‘‘It says willing or not. What do I opt for?” asked my mother, then a mere 18- year-old girl. The question was aimed at her brother who had accompanied her to the Employment Exchange. “Not.. means no. Negative. So say yes. Choose Willing,” was his advice to her and perhaps the most valuable one that he has ever doled out to his elder sister. ‘Willing’ took her to HMT.
My mother grew up in a village close to Bangalore. Second of the seven children that my grandparents bore, she was the first in her village to write a class ten examination and clear it too. College looked bleak as staying put for three to four years with relatives who lived in the city was not an option that appealed to my grandfather. At the behest of my grandmother whom I consider to be one of the finest examples of a feminist, grandpa registered my mother at the Employment Exchange. The forethought of seeing a financially independent daughter made my grandmother wage a battle for the same in what was predominantly a patriarchal family. She is certainly the family’s revolutionary.
The good old days saw a lot of organizations run by the government and I am not envious of the jobs that my parents held. Days after my mom and my uncle returned from the city after having said ‘Willing’, a letter reached them and welcomed my mother to HMT. Worried about the alien influences of the city which would mar the innocence of his daughter, grandpa’s initial reluctance to send her to work was also nipped in the bud by my grandmother. The deal was simple. She would live with her aunt in Bangalore for a year and then they would see how things would unfurl. Thus began her journey as an independent working woman.
She still recounts the first day of joining Hindustan Machine Tools. She was nervous and was accompanied by my grandfather. Soon things went smooth and she was inducted into the system. My mother officially became a working woman and stayed that way for four decades. Six months of living with her uncle and aunt made her crave for her own space and that’s when she decided to move out and timed it with my uncle’s arrival to Bangalore when he was recruited by ITI. I am talking about the late sixties here.
From then on, my mother never looked back. From being a trainee to a permanent employee, mom and many other women and men made HMT their second home. They worked from Monday to Saturday, had breakfast, lunch and tea served fresh and hot at the canteen, made friends, made best friends, made ends meet, ran lives and homes and of course carved their own identities thanks to one employer who became synonymous with quality. People back at the village would marvel at the golden dial HMT watch that my mother wore on her wrist when she went visiting every weekend. A few years later, she married dad, who worked for BEL and gave birth to my brother and I. And my memories of HMT are second only to my mother’s treasure trove.
As a toddler, I was enrolled into the HMT crèche and around me were children whose mothers worked with my mom. At seven in the morning, mom and I would be ready at the bus stop waiting for the blue HMT bus to arrive and once it came, off we went towards the enormous womb that housed us all for eight hours. I still remember the steaming idlis available at the campus; with sumptuous chutney that mom fed me once we would get down from the bus. A kiss, a hug and I would sulk for an hour after having watched my mom walk away from the crèche. I wasn’t alone. Some kids were too little and cried a lot. The day went by in sleeping, waiting for mom, day dreaming, walking to a play home (we would stop by a koi pond guarded by an iron gate waiting for a fish to fly out of water but the ‘aaya’ never allowed us to view that phenomenal event), waiting for the crèche helps to fetch our lunch from the factory canteen (I miss that food), waiting for mom to arrive and finally getting dressed to go home. Like fish to water, I would cling to my mom and would be rewarded with a juicy honey cake for my day’s toil on our way back home. I am yet to taste a better honey cake.
We grew, all of us. HMT, my mother, me and all the others who were a part of it; but what grew by leaps and bounds was the confidence that the organization restored every single morning in each of its employees. A pride that I have a working mom engulfed me even at school and every single day I dreamt of being fiercely independent like her and so did many other little girls whose moms worked with my mother.
There were ups and downs in the organisation, highs and lows but we bounced back and every time we did, we prayed to God to keep our pillar strong. Other brands made an entry into the market and slowly, as is the law of nature, the old was being replaced by the new. Innovation sometimes becomes the mother of resurgence but where did we go wrong? That’s a story for another day. Mother voluntarily retired from the organization and threw a huge party for all her colleagues who had joined her in the same journey many years ago. Today, I dare say that by the end of our tenure in one organization, we end up making more acquaintances than friends.
It broke our hearts a few weeks ago when we read in the newspaper that the last functional fragment of HMT was being closed down forever. No one would wind the clocks again. Ever.
Whenever I look at those marvelous three letters – HMT- my memories hypnotize me with the aroma of those juicy honey cakes and the cackle of my little friends at the crèche. Sometimes I wonder if they were imaginary but I know that they weren’t. These memories are a part of my past that makes up the most of my present and future, making me the woman I am for I was raised by someone who taught me that strong women who are willing to walk with the times, can rule their destiny. And inspire generations.
Thank you HMT for without you, we wouldn’t be us.
A Libran, Rashmi Ramachandra dotes on her morning cup of coffee. The family’s official juke box, Rashmi is a trained classical singer, an MBA in Marketing and HR who very soon found out that radio was her actual calling as it kept her close to the one thing that she loves the most – Music. A huge Harry Potter fan, she is trying to create a broomless version of the quidditch. ‘Life is too precious to complicate’ is what she lives by.