PPT

1. Wise and Otherwise :
Story 16:
Idealists at Twenty, Realists at Forty
Gokhale Education Society’s
S.M.R.K. B.K. A.K. Mahila Mahavidyalaya, Nasik-5.
Ms. Geetanjali Gitay
Assistant Professor
Dept. of English
CC English (LL)
T.Y.B.Com. Sem V
Unit 4

2. About the Writer : Sudha Murthy
• Sudha Murthy completed a B.E. in Electrical and Electronics
Engineering from the B.V.B. College of Engineering & Technology,
standing first in her class and receiving a gold medal.
• Murthy completed M.Eng. in Computer Science from the Indian
Institute of Science, standing first in her class and receiving a gold
medal from the Indian Institute of Engineers.
• She became the first female engineer hired at India's largest auto manufacturer TATA
Engineering and Locomotive Company (TELCO) in Pune.
• She is the wife of Infosys founder and ex-chairperson Narayana Murthy.
• She is the founder chairperson of Infosys Foundation, which is involved in philanthropic work.
• She has won many awards for her work.
•She is also a writer. The novel ‘Mahashweta’ is her most popular work. She has written more
than 40 books.
• “ Wise and Otherwise” is a collection of vignettes that record multiple shades of human nature.
These are experiences from her life where she met some people who were wise and otherwise.

3. Story 16. Idealists at Twenty, Realists at Forty

4. • Sudha Murthy
• Her friends : Vimla , Vinutha , Ratna.
• Partha- Vinutha’s husband
• Raghu- Ratna’s husband
Summary
• Sudha Murthy begins the story by telling about a get-together of old friend that they had. She
tells that they are a group of women who have known each other since the time they were little
girls. They began meeting before they were married.
•They continued the practice after their marriages and after they became mothers and now they
met at their children’s weddings. Though age has started showing its marks upon them, they
still meet, sometimes, after the gap of several years.
• So much had changed in last twenty-five years. Many of these changes would have been very
difficult to imagine before they happened. Sudha Murthy tells that they had many dreams and
very few of them have been realised.
Characters

5. • Sudha Murthy gives example of her friend Vimla, who was a very beautiful girl when they were in
college. Everyone used to mistake her for a film star. She was aware of her beauty and was quite
vain. After twenty –five years, the picture was very different. Vimla no more had her long, jet- black
hair, or her perfect complexion. She looked like a barrel with wrinkles all over. Her hair was grey,
thin, and cut short. She talked philosophically that the beauty is impermanent.
• Sudha Murthy then tells about one more of her friends, Vinutha. She was a very bright girl in the
college. She used to be called a mini-computer. She was good looking, talented and importantly,
very simple. Sudha Murthy and everyone else used to wonder whom would Vinutha marry. She
married Partha and everyone felt that they would live happily ever after. But that wasw wrong.
When Sudha Murthy met Vinutha after many years , she looked dull and had lost all her zest for
life. Her energy was dampened by her ever-taunting husband. He taunted her for being bright.
Husbands seldom share their wives’ glories in our society and it was true about Vinutha.
• Then Sudha Murthy tells about one more of her friends, Ratna. She had been an ordinary girl in
every sense of the word. She graduated and got married like most people do. Her husband Raghu
was a clerk and a very timid person. One year, Ratna comes for the get together and they are all
astounded. She had become very different.
Summary (cntd)

6. • Ratna was a leading businesswoman and had received many awards. She tells that hers is a
typical rags to riches story.
•She tells that after marriage, she realised that her husband was an excellent assistant rather than
a leader. He always needed to listen to somebody and in their family that person was his mother.
Ratna soon realised that she had to make her own decisions or she would forever remain a slave to
her mother-in-law. She decided that she must become economically independent. She knew how
to stitch garments. So she started stitching at home. First she worked with cloth and later with
leather. She understood her business very well and soon expanded her work to suit the needs of
her customers. Then she shifted to condiments.
•She concludes her story by telling, “ Work for you customer’s satisfaction, not your satisfaction.
Life is a great teacher. I learnt everything by experience.” She always learnt from her mistakes.
All her friends were surprised and delighted at Ratna’s courage and the turnaround in her life. All
of them had thought that Vinutha would be successful, not Ratna. But the things had turned
around totally different. At twenty they were idealists, at forty, they had become realists.
Summary (cntd)

7. Text Content Source :
1 .Wise and Otherwise, Murthy Sudha, Penguine India, New Delhi, Reprint(2006).