Watched my father keep building for the nation despite challenges: Karan Adani

Ahmedabad, Aug 19 (IANS) Karan Adani, Managing Director of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited (APSEZ), said on Wednesday that he watched his father, Gautam Adani, building for the nation despite the Hindenburg attack on the Adani Group and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) proceedings.

The Adani Group Chairman continued to build because “beneath the noise one belief remained unshaken, that the work mattered more than the moment”.

In a LinkedIn post, Karan Adani wrote that he was asked one question more than any other: “What is it like, as a son, to watch your father endure all of this? I could never quite answer it. Not while we were living through it. Now that it is behind us, I can”.

There are two answers.

“One is what a businessman sees, an institution under extraordinary pressure. The other is what only a son can see. That answer is harder to put into words,” Karan Adani further wrote.

He said that through years of extraordinary pressure, “what struck me was how rarely Papa allowed circumstances to change how he treated the people around him”.

“That may be one of the most important lessons I have learnt from my father. Sometimes the strongest answer to a difficult period is not an answer at all. It is to keep building,” the post read.

Karan Adani said that there were mornings “when I woke to another headline. Another accusation. Another judgement on a man I have known all my life”.

“I felt anger. I felt concern. And, as a son, I often wondered, how much should one man have to absorb? But what stayed with me was not the noise,” he noted.

We often imagine resilience as something dramatic – a great speech, a show of defiance, a promise to prove everyone wrong.

“I saw none of that. I saw my father rise every morning and return to the work in front of him. Projects still had to be built. People still depended on us. Ports had to run. Power had to reach homes and businesses. Airports had to serve passengers. Investments whose results would be seen only decades later still had to be made,” Karan Adani emphasised.

India had not paused because our family was living through a storm. And neither did he.

“Growing up, I never thought of my father as ‘Gautam Adani.’ To me, he was simply my Papa. And Papa has never been somebody given to elaborate speeches or public flourishes. He has always had an extraordinary ability to focus on the task in front of him,” he wrote.

These last three years made “me see my father differently”.

“I understood more deeply why he has devoted his life to infrastructure and nation-building. For him, these were never slogans. He has always believed that India’s aspirations will demand infrastructure on a scale most cannot even imagine today. That belief has shaped every major choice he has made,” said Karan Adani.

—IANS

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