An Interview With Fairfax Financial's Prem Watsa

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Oct 06, 2014

Please briefly describe your family background.

My father was an orphan from Mangalore. He lost his mother when he was 3 , and then his grandfather when he was 12 . He was one of four children, so his other siblings were sent to live with various relatives. However, he went to school and was an active sportsman, did his Bachelor’s degree and became a teacher at Madras Christian College. He later, went on to become the Principal of Hyderabad Public School.

I was the third of the four children that he had. My father always emphasised education and gave me my grounding. After high school he encouraged me to write the entrance exam for IIT.

How did you first hear of IIT-Madras back in the mid-1960s?

It’s a funny story. IIT Madras was in its infancy but was already getting very popular. I first heard of it in school. I wrote the first exam, and scored only about 8/20 in Math. Despite this, my dear aunt forced me to write the other papers as well, the second of which was English and the third chemistry. I was pretty good at chemistry, and that is why I decided to study chemical engineering.

How was the hostel and academic life in your time, and what were the extra-curricular activities you were active in?

IIT Madras has always been a great place and provided a really good foundation. The five years that I spent at IIT Madras were undoubtedly the best years of my life. I was young, only about 16 years old when I joined. I was in Alakananda Hostel in my first year, Ganga in my second, and Jamuna for the final three years.

I was the sports secretary of Jamuna Hostel, and also later the institute sports secretary. I used to play hockey for the institute and also quite a lot of table tennis. In fact, IIT Madras started winning the Inter-IIT trophy during my tenure as the Institute Sports Secretary. Before that, it used to be dominated by IIT Delhi and Kharagpur. This victory also marked the beginning of IIT Madras’s ten-year winning streak.

The warden of Jamuna Hostel, Dr. Anantharaman, was a wonderful person. It was his encouragement and his guidance that encouraged us to prosper.

The Inter-IIT experience was truly awesome. We organized an intense training camp with coaches for over two weeks to train and prepare. We all wore blazers to the closing ceremonies, and that was the first time I wore one.

The institute’s student publication, “Campastimes,” once ran a headline mocking my talk of winning the Inter-IIT, calling it “How to win without really trying.” But we went ahead and actually won it! We continued winning for the next 10 years after that. It was a real boost for everyone. It taught us that you could achieve something that hasn’t been done before if one is confident and committed enough to do it.

Sports is still very much an active part of my life – I now play golf, tennis and the occasional game of table tennis. I have a summer home in Toronto, where everyone in our family gets to compete in a tennis and table tennis tournament. We even award a small trophy to the winner!

Academic life:-

I got used to writing exams. We used to have periodical tests – every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, this was the rigour of the German system. However, this helped us work under pressure – and because of this we could virtually pass any subject with just two or three days’ notice. I didn’t get a Distinction, but managed to secure a First Class in my final exam.

As I look back, it was the sports as well as academics which made me a lot more well-rounded. Also, in my final year, I used to go outside the campus often to meet my fiancé, Nalini Loganadhan, who was then a student at Stella Maris College. Meeting her and getting married to her was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Other fun experiences

I had a really good set of friends in my hostel. Me and my friend, Victor Pais, used to run a small convenience store, where people used to come to buy coffee, tea, snacks, chips and soft drinks. Saturday movie night at the OAT used to be fantastic, we would come back after the movie and open the store to cater to the crowd. However, we were pushed out of business when Narmada hostel got a small cafeteria nearby.

In our final year, we conceived and started an award to recognize excellence in our hostel called the Jamuna Blues (inspired by the Oxford Blues). Since I was the Institute Sports Secretary then, and Victor the Students’ General Secretary, we (not sure how) were the first recipients of the Jamuna Blues. Those were indeed fun days.

Continue reading: http://chennai36.iitm.ac.in/the-only-way-was-to-go-up-prem-watsas-interview-with-chennai36-part-1/