An Uncommon Love : The Early Life of Sudha and Narayana...

An Uncommon Love : The Early Life of Sudha and Narayana Murthy

Sudha Kulkarni was a vivacious young woman, forging a pathbreaking career as TELCO’s first woman engineer, when she met the serious, idealistic and brilliant Narayana Murthy, and they fell in love. For the first time comes the story of their early years – from their courtship to Infosys’s founding years, from their marriage to parenthood – told by master storyteller Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

What drew this unlikely pair together? And what kept them bound tightly through the challenges and loneliness they faced? What was it like to create a start-up at a time in India when licence raj ruled, there were no VCs, and entrepreneurship was regarded as a dirty word? How did Sudha Murty balance being a career woman, a mother and a start-up wife, and what was the toll that Narayana Murthy’s obsession took on both himself and his family?

Taking us deep inside the minds, hearts and values of the Murthys, with exclusive access to them, Divakaruni tells their story with extraordinary emotional depth, bringing them and their worlds (small-town and rural Karnataka, India, in the 70s and 80s) vividly alive.

This is a book about the sacrifices it takes to forge a powerful and lasting marriage, about the early story of Infosys and Indian business before liberalization, and most of all about two icons before they became the legends that transformed the fields of business and philanthropy.