New Delhi:
Rajya Sabha MP Sudha Murty’s son-in-law Rishi Sunak might have served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for a couple of years, but that made no difference to their equation, the author-philanthropist said.
“Whether he is the prime minister or not, he is our son-in-law, we love him the same way,” Ms Murty said on NDTV’s ‘India Through the Eyes of Its Icons’ show.
She also quoted the third daughter from Shakespeare’s iconic play King Lear. “As the third daughter in King Lear said: ‘I love my father as much as a daughter should love a father’. Similarly, whatever may be Rishi’s position, I love him like a new son.”
“In no way it has affected us; it would have been the same if he lived in the same country,” Ms Murty added.
While nothing changed between Sudha Murty and Rishi Sunak, she agreed that the world started looking at her differently after he became the British Prime Minister. “When you get a lot of money, people view you in a different way; new friendships will come, new acquaintances will come,” she said, adding people’s expectations of you also change.
“When Rishi, our son-in-law became the prime minister, people started asking me for a lot of favours in England,” Ms Murty said. But she told them he was the PM of another country and she couldn’t ask for any favours.
“People started asking: ‘How is life in 10 Downing Street?’ because they want to know,” Sudha Murty said, adding that there were other questions like if she stayed there and how it was. Ms Murty revealed that she stayed at 10 Downing Street, for she “preferred staying outside because of the security.”
On the same programme, Ms Murty also spoke about her husband and Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy, identifying him as a “simple man”.
It was good that he was simple, she said, adding, “So that we could do the same activity … with money or without money.”
“If he wanted different and I wanted different, it’d become so difficult,” she said.