Janak Desai Biography

Something about Me Early Years in India: I was attending the high school in a small city in India during mid-1960 when diamond cutting was exploding. From the class of 140 graduating students, all but two of us joined the flourishing business. Because of inspiration from my mother, I set out to get MBA degree. My mother was also instrumental in sending two of my elder sisters to attend higher education, and join the working women in late 1950's. She was a forward thinker. Migration to USA: In 1969, my mother migrated to USA, and I moved to a college town to attend Commerce College. Two years later, I migrated to USA to complete my studies. I graduated from Syracuse University in 1976 with MBA in Finance and Economics. From 1977 thru 1985 I worked for two different companies as Financial Analyst and Financial Planner in various capacities. My work involved five year corporate planning, profit forecasting, and financial modeling. During this period, the computer technology was slowly coming in. I started a new project, to migrate our company from the manual accounting to an automated system. It was a 3 year long project. During this period my brothers in India were asking me to consider starting the Diamond Business in USA. It has been our family business for decades. During my first visit to India in 1985, I decided to change my career. I stayed in India for six months to learn the business. Upon returning to the USA in 1986, I started the precious gems business, and am still doing it. The passion for art: During my high school years, I must have had a deep but silent interest in poetry and Indian shastriya and sugam sangeet (vocal music) . Forward thinking education in our school surely influenced my passion. Our music teacher had a profound impact that is still benefiting me. Whatever he sang were always fine poems. In a silent way I must have liked them. During my 14 years of absence from India, those songs and words stayed with me. Upon subsequent visits to India, from 1989 until today, I have been expanding my interest in poetry reading and writing. I have been teaching poetry writing to myself since it is difficult to find a teacher or teaching facility in USA. I now write poems in four languages. On a somewhat different topic, I noticed that some of Indian youth did not identify with our languages. I felt that I should make some effort to rid this evil. Poets at a Gujarati Convention-2008 in New Jersey, USA also highlighted this issue. That convention strengthened my resolve, and in 2009, I emarked on a new journey. Poetry Collaboration: In February 2010, I joined the Facebook revolution. Poetry was the purpose, but neither the approach nor the end goal was clear. I was fortunate enough to come across few young but enthusiastic writers, who I started collaborating with. It now has become the way of life for me.