BOOK: Three Thousand Stitches
AUTHOR: Sudha Murty.
PUBLISHER: Penguin Books (Penguin Random House India)
COVER DESIGN: Neelima P Aryan.
COVER PHOTOGRAPH: Shrukeerti Khurana.
ISBN: 978-0-143-44005-5
RATING: 4.5/5.
PAGES: 179.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sudha Murty was born on 1950 in Shiggaon, north Karnataka. She did her MTech in computer science, and is now the chairperson of the Infosys Foundation. a prolific writer in English and Kannada, she has written novels, technical books, travelogues, collection of short stories and non-fictional pieces, and six books for children. Her books have been translated into all the major Indian languages. Sudha Murty was the recipient of the R.K. Narayan Award for Literature and the Padma Shri in 2006, and the Attimabbe Award from the government of Karnataka for excellence in Kannada literature, in 2011.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The book no wonder has been the winner of the 2018 Crossword book awards for the best non-fiction book!
The book gets its name by the gift given to her as a token of appreciation which was an embroidered bedspread, hand-stitched by three thousand women. During the initial days of the Infosys Foundation, Sudha Murty helped many prostitutes get a better life for them as well as their children. It was when the women started their own bank and had contributed the sum of one hundred each by three thousand women and had arranged a function cordially inviting Sudha Murty, their akka, and bearing her vacation expenses including tickets and stay. The women, each contributed a piece of cloth and hand-stitched it to form a bedspread as they all wanted to gift her something of their own that would stay with her forever.
Throughout the book, Sudha Murty takes us through her journey of life, though, not in a chronological sequence. She tells us about her college days when she was the only girl in the an engineering college and that it did not even have a girls toilet or room. She tells us about the comments passed on her during the annual functions and also during class but she decided not to act on any of it and carry on with her studies. She proved to be the epitome of success in an engineering college and had topped in the university several times.
She tells us tales about her childhood where her grandmother told her stories about krishna and gopiya and about the pandavas and the Akshaya Patra. Sudha Murty shares with us the unwritten and untold story of her father where he had to go out of his way to help a teenage girl who had just delivered and later how she paid tribute to Sudha's father. She takes us through her day at Infosys Foundation and tells us about her busy day and the dilemmas that need to be solved within the blink of an eye. She tells us about her visit to her friends place where her friends father shares the knowledge of a botanist with her and tells her about many indigenous spices and vegetable which are vital in our meal but have a different origin.
Through one of the chapters, we go through the incident when Sudha Murty was insulted by telling that she wasn't eligible to travel in the business class and said her to be a cattle class. She gives her thought on the changing world where, in her childhood, visiting Kashi was said to be very holy and the person was considered to be very lucky since it took days to reach there but now,the sacred place has lost its significance.
Once on her visit to foreign countries, she witnessed that Bollywood had a great impact on foreigners. She mentions Bollywood to be a great ambassador for India.
This book has made its way to my collection of one of the books that I have completed in a single sit. Sudha Murty is truly a gem and her works, masterpieces!
Well, the book also contains within it, the reason why he hasn't bought a single saree for almost two decades.
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