Swapna Jarag.1. When did you meet your life partner ( pls mention Name & profession too )? Considering the busy schedules how you both get time for each other?3. What are the career interests of your children? What they have been educating in?Do they wish to follow your profession ?4. How you manage to get some time out for family i.e.how you spend any vacation with your family?5. In the emotional situations caused in the service whom do you find dependable ? Please share any such incidence .6. An incidence unforgettable – where you have been trapped in some sort of situation such as flood, communist riots etc? How did you handled the situation?
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Swapna, here goes the reply
My husband Prakash Mehendale is an engineer from Walchnd College Sangli. He was posted with Philips at Calcutta. My parents were in Bihar - - at Darbhanga where my father Dr. B.S. Agnihotri was a prof of Sanskrit and Philosophy. My father-in-law's younger brother Dr M. A. Mehendale was also a prof of Sanskrit in Pune. At some common friend's suggestion Prakash had come to visit us at Darbhanga and the marriage was settled. I was then awaiting the result of my written exam of IAS. Thereafter both events progressed simultaneously. We were married in May 1974 and the results came in June end asking me to join at Mussoorie on 14 july,
So we decided that my choice of cadre will be 1st Maharashtra -- 2nd Bengal, and when I got the Maha. Cadre, as agreed beforehand his company gave him a transfer to their Pune office. Thus we settled at Pune though he is born and brought up in Mumbai.
Adjusting time -- it was known beforehand that mine was a transferrable job, but that govt will be accomodative to some extent. Thus I got some postings in Pune and some in Bombay, Nasik, Aurangabad, Sangli and Delhi. But it was not too tough. Children stayed with me when younger and with him when they went to college. Both my mother-in-law and my mother supported by looking after children when necessary.
Children -- 2 sons elder Aditya , a doctorate in mechatronics and Hrishikesh a hard-core computer engineer.
Aditya was extremely research oriented, Hrishikesh too was more towards that. None wanted to persue my career though they take great pride in my being IAS.
Getting time for family is easy when planned properly and when u have the confidence in mind that rest of time u r 100 % committed to work.
Emotional conditions -- I find my family members from both sides are dependable. Of late Hrishikesh is the MAN DEPENDABLE.
1978 -- I was Assistant Collector and Assistant Returning Officer for Parliamentary elections. A major riot at Dehu was averted because I could sense the volatile situation and rushed police force there by transporting 6 police constables at vadgaon in my jeep, who then kept the poling booth safe Though there was some stone pelting elsewhere, they could not capture the booth.
