HYDERABAD: “Being the granddaughter of a school teacher, I think I’m taking a class and will not stop until someone rings the bell,” began Sudha Murty, chairperson of the Infosys Foundation, social worker and writer.Murty narrated small snippets from her eventful life at the 9th annual session of the FICCI Ladies Organization, Hyderabad chapter on Saturday. After Aparna Reddy and Swapna Cherukuri took over as new chairpersons of FLO and YFLO respectively, Murty presided over the session.Giving a talk on Power of Vision in Leadership, Murty said women need to shun the stereotypical image created by society and break boundaries by using their tremendous potential. She then said how she was unperturbed by her father’s disapproval. “My father always said no one will marry you if you take up engineering. Had I listened to what my father said, I would not have been the first woman to work with Telco,” she said. She spoke about how her professors dissuaded her not to join an engineering college because there was “no ladies washroom”. Abiding by all rules, she was the only girl to have joined engineering in Karnataka in 1967. She recollected glimpses of her life and said “If I had not questioned JRD Tata about why Telco (now Tata Motors) was not recruiting women, seeing the advertisement ‘lady candidates need not apply’, I wouldn’t have been in Telco.” Author of Dollar Bahu and many other books, Murty urged women to live their lives in a way they want to and not depend on others.Speaking about how she served victims of several natural disasters in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Odisha and Punjab, she said “The next time there is a natural disaster, people will remember me.” Referring to Padmini Kolhapuri’s presence at the FLO ceremony last year, she quipped, “Last year it was a beautiful woman addressing the session but this year, it is an old lady.” She signed off saying, “I led an ordinary life under extraordinary circumstances and that keeps me going even now.”
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