Uncommon common man.

Jaipur Literature Festival, the kumbh of literati is underway at Diggi Palace in Jaipur. A place where you must be for the next few days, irrespective of your tryst with literature. This fine morning in the premises of this greatest literary carnival on earth, the Jaipur literature festival, I got a chance to spot the Murty family. Yes, the Murtys of the Infosys fame.

When I saw the dad Murty and his prodigious son Rohan Murty, I was amazed. Dressed as simpletons in the sea of fashionistas, they were pretty hard to identify for people who keep away from newspapers in general hence ignored by everyone. They ended up at the cash counter at one of the many food stalls at the venue, unescorted and unnoticed. Standing in the queue patiently, they were making some inquiries with the attendant at the counter. When they were done ordering the food they stood there in the queue to pick up their food up being danced around by the other hungry people. In the meanwhile I candidly asked the attendant if he knows who those people were and as expected he was unaware but passed on a strange smile of bewilderment on the question itself.

On the other side of the food stall where the seating was, the family had a hard time finding a place for themselves. A woman seated alone was asked by Mr. N. R. Narayana Murthy to share the table to which she declined as she was holding it for some random person, who would later turn up to click some stupid selfies. People pay thousands of bucks to share a meal with celebs like these in the name of charity. With much difficulty they found a place and had their meal. And amusingly they were asked to vacate as soon as they were done by another set of unaware literature enthusiasts. These enthusiasts got into the OMG mode when they got to know.

I followed them to Rohan Murthy’s session, and was amazed again to know a young PH.D kid from Harvard in computer science was working hard to revive the traditional Indian wisdom with the Murty classical library initiative. In a world where status and show of power is everything the humbleness and simplicity of this family was an inspiring exception.

The thing about the incident is that even the lesser heroes of the silver screen are celebrated whereas the people who changed and continue to change the destiny of the nation go unsung.

Article by Pulkit Soni & Photographed by Manav Singhi

To know more about Jaipur Literature Festival check the link below - http://www.manavs.com/p/jaipur-literature-festival.html