A Shepherd guides his herd

Article written by  FRANCIS BONNY UKKEN, HOSD 2015, Christ University

I’m feel privileged  to write about my grandfather, his name is Joseph born on 9^th December 1937, born in Kerala with 5 brothers and he is the eldest one .he got married at the age of 17 and had 3 kids amongst them the eldest one is my dad.

After some years of his marriage he had moved to Bangalore with his brothers, in a time where my family was at low and wasn’t doing that well financial and after months passed by he had he made sure that his brother got into some kind of job and made sure that they could support their family and he also started a small shop.

As years passed by he always had one thing on his mind that is to have a joint family and on the other hand he also made sure his brother are doing good in their business, I would always had question why don’t you and your brother come together and work or start a business as one but his response would be that “family and business are two different worlds they should never collide”.

He would help his brother in some or the ways most, sometimes they won’t even know ,there was a time he helped his brother financially with a 3^rd person cause they had a misunderstanding so basically he has been the head of my family and at any time of  trouble he has always been our go to man. He always played a major role in dad life, when my dad was in a point where he thought of quitting his studies but my grandfather made sure he continued and now my dad is working in Dell and if it was not for him my dad would have been worked in some ordinary company.

Now he has department stores in double road and his dream of having a joint family will soon be true were he building a 4 floored house, with 15 rooms for our whole family and this would be done before 2016 and I’m just wait for it to get over so that we could all move in together as one family and all the requirements needed for building this dream house are meet by him and he go to the site regularly and makes sure that everything is going according to plan.

I feel so happy that there is someone who is a great leader ,a coach ,an Inspiration and a guide without him who knew were  we would have been and I have learnt a lot from him and I would like to end saying that every family need a light that shows the way.