Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Vividly Portrays The Sacrifices Made By N.Narayana Murthy's Family In Her New Book
‘An Uncommon Love: The Early Life of Sudha and Narayana Murthy”, a new book by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, emotionally recounts the early struggles of Narayana Murthi as the Infosys co-founder and the sacrifice his family made to support him as he was spreading his wings to his dream. Infosys had a profound impact on the lives of Akshata and Rohan (Murty), with them missing his father, as their mother Sudha often told the children that they had to make sacrifices ‘for the sake of Infosys’, the book said.
She added, ‘Please understand that it needs help right now—more help than both of you. It needs all of us to sacrifice for it, or else it might not survive.’ Such statements put a lot of pressure on the children. They felt guilty making any demands, especially where their father was concerned. They also understood that Infosys was the reason why they rarely saw their father, why he was at work for such long hours, and why he had to travel for business so often—and they felt a deep, though unarticulated, resentment. Understandably, they were jealous, particularly when it was Infosys’s ‘birthday’.
The book portrays the longing of Akshata and Rohan for their father, who seldom met them in his busy schedule. “The quiet Akshata, who missed Murthy silently, once said that her grandfather was her real dad’ while her father was a ‘bonus dad’, someone who appeared at infrequent moments and tried to make up for his absence with fun activities as Murthy had to often travel outside India to meet clients. Akshata would help him pack his bags for these foreign trips. She knew it was useless to tell her father not to leave her, as she used to do when she was a toddler. But sometimes, after they finished packing, she would have tears in her eyes. When Murthy travelled overseas, he and Sudha agreed not to call each other unless it was an emergency because they did not have a home phone. Every call required a trip to the post office, or later, an STD booth, and the time difference made it even more difficult. Calling Murthy in the US was prohibitively costly, at Rs 32 a minute. As a result, the children did not get to hear their father’s voice for weeks at a time. This added to their heartache and caused an emotional rift to open up between them and Murthy,” the book said.
The author also narrates the desolation Sudha Muthi experienced in a story. “One day the children overheard a conversation between their mother and a board member at Infosys. He was telling Sudha, ‘In Murthy’s life, Infosys is Number 1.’ Sudha asked, ‘Who would you say is Number 2? The children? Myself?’ The man paused. Then he said, ‘Infosys is also Number 2. And Number 3 as well.’ The children waited for Sudha to disagree, but to their surprise, she only nodded silently and a bit sadly. Soon after this, Rohan decided to confront Murthy. ‘Who do you love more—me and Akshata, or Infosys?’ he asked him bluntly. Akshata, too, waited with interest to hear his answer. Murthy, taken aback, looked at the two young faces turned towards him. ‘Of course, I love you both the most,’ he assured them. But with a sinking heart, he saw that neither Rohan nor Akshata were convinced. He was, after all, gone most of the day, dedicating virtually every waking moment to the company. In fact, he was never able to attend any of the children’s school activities and only made it to their final graduation ceremonies,” the book read.
Narayana Muthi”s journey at Infosys was also tough; as the book describes, he was surrounded by much younger and inexperienced colleagues for whom he also felt a great burden of responsibility. The book acknowledges his recurring dream of floating in space as his subconscious expression of intense isolation. But the isolation also made him lonely and withdrawn in his own life and marriage.
