Life Lessons from Narayana Murthy .. Contd.

[Guest guest]

He was discussing exciting new developments in the field of computer

science with a large group of students and how such developments

would alter our future. He was articulate, passionate and quite

convincing. I was hooked. I went straight from breakfast to the

library, read four or five papers he had suggested, and left the

library determined to study computer science.

 

Friends, when I look back today at that pivotal meeting, I marvel at

how one role model can alter for the better the future of a young

student. This experience taught me that valuable advice can sometimes

come from an unexpected source, and chance events can sometimes open

new doors.

 

The next event that left an indelible mark on me occurred in 1974.

The location: Nis, a border town between former Yugoslavia, now

Serbia, and Bulgaria. I was hitchhiking from Paris back to Mysore,

India, my home town.

 

By the time a kind driver dropped me at Nis railway station at 9 p.m.

on a Saturday night, the restaurant was closed. So was the bank the

next morning, and I could not eat because I had no local money. I

slept on the railway platform until 8.30 pm in the night when the

Sofia Express pulled in.

 

The only passengers in my compartment were a girl and a boy. I struck

a conversation in French with the young girl. She talked about the

travails of living in an iron curtain country, until we were roughly

interrupted by some policemen who, I later gathered, were summoned by

the young man who thought we were criticising the communist

government of Bulgaria.

 

The girl was led away; my backpack and sleeping bag were confiscated.

I was dragged along the platform into a small 8x8 foot room with a

cold stone floor and a hole in one corner by way of toilet

facilities. I was held in that bitterly cold room without food or

water for over 72 hours.

 

I had lost all hope of ever seeing the outside world again, when the

door opened. I was again dragged out unceremoniously, locked up in

the guard’s compartment on a departing freight train and told that I

would be released 20 hours later upon reaching Istanbul. The guard’s

final words still ring in my ears -- " You are from a friendly country

called India and that is why we are letting you go! "

 

The journey to Istanbul was lonely, and I was starving. This long,

lonely, cold journey forced me to deeply rethink my convictions about

Communism. Early on a dark Thursday morning, after being hungry for

108 hours, I was purged of any last vestiges of affinity for the Left.

 

I concluded that entrepreneurship, resulting in large-scale job

creation, was the only viable mechanism for eradicating poverty in

societies. Deep in my heart, I always thank the Bulgarian guards for

transforming me from a confused Leftist into a determined,

compassionate capitalist! Inevitably, this sequence of events led to

the eventual founding of Infosys in 1981.