The enigma that is Mr. Narayana Murthy

Finally, I have the time to write something. It has been a very hectic four months and with no results yet to show for that. Nevertheless, it feels great to be able to write again.

I officially became an engineer in the month of November, as my alma mater held its first convocation. It was brilliantly done, kudos to the Alumni team for that. It was amazing to meet people with  whom I had spent the last four years. But this is not what the idea of the blog is.

What would you do if you became a multi-millionaire and had more money than you could ever imagine? Buy a big house, keep a fleet of cars, wear the most expensive of accessories and clothing? Not if you are Mr. Narayana Murthy. We have all heard stories about the great visionary and the true father of the Indian IT industry. We all know how he started the company Infosys, with borrowings from his wife. About how even after all the riches, his wife still used to drop him to office as he did not know how to drive. About how their foundation donates millions of rupees to charity every year. But there is a subtle difference between listening to all the nice stories about such geniuses  and actually observing them in person. Perceptions change vastly after the latter, and not always for the good. In the case of Mr Murthy, thankfully, this did not happen. Here is what I saw an understood about the great man.

The official arrival of the chief guest was at 9.30 am as per schedule. All the students had naturally arrived much earlier. By 9.15 am, the volunteers were ushering us into the hall that was the venue of the convocation. I did not go in, as I did not expect anything to happen before 10 am. As I was loitering about outside, I saw a delegation of suited up men arrive in front of me. Right in centre was the Mr. Murthy. I looked at my watch. It was 9.25 am( and my watch is five minutes faster!). Talk about punctuality. While narrating this incidence to my father, I got to know another great story. Mr Murthy was to be the judge at the Hindustan Leadership Summit for judging the best entrepreneur. The committee which he headed was supposed to meet a 9am on a particular day with the nominees. At 9 am, Mr Murthy started off the process even though some participants had not reached. Clearly, punctuality is a virtue well imbibed in him.

As the convocation session began, Mr Murthy sat on the sofa listening to the various boring and frankly un-necessary speeches. The suit that he wore was one that you would expect any middle-class man to wear. He was wearing those woollen warm winter socks that we normally do in winters. Looking at him, I thought he has beautifully followed the words of Mahatma Gandhi-"simple living and high thinking".  As his turn came to address us, he delivered s speech that was relevant and not the normal boring kind. He talked about how the concepts that we have learned should always remain with us, how we should always keep ourselves updated with the latest in our field, how he still reads about the core topics in Computer Science(database, networking etc.) daily for two hours. Thankfully, it did not contain much about being a good human being, helping others, being moral and all the boring official crap that you would normally expect a chief guest to deliver. He was aware that he was talking to CS graduates and his address was very much in context.

After the session, the delegation disappeared upstairs while parents and students went off for the lunch. You would expect that the chief guest and other officials would be having their own lunch somewhere in private chambers. Not with Mr. Murthy. He was down for lunch in an hour. And that was the most incredible sight of the afternoon. Here was the IT king of India, a renowned person worldwide with many awards to his name, calmly standing and talking to every student and parent who wished to interact. It was disarmingly humbling to see the unassuming nature of the man. There were no security guards pushing the people away. There was no arrogance being shown. He never made you feel as if he is any better than you. That afternoon, he changed from being a chief guest to  being "one of us".

Finally, as time ran out, Mr. Murthy had to leave. You would expect the chauffeur driven super luxury car to come. And for the umpteenth time that day, Mr Murthy proved us wrong. The car that stood was a normal yellow and black Swift Dzire taxi, with a simple driver.

As I went back, I realized that the day had taught me a very important lesson. It did not tell me how to become rich, but it did tell me how to behave and carry yourself if I ever become that rich.h