Was checking an interview of Narayana Murthy by BusinessWeek. And place I cound was embarrassing. The interview went like this:
Narayana Murthy gives to Charity
Q: We hear you’ve become quite a philanthropist, that you’re making large donations with money from sales of your personal Infosys stock. Can you tell us about the money you’re giving away?
A: I’m somewhat reticent talking about it. I’d be happier skipping to another topic.
Q: Can you give us an idea of how much it is? Millions? Tens of millions?
A: Well, more, but let me not talk about it. These are topics that are best not discussed. They’re best done. (Note: I made the ‘Well, more’ part bold.)
– N.R. Narayana Murthy in an interview in New York with BusinessWeek editors including International Managing Editor Bob Dowling, Assistant International Managing Editor Christopher Power, and Asia Editor Sheri Prasso. (published in its July 19, 2000 issue)
Businessweek editors made a guess about how much Narayana Murthy was giving to charity. He corrected them by saying that he was giving more.
Narayana Murthy came out satisfied. In Bangalore, perhaps his chumchas started saying “Murthy is great giver.”
Business Week editors are a smart lot. They deal with billionaires, their net worth, their charity and they can catch a lie immediately. I did some challow research on that and found out that he couldn’t have given that much to charity. Am sure Business Week editors fount out that too.
Unlike most Indians who will start claiming the he is a liar, those editors found out the truth, and kelt in a file, “Murthy is a liar.” to be used when the time is appropriate.
Many Indians claim that Americans are easy to fool. They appear to be simpletons, while accepting lies on face value. And one day if chance comes, they will react.
When CBS ran the program on IITs, admission officer in US universities know about the status of IIT students. From the letters they got from Indian students, their performance. They kept quiet. Now they need Indians to fight Chinese. And full of confidence Indians are ready to fight for them. They are just laughing.