Avtar made himself financially retired at the age of 35 years
At the first glance he appears to be an unassuming person, a man of few words and very down to earth. No one, even in their wildest dreams can think of a person who lived in New Zealand for almost 9 years as overstayer after arriving here in March 1989 on a nine-month visitor visa. After a lot of struggles for survival and regularly evading getting deported for such a long period of time, he was finally deported by the immigration authorities back to India in November 1999, a total of 10 ten years after arriving in the country.
The same New Zealand Immigration authorities allowed him to come back to New Zealand only 4 months later, in March 2000. Avtar has never looked back ever since, and he proudly claims that he made himself financially retired at the age of 35 years. He hasn’t stopped working after that but now he doesn’t work for livelihood but to keep himself occupied and to grow his profile
Born in 1969 at Khurdpur village in Jallandhar district of Punjab, Avtar gets nostalgic remembering his tough early childhood days after he lost his father when he was only two years of age. He was brought up by his 20 years older brother and due to financial circumstances, he couldn’t study after his matric (class 10). He started working at very early age and his experience of working at different places there was seldom pleasant. People exploited him by taking advantage of his vulnerability instead of showing any empathy, but those experiences made him mentally very strong. He decided to go overseas to achieve something big in his life and he landed in New Zealand in 1989. The way he narrates his story, his voice oozes resilience and his zeal, to fight out all hurdles and overcome any adversities, enough to give goose bumps to anyone. Avtar says proudly that despite being so lowly educated, back then he drew a salary that was 2*1/2-3 times more than the actually much qualified professionals in horticulture. He says that he could demand that kind of money because of his sheer hard work and a proven track record. He worked with 3 or 4 different companies (orchids/growers) during his early years and made all of them the top league companies of New Zealand.
While working for others, Avtar never let his business instinct rest and kept investing his savings in real estate and whenever he got a little bit of financial liquidity, he would buy a new property. On being insisted how many properties he currently has in his portfolio, he shyly disclosed, it’s just around 70 and all of these put together value at a staggering $36 million, on a very conservative basis. Yes, you heard it right, its just over $36 millions and the man has no qualms about it. He says your hard work is always rewarded, however long it may take. Avtar is currently also busy doing many community and charity works here in Auckland and at his native place in Punjab. He is running free library service in New Zealand and in India and supplies grocery to needy people in his hometown.
On being asked about his unusual last name he said, he changed his family name with ‘Tarksheel’ since all his life he has been in a habit to critically analyse, contemplate and scrutinise any situation or challenge based on rational thinking, hence aptly named himself ‘Tarksheel’.-Yugal Parashar
