Subrata Narayan Chakravarty – 50th Reunion Essay

Subrata Narayan Chakravarty

College: Branford

After over 46 years of writing and editing stories about business I retired last year. Barbara and I sold our home in Westchester County outside New York City and moved to an apartment in Florida. I have been reflecting on what I have learned in the half century since I arrived in the U.S. after finishing boarding school in India.

I had the unique experience of being a foreigner in the midst of an increasingly contentious nation without having to take a side. I could observe and make friends with both black and white—and I did, at Yale and since graduation.

The first lesson was one we learned before graduation—and one we demonstrated to then-President Kingman Brewster and alumni—that Yale was ready for coeducation. We cleared rooms at our residential colleges to make space for several hundred women from various colleges to show what “going coed” would be like. The women participated eagerly in class, happily in dining rooms and some anger with faculty attitudes. Once we had put our case, Brewster responded quickly: Yale would accept women in the very next academic year.

Ready or not, the Class of 1969 became the last all-male class in Yale’s history.

Once I began working I learned that loving one’s job is critically important to one’s happiness and success. Through these past 45 years I have met many people who dislike their work, even though they are making huge incomes, and others who have had successful careers by any standard. During my 26 years at Forbes magazine, I never made the salaries associated with Harvard Business School MBAs, but I loved the work I did. In the end that has been all that mattered to me.

Fifty years ago I was serving at the reunion party of the Class of 1918 on the Old Campus when the Yale marching band circled the tables playing the post-funeral Dixieland jazz tune, “When The Saints Come Marching In” for the small number of alumni who had come to New Haven.

As we approach our 50th reunion I hope we can enjoy the music as much as those alumni did.