Caption: Left: Westpac Banking Corporation chief manager Fiji David Evans presents Mrs Raj Pati Kewal a plaque to symbolise recognition for her service.
Photo supplied by: Westpac Banking Corporation.
by Dionisia Tabureguci
RAJ PATI Kewal is an unassuming woman. But the character that she exudes is not so ordinary. It is strong and bold; the motherly and soft caring nature is toned with steely determination that comes through when you speak to her. She smiles kindly but one cannot miss the underlying aura of finality, as if she has already analysed and made up her mind what to think of you all in one instant.
That is probably part of the people skills she has learnt after running a bus company for over twenty years and also having to manage two other companies, not to mention the amount of community work she has involved herself with over the years.
Kewal has also been the recipient of many honorary awards big and small, thelatest of which is the Westpac-sponsored Women in Business recognition of a long and outstanding contribution to women in business and the community, an award created particularly to recognize her contributions to the community.
But her little office in Rodwell Road next to the Flea Market in Suva gives away her sensitive, sentimental nature and shows one the door to her mind and heart. The wall is adorned with a large picture of her late husband Shri Krishn Kewal, who passed away in 1965, leaving his wife and five children behind. There is a picture of the newly weds before the children came. Beside the array of photos, a little corner is devoted especially to sacred images of the Lord Krishna and the Goddess Laxmi. “Prayer,” she nods solemnly, “is very important.”
Far from limiting herself to Hinduism, to which she belongs, Kewal finds it easy and has on numerous occasions attended worship and prayers of other faiths and denominations and demonstrates that as her belief that there is only one God and therefore, one people.
Little surprise then that she is so philosophical about life and her work – managing a fleet of 45 or so buses that belong to Island Buses Ltd, her late husband’s business, is no easy task and she recalls the challenges she had to face when on May 18, 1965, she got the devastating news of her husband’s death.
“I was shocked and stunned as any wife would be,” she says. “All of a sudden, I was left with our children and the business to look after.” The Kewals’ five children were still in school and the Island Buses fleet, then comprising over 70 buses and being the first bus company ever established in Fiji, was servicing many routes in Nausori and Suva.
Kewal took the difficult times in her stride and imparts a valuable lesson she learnt from it: “Always stay positive. That is very important. Positive thinking is the most important thing after hard work, sincerity and loving one another.”
Those words sink heavily in and it is easy to feel the weight of the message, coming from a woman who has largely worked and prefer to work behind the scene. “I am media shy,” she smiles. “I don’t think everyone should know what I’m doing in the community. It gives me great satisfaction and is also an important part of my life to serve the community. Our business is about ordinary people.”
Admittedly, it took some doing to get her to share her experience. The challenges she faced when her husband passed on and how she managed to go the distance alone. Women looking for inspiration could easily turn to her for a role model. In fact, at the Westpac-sponsored WIB awards, it was noted that the judges couldn’t give her an award because her accomplishments were far too many, her involvements in and with the community immeasurable in relation to the awards. The judges had to create a mention of recognition to acknowledge her and she received a standing ovation as a sign of respect and assent that credit is indeed due.
“When my husband died, there was no one to look after the business because the children were still small and my husband’s brother had his own business to run. So I took on the task,” Kewal recalls.
That move positioned her directly in the face of criticisms and disapproval as in those days, it was not the norm in the Indian culture for women to be running a business. And a bus business for that matter was just too far fetched.
“I turned these negativities into a positive thing by being determined to take on the job. The more disapproval there was, the more was my determination to work hard and show the world that women can do it. This is where it became important for me to remain and think positive about everything. It was not a very easy time. All my workers were men and it was a difficult thing for them to adjust to having a woman to report to. But in the end, we all managed to turn the business into one big family and that is still how it is today. The men have been very understanding, respectful and supportive of me and I treat them like family,” says Kewal.
Without a second thought, she had plunged into running the business and into bringing up her five children. “There was a vacuum in the decision making. The business needed someone to make decisions and that was the role that I played,” Kewal recalls. To make the business manageable, she had to sell some routes and bring down the size of the fleet. The number of employees, which had grown from when it started in 1945 to 120 in the 1960s, had to be reduced again to the now 70 odd workers that the company employs. Aside from the bus business, Kewal also had to drive the operations of Island Motor Spares, a subsidiary of Island Buses as well as Kewal Investments Ltd which manages her late husband’s and now the family’s property investments.
But juggling all that with her family commitments was not a very difficult thing for her. “Nurturing is part of the woman’s role so it was a natural thing for me to nurture my family and the business,” she says.
Thirty years on, her children are grown and have left the nest. The eldest Surjan is a chartered accountant. Her first son Viren Kewal is a business administrator, second son Raven is an automotive engineer, third son Naren is a cardiologist running his own hospital in Auckland while second daughter and youngest of the siblings Ranjni Kumari is an accountant. All are married and live abroad but the two elder boys come in frequently to help their mother with the business.
“They are very good boys. They are always here to help me,” she beams. Thirty years on too, the bus industry has changed. More bus companies have sprung up, new roads and routes have been developed and more people now travel by bus. And with those come new sets of problems including the rising cost of fuel, illegal minibuses and the bad road conditions and generally, the bus business is getting harder.
So it gets very difficult now to plan for the future, says Kewal. “I might decide to retire tomorrow and my children may take over with their own plans. For now, I am going everyday at a time as I have always done since taking on the business after my husband died.”
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NOTE: This article was published in the Fiji Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as: The POWER behind Island Buses: Positive thinking helps Mrs Raj Pati Kewal run a bus company, pp 9,10, January 2005 edition.
Fiji Business is a publication in the Islands Business International portfolio and sold only in the Fiji islands as an accompaniment to Islands Business Magazine.
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