Daughter to a schoolteacher and the daughter-in-law to a school... ” were the opening sentences of her speech at the FLO installation ceremony here in Hyderabad. Ms. Sudha Murthy, in spite of she being a lecturer, her speech had no elements of a typical classroom talk, it was informative and inspiring — filled all along with a dash of humour.

The family woman

Today’s motherhood is much more difficult. When I ask my children what I should talk about, they plainly said, “Mom, no one comes there to listen to you. They are there to see who Narayan Murthy’s wife is, and, just because they have the patience, that does not mean that you keep talking.” Such is the relationship between her and her kids. She had mentioned her mother-in-law a number of times in her speech and now since she is one, we wonder what her relationship with her son Rohan’s wife Lakshmi Venu is. “It’s just been a month and all I can say is that she’s a very fine woman.”

The seven partners at Infosys have been together for so many years and are family to her. “When you share so many difficulties together, you become one. We stayed in each other houses. My daughter was brought up by Sudha Gopalkrishnan and son was brought up by Rohini Nilakani. Whatever differences the men have at workplace, we women never differentiated about anything. I also tell Murthy, you guys might differ at office, but we don’t differ at home.”

The person

The Murthys are always known to be very simple people. So what could be the luxuries they indulge in? “I love movies a lot. I love music and I travel a lot — the best places being Paris and London. In India, Calcutta and Delhi are places I enjoy visiting. I have my own library of about 5,000 books. My next book is on children, though the name of the same hasn't been decided yet.”