About the Book
Over the years, Sudha Murty has come across some fascinating people whose lives make for interesting stories and have astonishing lessons to reveal. Take Vishnu, who achieves every material success but never knows happiness; or Venkat, who talks so much that he has no time to listen. In other stories, a young girl goes on a train journey that changes her life forever; an impoverished village woman provides bathing water to hundreds of people in a drought-stricken area; a do-gooder ghost decides to teach a disconsolate young man Sanskrit; and in the title story, a woman in a flooded village in Odisha teaches the author a life lesson she will never forget.
About the Author
Sudha Murty was born in 1950 in Shiggaon in north Karnataka. She did her MTech in computer science, and is now the chairperson of the Infosys Foundation. A prolific writer in English and Kannada, she has written novels, technical books, travelogues, collections of short stories and non-fiction pieces, and four books for children. Her books have been translated into all the major Indian languages.
Sudha Murty was the recipient of the R.K. Narayan Award for Literature and the Padma Shri in 2006, and the Attimabbe Award from the government of Karnataka for excellence in Kannada literature in 2011.
Preface
One may wonder why I am writing about the personal lives of many people who have confided in me about their problems. Isn’t it unethical to do so? However, most of the people I have written about requested me to change their names and use their problems as case studies. Some like Vishnu and Porta do encouraged me to tell their stories so that others should not become like them. I thank all these people wholeheartedly and am grateful for their strength and kindness that has allowed me to share their stories with you.
This is my fourth book of recollections of my experiences as a teacher, a writer and a social worker. I want to thank my new editor, Shrutkeerti Khurana, whose hard work has made an immense difference to this book. Her constant interaction with me made me think of some stories in a different way and also helped me look at things from a youngster’s point of view.
I would also like to thank Udayan Mitra of Penguin Books for convincing me to bring out a new volume of my stories and thoughts.
Contents
ix
1.
Bombay to Bangalore
1
2.
Rahman’s Avva
15
3.
Ganga’s Ghat
26
4.
The Day I Stopped Drinking Milk
35
5.
Changing India
41
6.
Genes
49
7.
Helping the Dead
58
8.
Three Ponds
69
9.
No Man’s Garden
86
10.
Sticky Bottoms
96
11.
Too Many Questions
107
12.
The Gift of Sacrifice
113
13.
Bad Help
122
14.
Sharing with a Ghost
132
15.
Foot in the Mouth
139
16.
Miserable Success
146
17.
Shraddha
155
18.
Lazy Portado
163
19.
Uncle Sam
173
20.
You Should Have Asked Me
181
21.
A Mother’s Love
187
22.
Do You Remember?
194
23.
Life’s Secret Lessons
199
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