better half
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Jab we met
Dr Jayashree Firodia, better half to Arun Firodia, industrialist and chairman Kinetic group on the importance of being together By Kalyani Sardesai
hey will complete fifty years of wedded bliss next year. Wait a minute! But didn’t the Jab We Met party held by the Firodia family some five years ago celebrate that already? Jayashree Firodia breaks into a child-like smile. “Of course! That was the anniversary of our first meeting in college. But 2015—ah, that is truly our Golden Jubilee year,” she laughs. God lies in the details. So does an enduring marriage -one that marks each little memory and cheers on every milestone. Over to the lady on what it means to be wife to a man who is so many things - industrialist, researcher, philanthropist - but at the end of the day, simply her life partner.
Time setting: The late fifties. A far more innocent and conservative world than the one we know today. Venue: Fergusson College, Pune; two scholarly students - Jayashree Pathak and Arun Firodia-meet in the same class. Several common values bind them; not the least, making a mark, academically. Their first real meeting: When he invites her to a canteen party to mark his winning the college gymkhana elections. Her major concern: “Are there going to be other girls present too ??” “Things back then were way different than what they are today,” Jayashree smiles at the memory. “It wasn’t the done thing for boys and girls to be seen together.” Friendship blossomed into love. But they never lost sight of their academic goals. Arun went on to pursue his engineering at IIT Powai, Jayashree studied MBBS. “It was before he went for his higher studies to MIT, Boston that he told his parents about me,” she says. Despite coming from two different backgrounds—he was a Marwari, she a Maharashtrian, all hell did not break lose. “Both sets of parents were educated and open, and I was easily accepted into my marital home,” she says.
Pic: vaibhav kund
The journey of a lifetime… starts in college
46 / Corporate Citizen / December 1, 2014
No regrets for what could have been
While her career took a bit of a backseat, Jayashree did not mind. “The years between 1970 and 1995 were madly busy. I had a clinic at home, but my four kids (Kimaya, Sulajja, Vismaya and Ajinkya) took up most of my time,” she recollects.
This was when Arun was busy with the research and marketing of two of India’s most iconic two wheelers: The Luna and the Kinetic. “It was a hectic but exciting time. So much was happening at once,” she shares. But Jayashree continued to contribute to social pediatrics, especially in rural and