PART-1

In real life, VK Bansal looks exactly like the way he does in
photographs.  A trademark white bush shirt, a half smile waiting to
break into a grin and a gaze that seems to be perennially fixed some
place far away.

What the photos do not incarcerate, however, is the moral fibre that
makes VK Bansal, the 65 year-old grand daddy of Kota, Rajasthan. The man who  singularly started an engineering coaching industry which is rolling in crores of rupees today  – and all from a handicap and a pink slip that was never meant to be.

Occupying the corner most office on the ground floor at the huge
Bansal Classes mansion in Kota, Mr. Bansal, until recently, took
lectures like other faculty at Bansals. These days, he is a bit unwound but lectures nevertheless. Meeting this man is a must for any journalist covering Kota – the Mecca for engineering aspirants in India.

“Why did you want to meet me,” he asks when this correspondent walked  in and with a taciturn smile adds “You want to write about my handicap”?  Ironically, except for the automated wheel chair that peeps from behind Mr Bansal, handicap and the man seem far apart. Not a note of self-pity nor a word of lament. 

What Mr. Bansal calls handicap is muscular dystrophy – a disorder that left him physically  impaired at the young age of 28 (in 1974), a few
years after he graduated in mechanical engineering from the Banaras Hindu University. At that point Mr. Bansal had moved to Kota from Jhansi (his birth place) to join JK Synthetics, a chemical company. He was also married by then.

Over that, Mr. Bansal was told he was at an advanced stage of muscular dystrophy, which meant 7-8 years or maximum a decade to live. For most people, this diagnosis would have heralded a series of visits to  Gods and godmen, places of worship, astrologers and of course a string of doctors. Of all, Bansal chose the last.

“I wrote to many doctors across the world and visited a few in India. I asked only one thing – a list of professions I could undertake with my condition,” said Mr. Bansal. It was then that a doctor based in Mumbai, (then Bombay) suggested that teaching could be considered. Mr. Bansal was also in a hurry since there were feelers from JK Synthetics to let him go since his arms and limbs had begun to get quite dysfunctional.

“I wasted no time in taking the ‘teaching’ suggestion seriously and hunted for students.  Yes, I had taught earlier in an institute but to make a career in it was different and that too in the condition that I was,” Mr. Bansal remarked.

The Bansal chief then started hunting for students. “I used to go to the playground in the JK Synthetics’ housing colony. where I stayed and picked up children to tutor. Those days’ tuitions were still a novel thing,” Mr. Bansal recalls. The tuitions were taken at the dining table in his house. What started with a single student grew to a sizeable number within a few years. Though Math was what Mr Bansal’s forte was, he started taking an interest in engineering preparations too. 

He revisited his engineering books after a decade and bought new books as well to update himself. Sometime in 1983, when JK Synthetics closed down, Mr. Bansal started coaching classes on a professional scale. He gathered with him the brains and scientists who worked for JK and thus Bansal Classes came into existence in 1991. 

What follows is the inspiring journey that led to the Bansal empire. Catch the PART-2 of the story here.