Getting To Know: Sudha Murty

Sudha Murty is one of the oldest of writers whose appeal reaches as far as the youngest of readers.

19 August, 1950 was the day this phenomenal woman was born to a surgeon father and a mother who was a former schoolteacher.

Source: scoopwhoop.com (Sudha is the first girl from the right)

Growing up with her grandfather’s nightly stories that became her first lessons in life, her own stories are full of reminiscences of the time she spent as a child in her village Shiggaon, in Karnataka. Her grandmother in turn, taught her the value of traditions and culture of not just their own community, but that of the entire country.

When it came time for her to make a career choice, Sudha persisted to pursue engineering despite knowing that it was an unheard-of decision for a girl in their society. Her family suggested other options—history, medicine, even mathematics or science so she could get comfortably into the teaching line, but her determination helped her knock over all obstacles, and with the support of her liberal father, she became the only girl in a class of one-fifty students at B.V.B. College in the town of Hubli, from where she graduated. She is rightly proud of it, too!

The young engineer went on to become the chairperson of Infosys Foundation, India’s biggest IT and business consulting MNC headquartered in Bengaluru—again playing in a male-dominated field, but not before paving the way for budding women engineers in the State.

Even as a young undergraduate, Sudha had been different from other students. While other girls her age could have given up under the pressure or teasing that she experienced from her all-male classmates, she accepted the task as her penance instead. Neither did she miss any class, nor take anyone else’s help for her notes. To teach herself self-restraint, she decided she would wear only white saris, refrain from sweets, sleep on a mat and even take baths with cold water throughout the four years!

A similar exercise in self-control came when she visited Kashi for the first time. Recalling her grandfather’s words of making an unusual vow when taking a dip in the holy Ganga—the vow of giving up what one loved the most by offering three handfuls of water to the river with the Lord Sun as the witness—she took the ultimate decision to give up all kinds of indulgent shopping for the rest of her life. It really was a big vow, considering she was very enthusiastic about buying saris and was planning to buy some world-famous Banarasi silks later that same evening.

Over twenty years later, her desire to acquire has completely vanished now, which we can see from her work as a social servant and philanthropist. Her book Three Thousand Stitches gives ample evidence of this fact as she narrates how she worked to uplift the devadasi community in Karnataka and the amount of struggles she faced while doing so, and yet how she persisted until she was able to convince the women and provide them with enough resources to make them independent.

Her determination truly is an inspiration for all of us. Her writings entertain, educate, and most of all, keep the hope alive for humanity.

Image credit: yourstory.com, sharethegoodies.net, bookgeeks.in