T.N Manoharan

I n January 2009, the UPA government acted with alacrity when a jewel in India’s technology crown, Satyam Computer Services, turned rogue. Chairman Byrraju Ramalinga Raju, a man revered as God in his native state of Andhra Pradesh, made the stunning disclosure that there was a Rs 7,000 crore fraud in the company’s balance sheet. Satyam’s stock price crashed to Rs 6.50, and the government swung into action.

Minister Prem Chand Gupta announced new nominees to the Satyam board, and it included the highly respected past President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), T N Manoharan. A year later, following the incredible turnaround of Satyam, the affable CA won the nation’s fourth highest civilian award, the Padma Shri.

But we are getting ahead of the story.

Rajakoil is a small village near Gudiyatham. Located 170 km west of the capital city of Chennai. This is where Patriarch T L Narayanasamy Chowdhry and his wife Sarada Ammal brought up their five children with love and care. The place had bicycles, bullock carts and horse carts for transportation. The couple headed a joint family and employed 12-15 people in their farm. Mom would cook for everyone including those who worked on the field. The staple food was rice for ‘us,’ and porridge for ‘workers.’ During vacation Manoharan slyly tilled and exchanged porridge as a part of a pact.

Things were initially good, but as the days went by, electricity supply got restricted to two hours in the night, the groundwater began to dry, and life overall looked rough. The agriculture yield decided, from season to season, if you would be rich or poor. The Chowdhry family worried about its bleak future and the Green Revolution was far away. Life was like playing the roulette wheel in those times of uncertainty, but Narayanasamy had plenty of intangibles from being an elder statesman and a Good Samaritan with Spartan habits. He wasn’t going to let life get the better of him; for he had his youngest son, the apple of his eyes, Manoharan Chowdhry, staying with them.

For his middle school, Manoharan went to the Thiruvalluvar High School in Gudiyatham and studied in the English medium. At Gudiyatham an aroma of patriotism prevailed as it was here that the first national flag of post-independent India was woven.

Dad Narayanasamy told a tea vendor who peddled his ware across the school to allow his son to sit in the shop and have lunch! “During the break, I read Tamil books like Irumbu Kai Mayavi (Iron Handed Magician), and Parakkum Thattu (The Flying plate). Much later, I read Kamba Ramayanam, Mahabharatham, and William Shakespeare.”