Inspiration From Sudha Murthy
In my seminars, I show two photographs simultaneously, one of a Bollywood actor, known for her sensational acts, and the other of Sudha Murthy. Ironically everybody recognizes the Bollywood actor, but very few recognize Sudha Murthy.
The point they realize is that many of us are habituated to watching convenient media, namely TV, and that too channels which tend to be sensational. Instead if we were to inculcate the habit of visiting websites or searching for sensible media on the net, it will greatly invigorate our mind, our thought process and our day to day behaviour thereby ensuring that we live meaningful lives.
While searching for information on Sudha Murthy, I came across an article from which I have picked a few lines verbatim, which are as follows:
“The Murthy couple loves reading and have a massive collection of over 20,000 books arranged in two libraries. Sudha is strictly against the idea of lending books to someone and tells, “I tell my husband, ‘how could writers survive if everybody started borrowing their books?’ We, the authors, want people to buy books. “That is the only way we can earn — from our royalty”. Sudha has established over 60,000 libraries in Karnataka alone through the Infosys Foundation.
In her latest book, Three Thousand stitches she talks about the problems that she faced during her engineering days. “I cried after writing that story. I don’t know how I could do that at that point in life. But the fact that I did not have a toilet for four years in the college motivated me to build 13,000 toilets in the state,” Sudha told to TIE.
Recently a video went viral in which it can be seen that Sudha Murthy is visiting her Engineering college as a chief guest to inspire the students. At the time of lamp lighting ceremony, she realizes that one of her teachers is sitting in the audience, so she requests him to come and be a part of the lamp lighting. The teacher is overwhelmed, and when he is about to go back to his seat, he bows to thank Sudha Murthy with his hands folded for the honour she gave him. Sudha Murthy holds his hands and does the Sashtang Pranam (reverential prostration) to the teacher. When I show the video to the participants in a seminar, invariably there is a spontaneous applause for Sudha Murthy. I encourage you to follow the likes of Sudha Murthy, please watch the video, link attached.
An Article by Vijay Michihito Batra