Mysuru: Probationary police officers undergoing training at Karnataka Police Academy (KPA), and women police constables under training at the Police training school, had an interaction with Infosys Foundation chairperson Dr Sudha Murty Saturday morning.
Sharing several incidents from her life, Dr Sudha Murty advised the probationers to serve with a human touch and compassion and spend quality time with their families, mainly children. “If you are happy you can help others. Put your feet in the shoes of people who come for help” she said.
She also revealed that it was her daughter Akshatha Murty who had acted as a catalyst for her to start social service. “My daughter when she was 16 years old, functioned as reader for visually challenged children in the Academy of visually challenged in Jayanagar. She used to write exams for a bright student, who was visually challenged named Anand Sharma. One day in 1996, when I was serving in Bengaluru University as chairperson of a department, I was setting an exam paper, and my daughter told me that Anand Sharma had got a seat in a famous college and I should give money for his studies. When I replied that I had never given pocket money to kids, she said ‘You are well read, well qualified, if you cannot do social service, then you don’t have the right to ask anybody to do so.’ It was then that I resigned my job and started serving society.”
She also said, “The death of my mother and mother-in-law and several experiences while working during the tsunami, made me realise that no one and nothing is permanent. We pass through this life only once, if we can show compassion, let us do it now.”
She inspired the trainees by giving her own example and how she overcame hurdles to pursue her engineering course being the only woman in the college where she stood first.
“There was no toilet for women in the college and I realised how serious the problem was So that made me build 14,000 toilets in various places, much before the Swacch Bharat campaign began,” she said.
