Dress for Success

When Anil Jethmal was 6 years old and attending the Campion School in Mumbai, India, he wore a tie to school.  The tie was part of the school uniform for 1^st grader Anil.

At age 10, Anil Jethmal and his family moved back to New York permanently.  For his first day of 5^th grade at the Browning School, located on Park Avenue in Manhattan, Anil again wore a tie, this time with his three-piece suit.  The suit had a decorative pocket square in the breast pocket.  He carried his books to school in a brief case.

While many consider Anil’s attire to be unusually formal for a 10 year-old schoolboy, The Browning School felt otherwise.  Founded in 1888 by John D Rockefeller, Browning’s stated goal since inception was not only to educate, but also to foster an atmosphere where boys grew up to be gentlemen.  The clothing was just a part of that endeavor.

However, something interesting happened along the way.  After several years of wearing a suit to school every day, Anil began to psychologically associate dressing up with working.  Four decades later, even when working from home, Anil Jethmal still finds a need to dress up in order to be productive. And while he does not wear a suit and tie when working from home, he comes pretty close….always a professionally pressed collared shirt and creased pants.

Moreover, in an age when technology is insidiously blurring the line between work and leisure, Anil, now more than ever, feels the need to delineate the two---what better way, then, than dressing for success…and equally important, dressing for leisure and family time.

An Oasis in Time

A native of New York and of Indian heritage, Anil Jethmal was used to hearing ethnic "jokes", comments and innuendos from far too many of his native New Yorkers. He often heard that the cultural diversity of New York actually made the city a much more tolerant and accepting place than other parts of the country.

So when Anil Jethmal attended Bowdoin College in Maine, it marked the first time that he would be living away from his New York home.  He read that Bowdoin College was mostly comprised of a somewhat homogenous "white" student body.  It was Anil's full expectation that the jokes and comments would come more fast and furiously than anything he had experienced prior to the point.

In reality, quite the opposite turned out to be the case.  In Anil's four years at Bowdoin, he does not recall a single slight towards him because of his nationality.  Yet, when Anil would return to New York for summer and winter break every year for four consecutive years, he felt each time as if he were journeying not just back to New York, but back to America's intolerant past.

In a period of time, where so many feel emboldened to express their intolerance and racist tendencies, Anil Jethmal often wonders exactly what it was about Bowdoin that made its constituents break down racial divides.  The most obvious answer is that Bowdoin College is known to be one of the best, if not the best, college in the United States.  It accepts only those students whose academic achievements rank them at the top of their class.

So, when Anil would inform his fellow students of his ethnicity, he would brace for an all too familiar negative response. Instead, much to his surprise and delight, he encountered a very different attitude. He found that his fellow students had an intellectual curiosity about India, and of Anil's experiences as an American of Indian heritage living in the US.

Given the recent social climate in the US, Anil is convinced more than ever that quality education is the most effective antidote to racism.  And, as he fondly remembers those four wonderful years, he is jolted back to the realization of how far away we, as a country, are from that utopia.  How to get there, of course, remains the million dollar question.