The Entrepreneurial Tycoon Narayana Murthy's Luckiest Day


As he writes in his book Life Lessons from Narayana Murthy, in 1974 while travelling through Europe, he was hitch-hiking his way from Paris all the way to his hometown Mysore. Due to some unlucky circumstances he was stuck in the Yugoslavian border without any money or food to eat and somehow managed to hitch a drop till Nis railway station. Soon after boarding the Sofia express in the night, he struck a conversation with a French girl who was his only companion in the compartment apart from a young boy. Discussing about the hardships in an iron curtain nation, they were arrested by the local policeman and dragged into small and dark cells for talking against the communist government. With a hard stone cold floor and no basic facilities like toilet, Narayana was confined in the room for 72 hours without food, water and his entire luggage confiscated.

Narayana Murthy writes in his book, “I had lost all hope of ever seeing the outside world again, when the door opened. I was again dragged out unceremoniously, locked up in the guard’s compartment on a departing freight train and told that I would be released 20 hours later upon reaching Istanbul. The guard’s final words still ring in my ears –‘You are from a friendly country called India and that is why we are letting you go!’ “