For Guyanese-born author and former University of Toronto Director of Operations and Finance Naraindra Prashad, retirement is not simply a time for vacations and slowing down. Rather, it offers an opportunity to use the skills and knowledge acquired over decades to serve humanity.
“So many of us, when we retire, think it is time to just relax, go on vacations or do nothing. That is not healthy,” Prashad, 67, said at the recent launch of his memoir, *The Life I Was Given*.
“Those of you who know me know that I have gotten even faster now. When you are working, you can take your time a little, but now I am just on the go. It helps to keep me young, I think.”
The virtual launch was facilitated by the Trinidad and Tobago-based Indo-Caribbean Cultural Centre.
The memoir pieces together the major stages of Prashad’s formative years in Guyana, his migration to Canada, his professional and charitable work and the hobbies and writings he has developed to support his philanthropic efforts.
“It reflects on how my life unfolded and how my experiences shaped my purpose,” he said.
Prashad questioned why retirees should allow decades of accumulated knowledge to go unused.
“Why not use all the knowledge, the experience and the skills that we have acquired in all these decades of work and life, and do something with them when we have free time? That’s why I decided to move into the charity work I am doing,” he said.
Born with congenital heart disease, Prashad was hospitalised for three months while attending North Georgetown Government Secondary School. He missed an entire term while preparing for the then General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level examinations, which he subsequently wrote successfully.
On December 8, 1976, at the age of 17, he underwent open-heart surgery in Canada shortly after migrating there with his family. That turning point divided his life into a “before” and “after” and inspired the title of the memoir.
A chartered accountant by profession, Prashad always had a love for writing and storytelling. He later completed a certificate programme in creative writing at the University of Toronto, with a focus on personal narratives.
He said the memoir draws on four decades of professional work and his broader life experiences. Its reflections are organised around three themes: “Quiet Leadership”, “Shared Humanity” and “The Work That Outlives Us”.
Prashad was also inspired by a desire to share happiness with others. While he subscribes to the 14th Dalai Lama’s observation that “the purpose of our life is to be happy”, he noted that happiness is not always simple because people must contend with emotions, struggles and responsibilities.
A yoga instructor, he said he frequently tells participants in his yoga, meditation and mindfulness classes: “The purpose of our lives is not only to be happy but also to make others happy. While we help others through their troubles, we often move beyond our own.”
Proceeds from the memoir, which is available in hard copy for US$30 and through Amazon, will go to the East Meets West Children’s Education Fund, a charity he helped to establish.
The organisation has supported the education of marginalised children in India, Nepal and Guyana for the past six years.
Quiet leadership
Although Prashad served as Director of Operations and Finance in the Office of the Governing Council at the University of Toronto, where decisions governing the institution are made, he does not believe leaders must constantly call attention to themselves.
“In my working life, I often thought of persons on the frontline, such as the receptionist, as the true leaders of the organisation or department because they are the first point of contact,” he said.
The receptionist, he noted, often decides who is allowed to enter and who must remain outside.
Prashad said he was never drawn to a style of leadership that required constant recognition. Instead, he was shaped by his parents’ quiet service, steady standards and humility.
At the university, he came to understand that his leadership did not require more noise but greater consistency.
“In leadership, we do not have to be loud and in the face of everything, but we need to be steady in what we do,” he said.
Shared humanity
Prashad said his reflections on shared humanity are rooted in the belief that people’s lives are connected through care, compassion and responsibility to one another.
Chapter 14 of the memoir, titled “East Meets West”, explores that belief.
“By then, I had lived long enough to know that a life could become narrow while it appeared full. Family, work, faith and routine can all be meaningful and still leave the person asking whether he has answered fully for what he has been given,” he wrote.
Prashad said that question followed him for years. Education eventually became his answer.
He had repeatedly seen children fall behind not because they lacked ability, but because their families could not afford school fees, supplies, meals or transportation. East Meets West Yog and the East Meets West Children’s Education Fund seek to address some of those needs.
Born in Georgetown and shaped by Indian inheritance, Caribbean life, migration, struggle and endurance, Prashad later built an adult life in Canada and developed spiritually through temples, yoga and journeys across India and Nepal.
“East and West were not abstract categories to me. They were the actual coordinates of my life,” he said.
The name East Meets West therefore came naturally, as his life had become a bridge between different worlds.
His focus on education grew from seeing the difference between the lives of children who received opportunities and those denied them because of limited resources.
“I could not accept that easily,” he said.
Although his travels to India and Nepal allowed him to see firsthand the difficulties faced by children and young people there, Prashad said such problems are not confined by national borders. The organisation is therefore seeking to expand the scope of its work.
The work that outlives us
In addressing the theme “The Work That Outlives Us”, Prashad noted that relatives, friends and other community members contributed their time, money, encouragement, connections and labour to fundraisers that helped establish the children’s education fund.
Much of that support came without fanfare.
“I always preferred that kind of living. It resembled the world I came from—my mother feeding people because they were hungry, my father making room for others because circumstances demanded it. No performance, no need to enlarge the self while helping someone else,” he wrote.
East Meets West Yog developed alongside the education fund because Prashad did not want compassion to become merely an administrative exercise.
“The inner life matters. Breath matters, reflection matters, prayer matters,” he said. “Yoga, meditation and spiritual disciplines create a different quality of attention. Without that attention, service can become mechanical or self-congratulatory. I had no interest in either.”
Prashad said he has become increasingly convinced that outward service and inner spiritual work must continually correct and strengthen each other.
“Service without spiritual depth can harden into ego; spirituality without service can become decoration,” he said.
“The work widens in both directions. There were children to support, youth to encourage, seniors to accompany and communities in India, Nepal, Guyana and Canada carrying different needs but asking the same human question: Who will notice, and who will stay long enough to help? That question became more urgent to me with age.”
Prashad does not regard East Meets West as a monument to himself. Instead, he sees it as a continuation of the values instilled in him at his childhood home in Thomas Street, Kitty.
It reflects his mother’s instinct to feed others, his father’s insistence on living with purpose, the surgery that gave him more time, and the faith that taught him that devotion must be reflected in conduct.
His experiences slowly convinced him that compassion should not remain merely a feeling, but should take practical form.
Many years ago, while spending a month in India, Prashad listened to an American swami who had written a book titled ‘From Hollywood to the Himalayas’. She cautioned that giving rupees to children begging on the streets would not resolve the conditions that forced them there.
“She said, ‘Go back home and do something about it.’ That never left me,” he recalled.
Ann Clarke, a longtime friend and former university colleague of Barbadian and Dominican heritage, said the memoir caused her to relive some of her own experiences as a migrant to Canada.
She also drew attention to the inner strength of a man who, as a child, was uncertain whether he would survive into adulthood but later used his life to assist others at both the individual and institutional levels.
Clarke, a social work professional, endorsed Prashad’s appeal for retirees not to withdraw entirely into a life of staying at home or taking it easy, but to continue sharing their knowledge and experience.
Quoting Prashad, she said: “We have a lot of skills. Why are we wasting them right now?”
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