The Hindu Business Line : CA who started as a newspaper boy

I AM a chartered accountant employed in a nationalised bank as a senior manager. I completed CA against heavy odds. My father was a small-time newspaper vendor in Mylapore, Chennai. My elder brother passed away when he was 22 years old (following kidney failure), just when he was entering employment. My father, at the age of around 60, took up a job for Rs 300 a month in a charitable institution to supplement his low income. He wanted me to become a chartered accountant, following his interaction with those from the profession at his job.

I completed my graduation in science and I was thrilled at this because, one, I was the first to have done so in my family and, two, I was a below-average student. I had struggled hard, both physically and mentally. Physically because I had to travel more than 30 km a day either by cycle or train, and mentally because I studied in regional medium till the eleventh standard and shifted to English medium only at the pre-university level.

To fulfil my father's desire, I took up the CA course without even knowing what debit and credit meant. This necessitated my joining `accountancy' coaching class in an institute where I was already learning typewriting; this was to help me get a job and supplement my family income. I had a sister who was just married off, another who was in waiting, and a brother who was just finishing schooling. But those at the institute told me to take up the challenge of CA.

While doing fulltime articleship in an audit firm, I used to help my father distribute newspapers/magazines, getting up at 4 a.m. and then looking after the shop in the evening till 9.30 p.m. My usual study time was between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m., during which time I squeezed in a few hours sleep. This suited me nevertheless, as there used to be a lot of disturbance and distractions during the normal hours in the one-room tenanted portion we lived in.

Holidays were a welcome relief. I used to go up to the open terrace to study in peace, but here too there used to disturbances with children running around. Though new to subjects such as commerce, accountancy and law, I was able to scrape through my CA Intermediate exam in the very first attempt, which till date is considered by me as a big achievement, even more than qualifying for the Final exam.

The May 1977 accountancy exam was tough even for those who completed B.Com with high percentage of marks. A few of my friends even walked out of the exam hall halfway through that paper. I was able to score a mere 40 per cent, with an aggregate of 51 per cent. And during that period, sickness and deaths in family compounded my problems. It took a few attempts for me to clear the CA course, the economics paper and financial problems were the major stumbling blocks.

In retrospect, I realise that the CA course helped me fine-tune my thinking and analytical abilities.

R. S. Raghavan

Bangalore

JumpTheOdds@hotmail.com

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