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  Pic : Jagadeesh NV

It's a story that is truly stranger than fiction. A small-town doctor's daughter from north Karnataka marries an engineer, who soars meteorically through the corporate world and becomes a globally respected billionaire. The doctor's daughter becomes a multi-millionaire in her own right and — writing in her spare time — she also becomes one of India's top-selling novelists. Unlikely though it may seem, her morality tales always revolve around the evils of wealth and how it alters people for the worse.

'I have seen that in the corporate world, people who were so simple become so complicated. And they start thinking that money can buy everything,' says Sudha Murty, bestselling author and engineer and the wife of N.R. Narayana Murthy, founder and executive chairman of Infosys. Sudha Murty's own personal wealth was reckoned to be in the region of several thousand crore at last count.

Murty herself is famously and determinedly unaffected by her wealth. She wears only a modest gold mangalsutra and earrings, and doesn't have a single ring on her fingers. The conference room of the Infosys Foundation, the charity arm of Infosys, in Bangalore is extraordinarily Spartan and the furniture is ageing. The walls are bare except for two photos — of J.R.D. Tata who first gave Murty a job in Telco, and Jamsetji Tata. A plaque given to her by the Dalai Lama is the only other decoration.

'Money can give you certain comforts but money has limited use. And once you realise that, money becomes a burden to you. You donate it. Money is a heavy bag on your back and you should lead a simple lightweight life,' says Murty emphatically.

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  Sudha Murty with young students at a bookstore

Certainly, her message about the evils born from wealth has struck a chord with her readers and turned her into a guaranteed bestselling writer who has sold about 1.5 million books in 10 different languages. She has effortlessly turned out an astonishing mix of 24 novels, short stories, children's books and non-fiction in between a punishing schedule that keeps her on the road —mostly in rural India — for about 20 days a month for her Infosys Foundation relief work.

Most successful of all are her children's books like How I taught My Grandmother to Read, which has notched up sales of over 1,30,000 in English alone, and her short stories like Wise and Otherwise, which has been a huge publishing world hit, selling more than 1,50,000 copies in English alone. She also racks up huge sales in Marathi, Gujarati and Kannada.

Murty is, of course, multilingual and equally fluent in Kannada and English, and this means she has a few unusual quirks as a writer. She says: 'When I write a novel, it has to always be in Kannada first because my emotions come through my language. My columns are always in English and then translated into Kannada.' The actual act of writing is also different, depending on the language: 'When I write in English it is always on a computer. When I write in Kannada, it is with pen and ink,' she says.

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  Murty at the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the Infosys Foundation Dharmashala at the Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences

Many of her novels follow a simple path and are straightforward black-and-white confrontations between good and evil. The heroine is always a strong woman who marries or loves a man who starts out honest, good and well-meaning. Success quickly turns his head and as he gets greedier, the woman leaves him and carves out her own path in the world.

Take a look at her latest novel, House of Cards, released less than a year ago, which has already sold around 48,000 copies in English alone. The tale revolves around Mridula and her husband Sanjay, a doctor. The book's blurb sums up the plot succinctly: 'Trouble brews when Sanjay quits his government job and starts an immensely successful private practice. With affluence comes the never-ending ambition for more, and the inevitable slide into corrupt practices. For a long time, Mridula has no idea that Sanjay has sold his soul; when the truth hits her, she has no recourse but to walk out on him.'

Or, consider the tale of Mahashweta, who develops leucoderma and is cast out by her husband's family because the illness is considered inauspicious. The doughty heroine finally migrates to Mumbai and carves out her own life as a successful teacher — Murty's grandfather was a teacher and it's clearly her favourite profession. Says Murty: 'When I wrote, it I spent two years talking to patients and doctors. It took me two or three years to understand how a government hospital works. Now it is a book recommended by dermatologists in Maharashtra.'

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  Murty was conferred an honorary doctorate by Tumkur University in Karnataka

But her literary efforts are only one part of Sudha Murty, who's also a trained engineer and mega-philanthropist and driving force of the Infosys Foundation. She says she has been on the scene of seven national disasters and the Infosys Foundation has poured in cash to build more than 2,300 houses in Gulbarga after it was hit by floods. 'If there are floods in Odisha, I am there,' she says.

And, as she is a great believer in sanitation, the foundation has built more than 10,000 toilets. On an entirely different level, it has donated books to more than 50,000 libraries. Says Murty: 'My grandfather was a schoolteacher and he made us promise that 'When you have money you must donate books to at least one library'. Of course, the concept of money was so different for my grandfather.'

Murty keeps a close eye on all the Infosys Foundation projects and this means she has criss-crossed rural India — the Infosys Foundation works in every state where Infosys has offices — and knows rural Karnataka like few others. 'I have been to every village in Karnataka,' she says, adding that conditions have improved enormously and that there are schools and electricity in even the remotest hamlet.

But Murty was an iconoclast right from her childhood and long before she achieved great wealth — remember that she lent her husband Narayana Murthy the money to start his 'adventure'. Her father was a doctor in Dharwad in north Karnataka who encouraged his daughters to make their own lives and stressed they should all be educated. Sudha, however, surprised even him and became the only woman studying in an engineering college in Hubli — she is now a major donor to the college. She says: 'I put up a building in the college when I had more money. Because that college made me what I am today. It taught me how to deal with boys when I was all alone. It also made me a good student and gave me great confidence.'

Moving to Bangalore, she cut her hair which was also a convention-defying move, especially in Brahmin families in those days. She says unrepentantly: 'It was a great revolution in our family. People said, 'Oh she cut her hair, she bobbed her hair. How dare she chop her hair?' But it was so much easier to manage.'

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  Murty participating in a seminar along with her husband N.R. Narayana Murthy (extreme right)

And, famously, she wrote a letter to J.R.D. Tata saying he was discriminating against women by not hiring them. Tata immediately hired the feisty young south Indian girl in Telco where she met Narayana Murthy. Later, at the age of 29, the young woman went off backpacking around the US on her own. 'Today, it's not a great deal. But 37 years back it was a big thing for a girl from a middle-class family to backpack on her own.'

Today, she and Narayana Murthy keep their entirely separate and blistering schedules. She is constantly venturing into rural India and he is globetrotting. 'We keep our travelling schedules separate as our destinations are separate. Most of the time I am in the villages and he is abroad,'she says.

That shouldn't be interpreted negatively she adds: 'Both of us have so much in common. We are compassionate towards poor people. Both of us have simple habits of life and a simple way of living. Both of us walk the talk.' At another level, she adds: 'We are very fond of music but different types. He loves Western classical. I love Indian. Both of us love reading. And we are very honest to the core. Two people who have different personalities can still live together if your core values are the same.'

Amazingly, she travels abroad only when absolutely necessary. 'Those countries don't need me,' she says and adds that even when her children lived abroad, 'I told them to come here.'

Murty's tiny office at the Infosys Foundation, which looks out onto a busy road, is just as bare as the conference room. Here, she sits with her secretary, Leena, planning the weeks ahead in a battered diary — no fancy electronic gizmos here. She's constantly being forced to turn down invitations around the world. 'People call me for lectures. I get about 4,000-5,000 invitations a year. Out of that I do about 10 or 12.' She has made speeches at places like Harvard, Stanford and also Berkeley, but adds: 'I don't want to make it a habit giving addresses because there's a lot more to be done than just talk. Talking is an easy thing.'

Her latest hobby that she leapt into when she turned 60, is learning Kannada as it was spoken in the eighth and ninth centuries, and also learning the region's history. And whenever she's in Bangalore, she has a professor who has been teaching her all this. When on the road in rural Karnataka, she puts her new learning to use, trying to read ancient inscriptions in temples and the like. But she has focused on much more than just learning the language. She says: 'If you want to learn Kannada, which has a 2,000- year history, then you must know the entire history of Karnataka. You cannot separate language from history and you cannot separate culture from history.'

When Murty finally quit Telco to help Narayana Murthy get Infosys on the road, J.R.D. Tata called her and asked what her plans for the future were. She says: 'I said my husband is starting an adventure called Infosys. JRD asked, 'When you make a lot of money what will you do.' I said I don't think we will ever make a lot of money. It's my husband's dream. The dream may or may not work.'

Then JRD gave Murty some advice. “He said, ‘When you get a lot of money, you are only a trustee for that. Society gives you so much and you should give back to society’, she recalls. These are words that she has attempted to live by, on a scale that JRD might never have dreamt possible.