40 Fun Facts About Sudha Murty

How did Sudha Murty send JRD Tata her complaint about a TELCO job advert that barred women?

On a postcard, addressed to the chairman himself, she protested the men-only notice; she was called for an interview and became the company's first woman engineer.

Which British prime minister is the son-in-law of author Sudha Murty?

Rishi Sunak married Akshata Murty in 2009, five years after the two met at Stanford University.

After a 1990s pilgrimage to Varanasi, what did Sudha Murty vow never to buy for herself again?

New saris were the pleasure she gave up at the Ganges, where pilgrims are told to renounce something they love; she has since worn only gifted ones.

What did Sudha Murty famously do with the 10,000 rupees she had set aside for emergencies?

Funded her husband's firm: the 10,000 rupees became the founding capital of Infosys in 1981, and she kept back just 250 for herself.

Which address on Sudha Murty's arrival form did a UK immigration officer refuse to believe?

10 Downing Street was the truth: she was visiting Akshata at the prime minister's official residence, a story she later told on television.

As the only girl at her engineering college, which campus spot was Sudha Murty told to avoid?

The canteen was off limits under one of three conditions the college set; another was that she must not chat with the boys in her class.

Why is Sudha Murty's surname spelled one letter differently from her husband Narayana Murthy's?

She says his is wrong: to her, Murty without the h is the correct spelling, and she made sure their two children use it too.

What year-long dare from friends did Sudha Murty complete as a young engineer at TELCO?

Watch a film every day she did, 365 in 365 days, until every cinema gateman knew her and her friends conceded that nobody could beat her.

Which facility, missing from her all-male college, did Sudha Murty later build by the thousand?

Toilets for women did not exist on her campus, so she trained herself to get through the day; her foundation later built more than 14,000 in rural areas.

What part did Sudha Murty play in her cameos in the films Prarthane and Uppu Huli Khara?

A judge, both times: in Uppu Huli Khara she had about two minutes on screen, and afterwards said acting is far harder than watching films.

Sudha Murty was born in 1950 in the small town of Shiggaon, in which southern Indian state?

Karnataka now includes Shiggaon, though the town lay in Bombay State when she was born; Kannada, her family's language, is the language of many of her books.

Sudha Murty's foundation work has set up more than 60,000 of which facility across her home state?

Libraries were set up through the Infosys Foundation, which backed a drive to give every government school in her home state books and computers.

Who narrates Sudha Murty's children's series The Gopi Diaries, which opens with Coming Home?

The family dog tells it himself: the books follow Gopi from the day he arrives at his new home and show his human family through his eyes.

On which symbolic day in 2024 did India's President nominate Sudha Murty to Parliament?

Women's Day, 8 March, was the date; the prime minister announced it publicly and called her seat a testament to the strength of India's women.

Whose late-night challenge about helping the poor led Sudha Murty to start the Infosys Foundation?

Her teenage daughter Akshata, then 16, woke her to say that if a well-read, well-travelled person like her would not help the poor, nobody would.

How did Sudha Murty's grandmother thank her, aged 12, for teaching the older woman to read?

Touched her feet, a gesture elders never make to children; her grandmother said she was honouring a teacher, not a granddaughter.

Which house of India's Parliament did Sudha Murty join in 2024 as a nominee of the President?

Rajya Sabha, the upper house, keeps twelve seats for people the President picks for their contributions to art, literature, science and social service.

Which Sudha Murty novel was adapted into a Zee TV serial in 2001?

Dollar Bahu contrasts a daughter-in-law in the United States with one at home; filming of the serial's American scenes began just as the September 11 attacks happened.

Sudha Murty's Three Thousand Stitches takes its main story from her work with which group of women?

Devadasis, women dedicated to temples and pushed into sex work, are the group she set out to help earn their own living and shed the stigma attached to them.

Which civilian honour did the Government of India give Sudha Murty in 2023 for her social work?

Padma Bhushan is India's third-highest civilian award; she had received the Padma Shri, one rung below, in 2006.

In which city did Sudha Murty join TELCO as an engineer before postings in Mumbai and Jamshedpur?

Pune is where she was working when she married Narayana Murthy, whose new company Infosys also started out in the city.

Where did Sudha Murty earn her master's in computer science, as the only woman on the course?

IISc Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Science, is where a job advert on the notice board provoked her famous protest to the head of the Tata group.

In Sudha Murty's novel Mahashweta, which skin condition leads Anupama's in-laws to cast her out?

Leukoderma, which leaves white patches on the skin, appears while her husband is abroad; Anupama rebuilds her life in Bombay and later refuses to take him back.

In her first speech in Parliament, Sudha Murty urged a vaccination drive against which disease?

Cervical cancer vaccination was one request in that speech; another was World Heritage recognition for 57 Indian tourist sites.

What was the profession of Sudha Murty's father, who backed her wish to study engineering?

Doctor Kulkarni admitted he knew little about engineering and would have preferred medicine for her, but said the decision was hers and he would support it.

While raising two children, Sudha Murty spent years working in which profession before turning to philanthropy?

College professor was her day job before philanthropy took over: she taught for years, including at Christ University.

In The Magic of the Lost Temple, what does Sudha Murty's city girl Nooni find deep in a forest?

A stepwell, long thought to be only a legend, turns up in the middle of the forest while Nooni is visiting her family's village.

Sudha Murty's The Serpent's Revenge retells little-known tales for children from which ancient work?

The Mahabharata supplies the tales, drawn from before, during and after the Kurukshetra war, that most retellings leave out.

In which town, the setting of her first novel Gently Falls the Bakula, did Sudha Murty grow up?

Hubli is where she and her three siblings went to local schools, and where she became the first girl at the town's engineering college.

Which subject did Sudha Murty's grandfather, her first teacher, urge on her instead of engineering?

History was his own subject, and he told her she could become a great scholar; her mother argued for mathematics and her father for medicine.

Which US university publishes the Indian classics series endowed by Sudha Murty's son Rohan?

Harvard, where Rohan Murty was a doctoral student in computer science, received his $5.2 million gift, and its press issues the dual-language volumes.

Sudha Murty's story Runa became the 2013 film Pitruroon, made in which Indian language?

Marathi cinema got the story through actor Nitish Bharadwaj, making his debut as a director, and the author herself appears in a small role.

In which Sudha Murty novel does Mridula walk out on Sanjay after his medical career turns corrupt?

House of Cards takes Mridula from her village to the big city, where Sanjay quits his government job for a booming private practice and loses his way.

Sudha Murty's brother Shrinivas Kulkarni of Caltech won the 2024 Shaw Prize in which field?

Astronomy is his life's work: as a graduate student he helped discover the first millisecond pulsar, and he later ran Caltech's optical observatories.

In which state is the flooded village of Sudha Murty's story The Day I Stopped Drinking Milk?

Odisha is where a village woman taught her a lesson she calls unforgettable; the same collection tells of a woman who supplied bathing water to hundreds in a drought.

Which celebrated Indian novelist's name is on the literature award Sudha Murty received in 2006?

R. K. Narayan, creator of the fictional town of Malgudi, gives his name to the prize; her books have since been translated into all the major Indian languages.

Which traveller's seventeen-year journey to India gave Sudha Murty the nerve to study engineering?

Hiuen Tsang, the Chinese monk also known as Xuanzang, ignored everyone who warned him off the trip, as she ignored relatives who said nobody would marry a woman engineer.

Which 1960 Hindi film did a young Sudha Murty skip school to watch on its opening day?

Mughal-e-Azam drew her to the first show on the first day; when her mother fumed, she replied that by Sunday the film would be stale.

Which serialised novel did Sudha Murty's grandmother long to read in How I Taught My Grandmother to Read?

Kashi Yatre, by the popular novelist Triveni, ran weekly in the magazine Karmaveera, and the grandmother identified with its heroine, an old woman longing for a pilgrimage.

Which Sudha Murty book, set during the 2020 lockdown, won the Sahitya Akademi's children's prize?

Grandparents' Bag of Stories has children waiting out the pandemic in Shiggaon with Ajja and Ajji; it took the 2023 Bal Sahitya Puraskar for English.