Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s beautiful biography of Murthy and Sudha’s eternal love and the founding of Infosys.

It is time someone wrote the love story of Murthy and Sudha, and I am glad that the acclaimed novelist Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni chose to do it in her latest book ” An Uncommon Love: The Early Life of Sudha and Narayana Murthy.” Infosys, as such, is a household name in India and perhaps across the world. And so is the true story of how Sudha helped Murthy start the company with Rs 10,250, her savings till that point. It is also well known how Murthy’s vision of building an employee-centric company that believed in generating wealth for all employees was based on ideas of compassionate capitalism that grew out of his disillusionment and first-hand experience in Europe of the faults of communism. And how at every step in the building of the company, Murthy faced moral choices that tested the integrity of this vision, and how, most times, he leaned on Sudha for solace, advice, and optimism in the face of adversity. So many myths and legends have grown around the forty-two-year legacy of the company that it is sometimes difficult to differentiate fact from fiction. From a capital of USD 250 invested in 1981, thanks to Sudha, it has grown to become a USD18.38 billion company with a market capitalization of approximately USD 70 billion in 2023, employing over 343,230 employees worldwide. Narayana Murthy himself has long retired from the active leadership of the company, and the software giant he helped create has become a behemoth much beyond the control of any one person. But in the midst of all this growth, awe, change, and billions that have come in, the beginnings of Infosys can be traced to the story of two ordinary people, so different from each other, fired by their resolve to live a moral life, coming together to materialize a dream.

Chitra captures the significant moments in Sudha and Murthy’s lives that would have a lasting effect not only on their bonding with each other but also on the realization of their dream. My favorite is this one, which came just before the launch of Infosys. It was a pleasant evening in Mumbai. The year was 1982, and it was Sudha Murty’s last day at TELCO. Walking down the stairs of Bombay House, the corporate mansion, with a lot of emotions running through her, she bumped into JRD Tata – the legendary businessman and philanthropist. – who had his office there. Sudha had a fondness and respect for JRD that bordered on worship. Who wouldn’t? After all, he was an iconic personality in the Indian landscape: influential, wealthy, kind, a pioneering aviator, and a respected thought leader. A few months earlier, when Narayanamurthy was late to pick Sudha up after work, JRD, who happened to pass by, noticed that it was dark outside and Sudha was alone. He kept her company until her Murthy arrived. Sudha thought – there was no need for JRD to do that. She was a nobody, yet JRD demonstrated that everyone working for Tata was valued and had his attention. That admirable gesture and the innate humanity of the great man left a deep mark on Sudha. In later years, Both Murthy and Sudha would bring this quality into whatever they did in Infosys.

This evening in 1982, however, was different. After much deliberation, Sudha resigned from TELCO to move to Pune with Murthy to establish Infosys formally. The move was pending for a year and a half since Murthy had to finish his projects with Patni Computer Systems, a commitment that he refused to compromise on. “The longest notice period in corporate history,” as Murthy was fond of saying later on. On the stairs that evening, when JRD stopped and enquired about her well-being, Sudha told him that she was fine and leaving TELCO to join her husband, who had started a software company called Infosys. Without batting an eyelid, JRD asked an essential question with uncanny prescience: ” Oh good! What will you do when you are successful?” Sudha, embarrassed and perhaps a little unsure how to respond, answered the question straight without mincing words. ” I do not know, Sir, if we will be successful or not.” JRD must have been impressed with this candid and unpretentious answer. He looked at her intently with those deep blue magnetic eyes and gave her a piece of advice that would resonate with Sudha ever after. He told her, ” Never start with diffidence. Always start with confidence. When you are successful, you must give back to society. Society gives us so much, we must return it. I wish you all the best!”. These sage words became the philosophy, not only for Sudha but for Sudha and Murthy, as they built Infosys brick by brick and transformed it into one of the biggest, most respected, humanitarian, and most valued Indian companies in the world.

Infosys was Murthy’s dream and his only, to begin with. Sudha never held any position in Infosys at any time in its history. But Murthy couldn’t have built the company without her. She was the pillar, the backbone, and the anchor of Infosys during its incubation. If Murthy was the intellectual fire behind the vision of Infosys, Sudha was its fuel. In her own right, she was intellectually as capable as Murthy was, but she deliberately chose not to cross paths with his dream and listened to him when he requested that she should stay out of Infosys. Nepotism was something Murthy firmly objected to, and Sudha understood that. She believed in Murthy’s destiny and the high principles that drove him. That was his primal attraction. His rock-steady integrity, uncompromising dignity, and unwavering sense of right and wrong. It is not that they did not have their share of arguments, disagreements, and heartbreaks, but nothing that they couldn’t rise above, work through, and move forward. More often than not, it was Sudha’s wisdom and unbridled optimism that resolved an issue for Murthy. To him, she was the shoulder that he could unconditionally rely on. And Sudha knew that her husband would only come to her when he had reached an impasse, a crisis caused by a clash of morals and ethics. In many ways, they were an uncommon romantic couple – as Chitra calls her biography – for that age and time. It was a romance of ideals, a greater vision for the greater good.

That Sudha and Murthy fell in love with each other is extraordinary. Both of them were born and brought up in conservative families with solid leanings towards education. Parsimony was the mantra at home. The ladies of both households were strong women who shouldered a lot of responsibility quietly and uncompromisingly. Sudha’s Grandmother, Chitra writes, was “a rebel disguised as a traditionalist – a canny strategy that Sudha recognized as very effective.” Sudha’s family was from Northern Karnataka, and Murthy’s was from the South. Though part of Karnataka, the divide between north and South was deep and wide, starting with cuisine and ending with customs. Both Sudha and Murty were brilliant students, aced their exams, and could master anything they put their minds to. Sudha was crazy about movies, Murthy not so much. His passion was Western classical music. Books were the common denominator between them. They were voracious readers. In later years, as Murthy got busy with Infosys, his appetite for reading diminished, but not Sudha’s. She remains a book lover even today, and perhaps it was because of her love of books that she became a writer herself, authoring more than forty books for adults and children.

Romance was the last thing on their minds when the two met for the first time at a friend’s place in Pune. Chitra’s book begins with that meeting. Murthy – a bespectacled, lanky man, squint-eyed and introverted was anything but debonair, and she – clad in jeans and tops with a beaming smile and a shade skeptical. That they discovered something in each other defies conventional rationale. But they did! Something ticked between them. Even during that first encounter, they felt an attraction, kindred souls in search of fulfilling their potential. As they got to know each other, this bond only became more robust, rooted on firmer ground. The vicissitudes of life and the struggles they would face together in the future only deepened and ripened the mutual respect and admiration they found during their first encounter. One can write a dozen scientific and chronological biographies of Infosys packed with facts and milestones with many personalities flitting in and out of the pages. But all such efforts would be incomplete without the love story of Sudha and Murthy. And that is the pulse of Chitra’s beautiful biography. The great novelist that she is, she has managed to bring forth the birth of Infosys through the lives of two people deeply in love with each other. But Love is such a strange word, isn’t it? It doesn’t lend itself easily to a definition or categorization: love is sacrifice, love is compromise, love is passion, love is commitment, love is this, and love is that. There are so many dimensions to it. But none captures the essence of this strange feeling. Each love story is different in its way, and that is why it remains so mysterious, so beyond analysis. Between Sudha and Murthy, all the traditional elements of love were present, but beyond this, they had a deep respect for each other’s strong sense of individuality and calling. This is a rare thing. This was the crucial factor in their relationship. Each leaned on the other quite a bit but, at the same time, gave themselves the space to remain their unique selves. Each understood the other’s dreams and values, and they found ways to collaborate on a shared vision. This was the beauty of their relationship. While Murthy knew from the day he met Sudha that she was special, It took Sudha more time and reflection to understand this idealistic man who was steadfast in his principles. Both preferred simple living but dreamed big dreams for others. After five years of courting, Sudha and Murthy got married on 10 February 1978, on a chilly Bangalore morning. The ceremony, from start to finish, was thirty minutes. The bride and the bridegroom wished for a simple wedding with a minimal amount of rituals. They got what they wanted despite the reservations of both families. Murthy was thirty-two, and Sudha was twenty-eight years old. North and South Karnataka had come together.

The story of Sudha and Murthy and the story of Infosys is actually the story of post-independent India when the country, fresh from the euphoria of freedom struggle, chose to lean towards socialism as a means to achieve economic stability and growth. The Nehruvian idea that the Government should play a big role in setting up industries and regulating economic policies worked well for a couple of decades immediately after independence. It helped establish the heavy industries that were needed to fuel growth. The steel projects and the dams that were built during that time couldn’t have happened otherwise. But by the seventies, however, socialism had lost its charm worldwide. Even in hardcore communist regimes, socialistic ideas were becoming instruments of oppression and failed to live up to the promises they held. India was yet to make up its mind. The mindset of the country was towards social equality and equal wealth, and there was an undertone of distrust of individual entrepreneurship. Layers of stentorian bureaucracy and regressive policies have piled up, all designed to stifle Individual entrepreneurship. Even as the IITs and IIMs churned out world-class engineers and leaders, the graduates found themselves unable to realize their dreams in India. There were too many obstacles, challenges, and red tape to handle. Not very healthy at all. More importantly, there were indications of great changes sweeping the world. Computerization was beginning to make its impact everywhere, especially on businesses. The endless possibilities of automation looked exciting. Software development and programming languages were the new buzzwords. By the end of the 1970s, it was clear that India had to embrace IT, but the question was: Did we have the political and economic environment in the country to embrace such a change? The short answer was NO. The term software itself was looked upon with suspicion, and anything to do with it was closely scrutinized for malpractice or rejected outright as a utopian idea. Comfortable with what they were doing, the machinery of the Government wasn’t sensitive to the changes sweeping across the world.

The true essence and resilience of Sudha and Murthy’s relationship and the birth of Infosys can only be adequately understood in the context of India of the 80s and 90s. Those were testing times for anyone with entrepreneurial vision. Today, in a globalized and interconnected world, it is easier to acquire infrastructure, funds, and the backing that a nascent, unproven idea requires. Back then, it was an uphill struggle. Nothing was easy or smooth, from importing a computer to setting it up at a particular location to draconian foreign exchange regulations to negotiating with eurocrats who felt threatened to establish credibility among international customers quickly and smoothly; everything took effort, heartbreaks, and seemed insurmountable challenges. India had not yet established itself as a nation of Entrepreneurs, at least not in the field of IT, which it would come to dominate in the 21st century. The relationship between Sudha and Murthy had a lot of idealism in it. They liked each other’s company and respected each other’s views, but above all that, their love was cemented and infused with a shared dream to make a difference in society. In Chitra’s view, Sudga emerges as the one who comes up with the correct answers at the right time. And this is not because a woman wrote this book. Murthy himself and all the other founders of Infosys have at numerous times acknowledged that without Sudha, Infosys would never have taken off. This is true not just from a financial perspective. Sudha’s steady voice, often emerging from her deep understanding of history and culture, would help transform moments of hesitation and weakness into channels of opportunity and optimism. When Murthy insisted that she should stay out of Infosys because he wanted to establish Infosys as a company that honored merit and not family connection, it was a hard decision for Sudha to digest. After all, she helped the company with the money it needed to start, and she had relinquished a blossoming career to participate in Murthy’s dream. For a couple of days, she reeled under the impact of choice imposed on her – some would call it male chauvinism – but she realized quickly that such a decision was for the greater good, and she could find many other ways to promote her causes and interests. During the period when Akshata – her first child – was born, she found she had time on her hands, so she took to writing. Little did she know then that over the next forty years, she would go on to pen more than forty books with millions of copies in print and translated into a dozen languages. Today, Sudha, the writer, is more widely known than Sudha, the wife of the founder of Infosys.

When an acclaimed Novelist like Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni turns to writing a biography for the first time, it is to be expected that she would focus more on the relationship between the protagonists of the story than on the technical aspects of founding an IT company. Chitra manages to do that well. She unravels the emotional intracies in Sudha and Murthy’s uncommon love for each other. She focuses on both of their families and how their extraordinary support at all times made Sudha and Murthy’s journey and dream possible. There is a big lesson for all youngsters reading the book. The lesson is this: Nuclear families severed from their roots lose the support, nourishment, and timeless wisdom that only elders in the family can pass on. The love story of Murthy and Sudha is not a rebellion against family values or traditions. Instead, it was a consummation of it without losing any part of the warmth, love, and support only a family can give. Chitra’s language and style of writing are sparse, straightforward, direct, and accessible. I promise readers that never once would they have to consult a dictionary while reading this book. Chitra’s sentences are as clear as crystal, with no pretense, literary embellishments, or stretched metaphors. The writing is down to earth, like the Hero and heroine of the biography. Chitra’s 1997 Novel ” The Mistress of Spices”, her first full-length novel, I suppose, is a beautiful book. For those who have read and enjoyed it, “Uncommon Love” will be a different experience. There is no fantasy in this biography, no magic, but a plain re-telling of an extraordinary love story of two people in actual flesh and blood. I read the book in one sitting. Even though I had heard and read about many of the incidents Chitra quotes and describes; her narrative kept me riveted to the page. She brought in something extra to every event. I found an uncommon eloquence in her writing. It is only in the final paragraph of the book that Chitra, the novelist, decides to peep out: the dream of founding Infosys is fulfilled; the company has grown to a gargantuan size, and now, on a moonlit night, Sudha reflects on the journey with her head on Murthy’s arm as clouds gather and slowly make their way across the heavens, parting every now and then for the clear, cool blue light of the moon to shine through. There is peace and fulfillment.

I highly recommend this biography to all readers. Like Irving Stone’s biographical novel “Love is Eternal,” the story of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln, “Uncommon Love” brings to life the life and journey of two of the most venerated, beautiful, and successful celebrities of Modern India.