Why Akshata Murty Considered Narayana Murthy As Her 'Bonus Dad'

Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy stirred controversy last year when he suggested that Indians must have a 70-hour work week. The 77-year-old billionaire mentioned how in the early years of Infosys he regularly spent almost 12 hours working. Now, a book, ‘An Uncommon Love: The Early Life of Sudha and Narayana Murthy’ by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, has revealed how Murthy’s family struggled to cope with his long work-related absences, especially when his son Rohan and daughter Akshata were growing up. The 352-page long book details that when Murthy was working in the US, his children would spend weeks without listening to his voice as back then, phone calls to the US would cost Rs 32 per minute.

In the book, Divakaruni describes the sacrifice made by Murthy’s immediate family as, “Entrepreneurship has a human cost, and it is the entrepreneur’s family that pays it.”

As per a book excerpt published in the Times of India, one day Rohan and Akshata overheard a conversation between their mother and an Infosys board member in which the board member claimed that their father prioritised the company over his wife and children. When Rohan and Akshata noted that their mother did not correct the board member, they confronted their father. Rohan bluntly asked Murthy, ‘Who do you love more — me and Akshata, or Infosys?’. Murthy assured his kids that he loves them the most but he noted that “neither Rohan nor Akshata was convinced.”

Murthy spent lavishly at the anniversary of the founding of Infosys, but all other family celebrations such as birthdays were sober affairs. The book excerpt mentioned that while growing up, Akshata considered her grandfather as her ‘real dad’ and called her father a ‘bonus dad’. She described him as “someone who appeared at infrequent moments and tried to make up for his absence with fun activities.”

For Rohan, the absence of his father may have caused him to behave “naughtily”, while it made Akshata “quieter and more withdrawn until she entered her teenage years.” Sudha Murty dealt with the loneliness by focusing on the Infosys Foundation and her writing.

As per the book, “Sudha sometimes asked herself a question: Would I have been happy with a man who was satisfied with a nine-to-five salaried job, even if that meant he was home with me every evening? The answer was always a resounding no. Sudha knew she had made the right choice — in deciding to marry Murthy.”