Dear Hemen:
It is indeed remarkable, that you and I should be in contact now, and I want to thank you again for having made that possible. You have found the autobiographical chapter which I once wrote for a book about careers of sociologists. I did that at the end of a guest stay in Fulton, Missouri, about the same distance to the East of Kansas City as we were to the West of that town, when we were students in Lawrence. You also noticed there that Carolyn has passed away in 1999. She became the victim of brain cancer, and an operation postponed her death, but could not avert it. I noticed with great interest in your admirable biography that there are some parallels, for instance your son Vishesh and my son Paul were both born in 1960. But while your private life follows the path of respectability, mine has taken on unusual characteristics as I will try to explain.
Having received my M.B.A. from KU I returned to my alma mater, the University of Hamburg, to find that the business professors there were not interested in topics of human relations. That caused me to leave the business school and become a student of sociology instead. Carolyn received a Fulbright scholarship to study voice at the Music Academy of Cologne, Germany, and so we could stay in contact, at least for weekend get-togethers. In 1959 I received my PhD and Carolyn and I got married. Carolyn had trained to be an opera singer but found that to make a career in that profession it was frequently expected of the young female singer to be generous with erotic services toward decision makers at the theater. That make her so furious, that she gave up opera singing entirely and retrained to church music (quite different technique, as you may know). She sang in churches in Hamburg, and our children were born 1960, 1962, 1964, and 1967. In the meantime, I had become a management trainee with Unilever, working in marketing and advertising, but getting disillusioned about the business world. So, in 1961 I went back to the university as an assistant teacher. In 1969 I got the required post-doctorate degree and was soon invited to a position of professor at the Aachen Institute of Technology. Leaving Hamburg and moving to Aachen was a great sacrifice for Carolyn to make. In 1971 the University of Vienna offered me another full professorship along with Austrian citizenship. The children had hardly gotten settled, and Carolyn had barely established new music contacts, when my career demanded another move, even to leave Germany. This time Carolyn could not bring herself to follow me. We discussed it as good friends, understanding each other, but got divorced! Hardly had I started working in Vienna (and living there alone, visiting my family over weekends across 1000km) when the University of Munich invited me to come there in 1973. It seems that a very successful career was overshadowed with almost total failure of my private life.
From 1973 to 2002 I was professor of sociology at Munich University. In 1974 I re-married, Carolyn moved to Munich with the children, and my second wife, a young German lady, established very amazing relationships with the children from my first marriage. In addition, she (her name is Eva) and I also have four children, born in 1975, 1978, 1981, and 1988. With Carolyn I had three sons and one daughter, with Eva I had one son and three daughters. Paul is a hospital physician in Stuttgart, Marie teaches in the Music Academy of Vienna, Mark teaches clinical psychology at a college in East Germany, Erik died in 2011. And Eva’s children: Vera is married to the son of a physician from India, Randhir Dindoyal, and lives in the USA to oversee the teaching of German in that country and in Mexico for the German government in Berlin, Heinz lives in Zurich, Switzerland, and has become a fiction writer, producing novels, Christa is a psychotherapist here in Munich, and Anna writes technical texts for a company.
While these periods of my life represent no doubt results for which we all must be very grateful, they included the death of Carolyn in 1999 and the death of Erik in 2011. They also led to more career opportunities for me in mainland China (starting in 1996) again combined with more private disaster. I will close for now, because it is an imposition upon you to ask you to read all this. But in the future, we can go into more details if you want to do that. I look forward to reading your poems! Thank you for pointing them out to me.
Best wishes,
Horst
From: Horst Helle <horsthelle@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2018 11:54 AM
To: Hemen Parekh
Subject: Re: Since it is late in India, only a picture for now
Dear Hemen:
I am very grateful for your detailed reply. I shall soon write back to you.
Best wishes,
Horst
From: Hemen Parekh <hcp@recruitguru.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2018 6:29 AM
To: Horst Helle
Subject: RE: Since it is late in India, only a picture for now
Dear Horst,
I don’t know what prompted me to search for you on internet but I am glad I did
Thanks for those photos . Somewhere in my drawers , I think I have a copy of the one with both of us ( with me , in cap ) – but I could not find
But , among some 50 odd color slides ( 35 mm ) of our stay at KU , I have found 3 / 4 , which I will scan / digitize , next week and email to you . I think , a couple of those show Carolyn on stage , during “ India Evening “ function but I could be wrong
I have yet to go through your biography pages ( done 3 so far ) but somewhere there you refer to “ Carolyn [ 1935 – 1999 ] . That depressed me no end !
After I returned from KU , I worked for 1 year in a small engineering factory and , in 1959 joined “ Larsen and Toubro Ltd “ ( still the largest Engineering firm of India ) . I rose to be a General Manager of ( at that time ) , its biggest factory ( in Mumbai ) , employing 7,500 persons . Last 3 years of my job ( 1987-90 ) , I served as General Manager ( Planning ) and General Manager ( Exports ), before retiring in April 1990
After retirement , I set up a Headhunting ( Senior Level recruitment ) firm , under the name,
- along with my younger son , Nirmit ( 1966 born ) , who now manages it independently for past 10 years
My elder son , Vishesh ( 1960 born ) has a business of marketing Pharma Machineries ( from Italy ) and regularly visits Hannover Fair ( ? )
Vishesh and his wife Niyati stay with us ( or rather, me and my wife Bharati – now 81 – stay with them )
Nirmit and his wife Pooja ( a Electronics engineer ) stay a few km away , close to 3P office . They have no issues
Vishesh / Niyati have two daughters
Elder one , Anokhee , has post-graduate degrees in English Literature and Education from Sheffield and York ( UK ) . She married David Lingwood ( her college friend ) in 2011 and is settled in York with David ( who gave up his career in Police Dept / completed his MBA and about to take up another job
Anokhee is teaching “ English Language “ to high school students at Ethelburga University
They have a 3.5 year old daughter , named Maia . They spent 5 weeks with us in July / aug
Vishesh’s younger daughter , Aneere , did her M S ( Psychology ) from York and is now with us in Mumbai
She has her own private practice as a “ Consulting Psychologist “ , besides doing some research with a group
I had a bypass surgery in 2005 but keeping reasonably active / busy ( only from home ) by blogging on my site [ www.hemenparekh.in ] . Keeps me busy for 3 / 4 hours
My wife Bharati is also active, despite problems with her spine / knee problems
We have a garden adjoining our residence and go for a walk every morning
I am not in touch with anyone else from KU
More after I hear from you
Regards,
Hemen
PS :
You can read some of my poems at :
http://poemseng.blogspot.com/
From: Horst Helle [mailto:horsthelle@hotmail.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2018 10:07 PM
To: hcp@RecruitGuru.com
Subject: Re: Since it is late in India, only a picture for now
Dear Hemen:
Thanks and apologies come first: Thanks for your kindness to find me in the vastness of the internet and for writing after so many decades. Apologies for taking so long to respond. You are my one and only roommate I ever had. I remember of course that you were then a student of engineering at KU. I took courses in Business Administration, because it seemed clear then, that I would become a businessman like my father. But contrary to what my family and I expected, I spent only three years working in industry, then returned to the university and became a professor of sociology. At the bottom of this e-mail you find a link to a summary of my life. A few minutes ago, I sent a copy of three pictures from Lawrence: First the house in which we both lived, “as paying guests of Naomi”, as you write. The picture has a date on the back: Sept. 13, 1956. Next a portrait of you and me with a Christmas tree in the background. It too is dated: Dec. 18, 1956. Last – more as a joke – a picture of the “European” soccer team of KU at the time in which I played, dated Oct. 21, 1956. KU had three soccer teams: Asia, Europe, and Latin America (if I remember correctly). It shows how very international the campus was at the time of our stay there.
If you too have photos from our stay in Lawrence, please let me have copies.
I look forward to more correspondence with you.
Best wishes to you and yours,
Horst
From: Horst Helle <horsthelle@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2018 4:15 PM
To: hcp@RecruitGuru.com
Subject: Since it is late in India, only a picture for now
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