The Middle Class Mindset

When I was a child, the only class I knew was the class in schools. Later after I completed my college and was about to venture in to the “real” world in search of a job, it slowly dawned on me that we belonged to “middle class”.

I those days, there was only one middle class, unlike now, we have three variants of it, viz.,Lower- middle, middle-middle and higher-middle (strikingly similar to a car?). Accordingly, my house did not have a colour TV (up to 1987), I always saw my mother (a diminutive 4.50 feet something lady) behind a massive manual grinder, grinding dough, for the next day idlis and dosas. So that would mean we did not even have a grinder, mixie and the other common appliances that are part of any household today.

Breaking away from the physical realm and coming to the conceptual and imaginative one, being in business has been one of the earliest thoughts in my life.

In fact, I wanted to start a garage / spare parts shop, immediately after my father's retirement (my father is an automobile engineer).

But my father did not encourage the idea of a garage / spare parts shop but instead suggested tinkering work (where he would do the work himself), after some reluctance.

I can't really say whether his conservative background was holding him back, or lack of funds, or both. However, I remember very clearly that he did come up with the tinkering idea. I was just out of college then, and from a non-engineering background did not have an iota of an idea, what "tinkering" meant.

In my naivety, from a lay man's angle, I equated tinkering of a car to removing dents in a stainless steel utensil and instantly disliked the idea. Almost immediately, I forgot about business and started to hunt for a job and landed up in a job that paid me Rs.600 a month!! (1988). But thoughts about doing a biz used to crop up every now and then, more so, on my low days on the job.

Now, after joining the auto industry, I know that tinkering is one of the most important jobs in a Body Shop, it is very difficult to get good tinkers, and most importantly, there is lot of money.

Now, you might ask me – what is the use of thinking about that after working 25+ years, all the while, having day dreams of starting a business?  

I agree. But that smells of classic middle class! Doesn’t it?