A US client made Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy sleep on a large box in a windowless storeroom surrounded by cartons during a visit to the United States for work in the initial days. However, the client’s own home had four bedrooms, the book “An Uncommon Love: The Early Life of Sudha and Narayana Murthy” published by Juggernaut Books revealed.
Indian-American author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has come out with a biography covering the early days of Sudha Murty’s and Narayana Murthy’s lives that is replete with many such nuggets about the iconic couple. It is a story of Murthys’ early years from their courtship to Infosys’ founding years, and from their marriage to parenthood, PTI reported.
The US client has been identified as Donn Liles, who headed the New York-based company Data Basics Corporation. He was a temperamental client and was especially unpleasant to Murthy at times.
“He would often delay payments when he could, and Murthy would then be the target of his ire because he would hold his ground, refusing to budge on timely payment for services. Or Donn would not provide timely authorization for Murthy and his Infosys colleagues to book hotels when they had to visit him in Manhattan,” the book read.
“Once when Murthy visited the US for client work, Donn made him sleep on a large box in the storeroom, surrounded by cartons, though his home had four bedrooms. Additionally, Murthy had to manage Donn’s many last-minute demands for resources,” it says.
He put up with Donn’s behavior for the sake of his fledgling company, but the box incident truly shocked Murthy.
“My mother used to say that a guest was like God, and the way you treated your guests revealed what kind of person you really were,” he told his wife Sudha.
“When my father invited someone over without advance notice, she often served the guest her own food and went to sleep without dinner. And here was Donn enjoying a good night’s sleep in his luxurious bed after making me spend the night on a big box in a windowless storeroom,” he said, leaving Sudha furious.
The book also mentions how Murthy was averse to his wife joining Infosys despite being a fine engineer who knew she could contribute far more solidly to the company than helping with only the odds and ends that her husband assigned to her.
Murthy told his wife that she is extremely well qualified and no one has her kind of determination but if she joins “Infosys will become a husband-and-wife firm rather than a professional company”.
Divakaruni writes that while Sudha and Murthy had many things in common because of their shared Kannada background and their love for reading, their very different childhoods shaped them in unique ways, as per PTI reports.
Divakaruni says capturing in words the lives of two extraordinary people from ordinary backgrounds, who have changed the face of entrepreneurship and philanthropy was challenging.
(With PTI inputs)
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Published: 07 Jan 2024, 05:52 PM IST