Legacy: Letters from eminent parents to their daughters by Menon, Sudha (books suggested by bill gates txt) 📗

to become a college professor instead. She wanted to be at home when you both returned from school.

Do you remember coming home and regaling your mother with stories about your day at school, having a hot snack, and later in the evening going over your homework with her? I know career aspirations receive much attention in this competitive world. However, what was important in your mother’s time will remain the same even today, despite the much-changed world in which you live.

Having a child is an eternal responsibility, Akshata, and having to simultaneously deliver a hundred percent at work is like walking a tightrope. You are lucky to be in a position where you can take a break from your career for a short period and focus on your baby. Hundreds and thousands of women around this country do not have this option. At Infosys, I have talked to young mothers who leave their little children at home and have to perform consistently well at the workplace. I am reminded of how you are balancing your act and that makes me understanding and considerate to them. The world admires a woman who brings a sense of balance to all the three responsibilities—being a loving wife, a caring mother and a competent career woman. I have no doubt at all that you will strike a healthy balance in these responsibilities like you have in everything else.

Tell Krishnaa lots of stories and instill good values in her through them. Tell her, like I told you, stories of the accomplishments, courage, compassion, sacrifice and adventure, of your aunts, uncles and grandparents. Through them she will know her ancestors intimately and be inspired by their lives. It is also how she will develop love and respect for your elders and make a bond with the past and the present.

As you pursue your goals and live a contended life, remember that there is only one planet for us to live in and that planet is now becoming endangered. Remember that it is your responsibility to pass on this planet to Krishnaa in a better condition than you got it from us.

The world is yours to explore. Right from the beginning, your mother and I felt that it would be so much better for you to create your own future. You are already the entrepreneur you wanted to be. You will be putting India’s crafts and textiles tradition on the global map with your business.

My dream for you is that you become a model citizen of whichever society you choose to be in and conduct yourself as an honest, worthy, responsible and productive citizen of that country. No matter how transnational you are or how American (you have been living there from the age of seventeen), you will always be seen as an Indian. Therefore, uphold the image of India in every action of yours.

Be successful. Success to me is bringing a smile to the faces of people when you enter a room. Becoming so requires you to be caring of other people. I know this is your fundamental strength. Put the interest of the society ahead of your own family’s interest, and the interest of your family ahead of your own personal interest. That is the only way, my child, that we can make this a better world for our children and grandchildren.

I appreciate your penchant for following the golden rule—Do unto others what you want others to do unto you—to ensure fairness in everything we do. Many times people ask me how I want to be remembered. My answer has always been that I want to be remembered as a fair person, not a good person. To put yourself in someone’s shoes to understand their feelings.’

There is a joke in our family that the only person I am scared of, who can rein me in, is my daughter. Throughout my career—at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, while working in Paris at Patni Computer Systems and finally at Infosys, I really did not have a boss. In the first three places, since I worked hard to deliver whatever I agreed on time, within budget, and with the requisite quality, my bosses left me alone. Since I founded Infosys, I had no boss! So, the only boss I have known is you! Who else can order me around about my eating habits, my sleep patterns, my incessant traveling, and my refusal to go for regular medical check-ups? Rohan is my buddy, but you are the one who instills discipline in my life.

Take care, my child!

Lovingly, Appa

While this book was under publication, Murthy became grandfather a second time and Akshata is now mother to two little daughters, Krishnaa and Anoushka.

Pradeep Bhargava

radeep Bhargava, Director at Cummins India and Chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) Western Region, is a man who believes in doing things differently. In a corporate set-up where top honchos have an abundance of perks and privileges, this was the man who set up a precedent to do as much of his work as possible, by himself. Much to the astonishment and consternation of his staff at Cummins Generator Technologies where he was the Managing Director, he decided to eat in the staff canteen where he served himself and washed his own plates, after keeping the leftover food aside. After each meal, the leftovers in the canteen got weighed and a chart was put up with the total leftover food weighed so that the staff would know the quantity of food wasted every day. The leftover food was then used for vermiculture within the factory. In effect, it was a symbolic message for conservation and also a strong message to his staff about the importance of not wasting food when thousands of children in the world die of starvation.

In a career that has seen him work in the public as