuclear breeder reactor program. He had fought alongside Sikhs in World War II. He was impressed with my Cambridge School Certificate, Electrical Engineering B. Tech, and M. S. E. E. grades and immediately invited me for a second interview in Pittsburgh with the Department Director.
Successfully answering the technical questions posed by the three department heads, I accepted an offer of $800 per month as an Associate Engineer working on the control system design of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Rail Network.
Living frugally, saving 50% of my salary, I paid off my automobile loan and sent an imported tractor to my father in India to pay off the educational loan. Also, I attended evening classes for the MBA program at the University of Pittsburgh and funded my brother’s Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree at the same university.
Westinghouse Electric sponsored me for a permanent resident Green Card, and I had to register for the military draft. However, Westinghouse controlled the local draft boards, and I received a deferment as an essential worker exempted from military duty in Vietnam. This was very good timing because President Johnson, in 1965, had passed legislation opening immigration to Asians, including Indians.
On completion of my MBA and abolishing the military draft by President Nixon, I joined Bechtel, the engineering consultant for the San Francisco Metro, and moved to California. Bechtel wanted to send me to Sao Paulo, Brazil, as a member of their consultant’s team for the Sao Paulo Metro, which was a carbon copy of the San Francisco Metro. Before going to Brazil, I got my U. S. citizenship in one week as Bechtel was well-connected to the state department and one phone call was enough to set up all the appointments, complete the paperwork and attend the swearing ceremony.
After settling into an apartment in Sao Paulo, a few days later, I went to the American Center to attend a cultural event. Right next to me was seated a beautiful girl called Marta, who was a Sao Paulo University graduate and spoke English. We immediately connected, exchanged phone numbers, and started dating. Marta lived with her parents two blocks from the American Center and drove a Volkswagen. We went on dates to her family farmhouse and the beach in Santos. Following three months of dating that included Italian lunches with her family, sharing meals of chicken pies and exotic desserts, we decided to get married. We were married in a civil ceremony attended by family and friends. For our honeymoon, we visited India and enjoyed ourselves in a houseboat on the Dal Lake in Srinagar, Kashmir; visited the Taj Mahal, and finally met my parents in Kolkata.
Six months after our wedding, Marta had her first manic episode and was hospitalized. Marta was suffering from bipolar disorder and had previously had a depressive episode requiring hospitalization and electric shock treatment for recovery. She had inherited the mental illness gene from her grandmother, who had been institutionalized for the last 40 years. Around this time, experiments with lithium medication were being conducted to stabilize bipolar patients so that they could live normal lives. I told Martha that I did not want to have children to avoid passing the inheritable bipolar gene to our progeny along with the suffering and disability. Marta wanted to have children. So, we decided on an amicably friendly separation and divorce.
Returning to San Francisco after a seven-year overseas assignment, I was able to purchase a new car, a new townhouse with my savings and became debt-free by the age of forty. The only missing component was healthcare, which in the US is channeled through employers; available only to qualified employees, according to the employer’s need, because the workers’ employment can be terminated unconditionally at any time, any place at the employer’s convenience. My strategy to take care of the healthcare problem was to adopt a disciplined lifestyle of controlled food, sleep, exercise and to never get sick. By God’s blessings, I was able to avoid sickness until the age of 65, when the government-administered Medicare health insurance kicks in.
I was a regular at the local library. One day arriving at the Pleasant Hill library ten minutes before opening, I picked up a single book left at the gate as a donation. This was a 30-year-old book of Algebra solutions that I wanted to write based upon the self-learning system that had helped me in high school. Over the next five years, I prepared an encyclopedia of Science Technology Engineering Maths (STEM) solutions with fifty subjects and 50,000 problems and solutions and published it on the internet at www.stemez.com for the benefit of all students, parents, and teachers worldwide. It was included in the National Digital Library of India administered by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. This was the fulfillment of a 50-year-old desire conceived in high school.
My nephew was working in the Silicon Valley of California and tired of commuting two hours each way from Pleasant Hill. He wanted to move to Silicon Valley with his family. One Saturday, I drove to the Silicon Valley on a hunch and discovered a vacant, quarter-acre plot for sale in Cupertino. This plot was biking distance from the golf course, the best high school, library, post office, and was not supposed to exist. I made an offer on Monday and it was accepted beating many other competing offers. We were able to construct the main house for my nephew and an in-law unit for me. It appears God was looking out for me and I was provided this rare opportunity at the right time and place.
Time magazine reported that Nancy Reagan coordinated Ronald Reagan’s White House schedule based on astrological forecasts. This had been my life experience with significant events occurring as per planetary predictions. Nancy Reagan’s date of birth was July 6, 1921, and my date of birth was July 3, 1943, exactly 22 years apart when there was a new moon aligned with the sun at Aphelion’s distance furthest from the earth.
It is well known that the ocean tides on earth and a woman’s ovulation cycle are controlled by the orbit of the moon. Also, Jupiter has an 11-year orbit around the sun, which flips the sun’s magnetic field every 11 years for a 22-year complete cycle. The sunspots and radiation affect communication networks and ocean currents like El Nino in an 11-year cycle on earth.
It seems my life has been controlled by the universe in 22-year cycles. I was born in 1943, came to the US in 1965, became debt-free in 1987, and survived the 2009 financial crisis unscathed.
If I had to live this life again, I would not change a thing. The Mool Mantra teaches us that a spiritual life is not about the pursuit of transient happiness but about contentment, which is available to all humans independent of your race, class, nationality, religion, or economic status. All my desires were fulfilled beyond all expectations of this lifetime. There are no desires left to be judged in heaven, hell, or the next incarnation. Is it possible that I have been blessed by God with a contented life promised by the Mool Mantra?