The habitual academic topper grew up in a family comprised of her parents, two young brothers, and her maternal grandmother. But nothing during her early days, or later during her CA, marked Rajeswari out for rising past the upper echelons of corporate India to head an insurance behemoth.

The sprightly lady learned courage and self-confidence from her grandmother, who would coax her with positive self-talk: “Always tell yourself you are strong.” According to Rajeswari, anyone with the right qualifications and work ethic can break the glass ceiling irrespective of social background or gender. In the banking and insurance sectors, gender isn’t an issue anymore.

Consider these: In 2013, Usha Sangwan became the first woman Managing Director of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC). In 2019, Alice G Vaidyan became the first lady officer appointed as Chairman and Managing Director of India’s state-owned General Insurance Corporation. But with S N Rajeswari there has been a difference. She would be the first woman-CA to hold the top job. And of course, there are eons of women who lead banks.

As a child, Rajeswari and her friends used to sit on the parapet wall of the house, chew sugarcane, and spit the cane into the nearby ditch. When she thinks of it today, she blanches at how unhealthy the habit was. Not the best trait for a future-day insurer! “A lot of our evenings were spent in climbing the tree eating tamarind and hibiscus flowers,” she closes out. Around that time came the Tamil movie Palaivana Solai that captured the cinemagoers’ imagination. It was the story of five unemployed men carrying out discussion seated on the parapet of a wall!

Rajeswari came from a typical middle-class family. “We barely had any furniture at home, and sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, we used a wooden desk to do our schoolwork.

My grandmother did not do much schooling, so when my mother started her studies in Tamil and Hindi, my grandmother would sit and learn along with my mother in her zest to catch up with the missed out learning!”

Rajeswari did her schooling at Sri Sarada Balamandir and Sri Sarada Vidyalaya. She sang a lot of bhajans on the bus while returning home from school. Many years later, her mother-in-law would fall in love with a violin. Do you remember any of your teachers,” we ask?

“There is this excellent teacher we had, but diabetes rendered her blind. She sat inside the school campus and requested us to read and sing the religious texts for her. I would do till my bus came.” And the teacher would get jittery and called out her name whenever she did not come on time.

When the time came, Rajeswari’s father, Nagharajan, did not send his daughter to college. Instead, he asked her to pursue CA Entrance. With the help of a family friend, she registered for distance education at Madurai Kamaraj University. The family friend would one day propose and marry her.

When Rajeswari joined her articleship in ‘Balu, Hari, Sriram,’ she hadn’t yet turned 18, and dad had to sign on her behalf. Two years later, Boris Becker won Wimbledon when still under 18. He was the first qualifier to bag the All-England Championship, and Becker Senior had to sign the papers! Clearly, the coming day CMD was in illustrious company

Rajeswari completed her CA Intermediate with the 44th rank, and soon after her articles were over, as was the practice in those times, wrote the final examination. She passed in her maiden attempt to emerge as a chartered accountant. The lady from Salem had come good. In three years, she completed both CA and B.Com and says much of this was due to God’s grace and her parents’ and grandmother’s karma.