When we moved from Bangalore to our ancestral place in Kerala, one of the quiet but significant outcomes was that we could live alongside our parents.
For me, this was always a matter of responsibility. If we had the possibility to be near them, to be available for their everyday needs, and to share their later years more closely, it seemed natural that we should do so. I never felt any hesitation in describing it as our responsibility.
Then, a couple of days back, I happened to overhear my wife speaking to someone. She said, “It is our sowbhāgyam to be with our parents.”
That word stayed with me.
Not duty. Not obligation. Not even sacrifice.
Sowbhāgyam.
It is difficult to translate fully. It carries the sense of good fortune, blessing, grace, and an auspicious opportunity. In that moment, I felt that my wife had described something deeper than responsibility.
The outward reality remained the same. We were close to our parents. We could support them. We could be present in small and large ways. But the inner meaning changed completely.
Responsibility says: This is something I ought to do.
Sowbhāgyam says: I am fortunate that I am able to do this.
The first is morally important. The second is spiritually and emotionally transformative.
Duty can be carried with integrity, but it can sometimes become heavy.
But when service is experienced as sowbhāgyam, it becomes an opportunity received.
It makes us realise that being able to care is itself a privilege.
This thought led me to reflect on leadership.
Leadership as Soubhagya
Much of our language around corporate leadership concerns authority, performance, accountability, ownership, and responsibility. These ideas matter. Organisations need leaders who can make decisions, create value, sustain performance, and take responsibility for consequences.
What happens when a leader begins to see their position not merely as an achievement, but as sowbhāgyam?
A leader is entrusted with people’s working lives. Employees bring not only their skills, but also their time, hopes, anxieties, families, and aspirations into an organisation. Customers offer trust. Investors provide confidence. Communities allow an organisation to operate in their social and physical space. Nature provides the material conditions for all economic activity.
A leader may have earned a role through competence and effort. But no individual leader creates, alone, the ecosystem of trust that makes leadership possible.
Perhaps this is where Soubhagya Leadership begins.
It begins with the recognition that leadership is not merely a right earned through success. It is a fortunate opportunity to be useful in the lives of others.
A Soubhagya leader does not deny authority. They use it with greater humility.
I do not yet know whether Soubhagya Leadership is a concept that can be fully developed, or whether it is simply a personal orientation toward leadership.
It may have affinities with stewardship, responsible leadership, and Gandhian trusteeship. Yet it seems to add something distinct: gratitude for the opportunity to serve.
It does not ask leaders to become passive, self-sacrificing, or unconcerned with outcomes. Rather, it asks them to hold power with gratitude and exercise it with humility.
Perhaps that is the essential question for every leader:
“Do I see this role merely as a position I have attained, or as a fortunate opportunity entrusted to me?”
For me, this is the beginning of Soubhagya Leadership.
Leadership is the good fortune of being entrusted to serve.
