00:00When I wore a salwar kameez and I was in a Heathrow airport,
00:02someone thought you stand in economy because you belong to cattle class.
00:07They think I do not know English because people equate today you are wearing a sari,
00:11salwar kameez and you look simple without makeup that means you are uneducated, non-educated.
00:30You don't want to be famous. So you always say I am not attached to fame
00:41but because of your great contribution to society, people know you, they relate with you
00:47but you don't relate with your own fame. So we see a lot of us today work for fame.
00:52If you ask anyone what do you want to do in life, we want recognition, we want
00:56money or we want some kind of appreciation in the society. How do you define not being famous
01:02or not wanting to be famous because it brings a lot of confidence, acceptance if that's a word.
01:11I agree. Fame is not just coming in the paper or TV or newsreel etc. Fame is acceptance.
01:21Fame is acceptance from the peer pressure people. There are two ways to look at it.
01:27In my case, I felt it maybe initially I wanted acceptance or something and my level is very low
01:35so I got saturated very early and then I did not bother. That is one way of looking at it.
01:40Second thing is I am not a person who goes on acceptance. For example, if acceptance was
01:46important to me, I would not have done engineering because it was absolutely
01:54non-expectance education I took and over a period of time when I worked and saw the world, I said
02:01it doesn't matter what people talk about me. As long as I'm legally, ethically right, as long as
02:07my work helps poor people in our country, let them talk to me anything, I will accept it.
02:14So that attitude probably has made me not to attach to the fame. For example, you must have
02:21read I wrote a cattle class. Many places I have seen the way because I wear saree, they think I
02:26do not know English because people equate today you are wearing a saree, salwar kameez and you
02:31look simple without makeup that means you are uneducated. Most people think that way. That is
02:37the way of thinking, let them think it doesn't matter to me. So once I went to a dinner party
02:42and someone thought you know everyone was dying their hair. If you're not dying that means you're
02:48not smart, okay. You're not up to the mark, all those things. They came with a great hesitation
02:53being Narayan Murthy's wife, they felt like they should talk to me and but they thought I may not
02:59understand English at all. They said hello, namaste, may I know your name please. I said yeah
03:07I'm Sudha Murthy and thank you glad to meet you. They said my god you know English. I said of
03:12course I know English, I'm an author. So these are the myths people think about that. For example,
03:17I wore a salwar kameez and I was in a Heathrow airport. Someone thought you should stand in
03:22economy because you belong to cattle class. Then I said what is the definition of a class? Class
03:29is not money, class is not beauty, class is not fame. Class is what you are to the society. You
03:36may be very beautiful, you may be very famous but if you don't do anything to your society,
03:40according to my definition, they're classless. Mother Teresa wore a simple sari. She had a class.
03:48You look at great people, they have a class. Not have money and that is my way of looking at it but
03:54people think that oh you are your didi ji, your bhabhi ji, okay. Let them think. You can't live
04:01on someone's opinion. You have to live on your opinion what you think about. I don't know how
04:08this will go with us being on social media all the time. We have so many applications. All the
04:13time we are on social media and unknowingly we validate each other all the time. So this is a
04:19very disastrous. You are in a race where there is no end point. Yes. Right. If you are in a race
04:26where after 100 feet there is a thread, okay, cross the line, you are winner. Yes. And second
04:32thing, how long you can be in a race. If you are in such race, suppose you are learning race,
04:37I understand but you are in a race where there is always a pressure to excel, to look better,
04:44to wear better dress, to talk better and how long you can do that. Yes. And that will
04:51actually break you one or other day.
