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Lessons from the Past 137: The Common Touch
Walter Vieira 19 September 2025
Personal Finance
From the beginning of my working career, 60 years ago, I had been observing two kinds of people, especially in corporate life. Those who live their own lives—very private—and with the least connection with people lower down the rungs. And then some were up there—but had not forgotten the law of gravity. So they were comfortable up there and yet remained very grounded!
 
The managing director (MD) of the first company I worked for came through a special gate for his car and was directed to a private lift which took him to the corner office on the first floor. No one knew when exactly he came, or when he went. He met those he had wanted to meet, attended the meetings he needed to attend and was hardly seen by the staff.
 
There was also the personnel director, who was also up there in the hierarchy. But he was different. As his car passed by the bus stop in the evening, going home, he would stop the car and ask if he could give any three people a lift on the way into town. If some accepted, they would have a nice chat in the car till they got off.
 
I thought about this because there was a feature on Warren Buffett in a magazine I picked up. We all know he is among the richest men in the world. But he wears clothes he has had for many years, drives a car which is well over 10 years old (and not a luxury car), enjoys having a hamburger and Coke even at this age (and always has in the past) and lives in a home which is comfortable but not luxurious and where he has lived for many years. Despite his wealth, he remains grounded. He is not seen at high society parties or the turf club or at upscale hotels.
 
There are some others like him, even in India, like Azim Premji of Wipro, a great business success, with a very high valuation, both for himself as well as his enterprises. He is perhaps the highest contributor to public charities in India, especially in the cause of education. Yet his vice-presidents (VPs) in the company have better cars than what he drives. It is not unusual to sometimes see him getting out of an autorickshaw in his headquarters town, Bengaluru.
 
Such examples are the minority, everywhere in the world. Even with some limited success, one can be tempted to get insulated and isolated and lose touch with the world around us, and get surrounded by our own fairyland. We forget the final words of the great poem IF.  “If you can walk with Kings without losing the common touch, then you are a MAN, my friend.”
 
During periods in my life, I have been tempted to seek such insulation, but I have been lucky. I lived in an upper-class suburb in an independent home in Mumbai. I had no immediate neighbours in terms of ‘next apartments’, so the temptation was great.
 
In a building nearby lived a family with a child born with mental disability. From a young age, he seemed to bark continuously. It seemed he could not speak. This was the disability. The parents took great care of him.  Every morning and evening, he was brought down to the parking lot of the building and made many rounds around the building, all the time making these weird and loud noises. As he grew, the barking noise got louder as he walked around for exercise. The parents went through this for over 20 years with patience and love as a way of life. It was a burden that they carried—and they did so, graciously and gracefully, every day. When I heard the noises, I was reminded that it could have happened to me, but it didn’t. God’s blessings. It helped to keep me grounded.
 
In another apartment in another building, diagonally opposite, was another child who was born blind. The father would take the boy for a walk every morning and every evening, holding his hand. The father must have had to adjust his work timings to be able to look after the son. The boy grew up, and in fact got married, and then his wife held his hand and guided him to wherever they needed to go. They moved around as if the blindness did not matter. They seemed confident and happy and went about life as if they did not have any major disadvantages.
 
There is my friend Ketna, who met with an accident when she was skydiving. She fell from a great height and broke her spine. She had to be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. This management graduate, who was a product manager in a company, was now locked up at home for a considerable period of time. Yet, she picked up the threads and began to work from home, accepting assignments that could be handled without going to an office. She then found others who had met with a similar fate, and created an organisation for victims of spinal injuries so that they could work for each other’s benefit and learn from each other’s experiences. It was an organisation that did not exist before.
 
All these teach us a lesson that we should be grateful for what we have because we could very easily have been in situations like the above, and which are not unusual in the large world around us. Therefore, there is a great need to remain grounded despite great success. To accept the ‘theory of gravity’ as the best way to remain grounded. To remember to work hard and be successful, to get to a stage of “walking with kings yet without losing the common touch.
 
You may also want to read other articles written by the author. Here is the link https://moneylife.in/author/walter-vieira.html
 
(Walter Vieira is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants of India - FIMC. He was a successful corporate executive for 14 years, capping his career as Head of marketing for a Pharma multinational, for India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka- and then pioneered marketing consulting in India in 1975. As a consultant, he has worked across four continents. He was the first Asian elected Chairman of ICMCI, the world apex body of consultants in 45 countries, in 1997. He is the author of 16 books, a business columnist, international conference speaker and has been visiting professor in Marketing in the US, Europe, and Asia for over 40 years. He was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award for Consulting in 2005, and for Marketing in 2009. He now spends much of his time in NGO work - Consumer Education and Research Centre, IDOBRO, and some others.)
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