Dr. Balaraman Doraiswamy was a general physician in the Gopalapuram area of Chennai. His skills bestowed wealth and prosperity on the family. But his early death and eventual lack of financial management by the surviving family meant that his granddaughter Sangeeta Shankaran Sumesh did not grow up in the luxuries accumulated by her paternal granddad.

His daughter-in-law, Sukanya, worked at Cadbury’s, now wholly owned by Mondelez International and his son Shankaran at Britannia Industries Limited. As a young child, Sangeeta noticed that her family did not own some of the luxuries that most of her relatives and neighbors enjoyed – car, telephone, television, etc.

This turned her ambitious and determined. She dreamed of big houses, cars, and foreign trips. Her parents encouraged her to excel at academics to achieve those dreams.

Sangeeta, during her preschool days, befriended two kids in the neighborhood. Both were older than her by a year. When she was to move to lower kindergarten, her preschool playmates advanced to UKG. Sangeeta wondered why she, who was as competent as them, could not join them. Tantrums became a regular at the Shankaran household: “I am no different from my friends. I want to be in the same class as them. I will study hard and do whatever it takes,” she’d say. As Adarsh Vidyalaya’s school records of the year 1978 would have it, the initially-reluctant school principal, Mrs. Mallick, yielded; Sangeeta was allowed to skip one year and straightaway join UKG! Academic feuds between boys and girls were a routine up to Class Four, and Sangeeta would push herself to champion the lasses’ cause.

She’d ace competitions on dancing, oratory, and painting, apart from academics. Shankaran wanted his daughter to become a doctor, just like his father. Sangeeta liked biology but the quirks of Einstein and Newton, however pioneering, dissuaded her. She leaned the Commerce way, much to the dismay of her parents and relatives.

“Maybe I will pursue CA,” she said, trying to quell the discontent. In 1991, Cadbury’s organized a pan-India contest: The employee’s child to get the highest score in Class 12 exams was to be given the Young Sangeeta.

Sir Adrian Cadbury award and a cash prize of Rs. 10,000. Sangeeta bagged it, using which her parents gifted her a Kinetic Honda, the legacy two-stroke gearless scooter of the 1990s. Sangeeta loves driving two-wheelers and owns one even today. She secured admission into B.Com at Ethiraj College for Women, and rode into merrier graduation days

Notorious triple rides on her trophy-bike with friends and bunking college lectures coupled with exacting CAT-coaching classes, computer classes at NIIT, and ICWAI course was now her typical day. She turned a movie buff.

Sangeeta was used to engaging in summer courses and short assignments during her holidays. She continued the practice in college, taking on research projects for IMRB and accepting event management and modeling gigs. She landed a photoshoot and a TV commercial for ‘MeenuMix’ and was on the mixies’ carton boxes of many households.