By Xavier Augustin
The story of Captain Gopinath and Deccan Air is a story of endurance. Imagine a soldier returning to his home town where he got some land rewarded by the government. Imagine the scene of this youth looking at his patch of barren earth that he dreams of converting into coconut grove. Imagine a man pitching a tent and starting to dig – all alone. Imagine a scene where his prospective bride comes to visit him in his tent in the field and actually loves it. Imagine spending 10 years tilling the land and watering the trees with the help of donkeys. Imagine the glee when Rolex recognizes his contribution in organic farming and rewards him with a watch. Imagine him leaving the farm to Bangalore to start a new company offering corporate chartered flights with helicopters and from there on to start India’ s first low cost airline, Air Deccan.
The moral of the story: What matters is not how much resources you have but how resourceful you are.
Robert Frost’s ‘Birches’ comes to mind :
“I should prefer to have some boy bend them (branches)
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them”