A lot is said about how motherhood brings a sea of changes in a woman's life, but rarely do we talk about how fatherhood changes a man. Having a girl child makes a man even more sensitive and responsible, and so it's said that there's nothing more beautiful than the bond that a father-daughter share. Fathers play a huge role in shaping a child's personality, and that's what makes them protective towards their little angels. IT czar N K Narayana Murthy was no exception to these feelings when he became a father to a girl. It changed his perception towards life and made him even more understanding. Sharing his entire journey from being a father to a grandfather, Narayana Murthy wrote a moving letter to his daughter Akshata, which also includes a very important life-lesson.

Here's Narayana Murthy's letter to his daughter Akshata, that'll definitely move you:

Akshata,

Becoming a father transformed me in ways that I could never have thought possible. I could never go back to being the person I used to be before. Your arrival in my life brought unimaginable joy and a larger responsibility. I was no more just a husband, a son, or a promising employee of a fast-growing company. I was a father, who had to measure up to the expectations his daughter would have of him at every stage of her life.

Your birth raised the benchmark of my life, in every aspect. My interactions at the workplace became more thoughtful and measured; the quality of my transactions with the outside world more considerate, dignified, and mature. I felt a need to deal with every human being more sensitively and courteously. After all, some day you would grow up and understand the world around you, and I didn’t want you ever to think that I had done anything even remotely wrong.

My mind often goes back to the initial days after your birth. Your mother and I were young then and struggling to find our feet in our careers. Two months after your birth in Hubli, we brought you to Mumbai, but discovered quickly enough, that it was a difficult task to nurture a child and manage careers side by side. So, we decided that you would spend the initial years of your life with your grandparents in Hubli. Naturally, it was a hard decision to make, one which took me quite a bit of time to come to terms with. Every weekend, I would take the plane to Belgaum and then hire a car to Hubli. It was very expensive, but I couldn’t do without seeing you.

What never ceased to amaze me was how you created your own little happy world at Hubli, surrounded by your grandparents and a set of adoring aunts and relatives, oblivious of our absence from your life

I am often asked about the qualities that I have imparted to my children. I tell them that it is your mother who shouldered this great responsibility and I am ever so grateful to her for bringing you up to be the fine individuals you are. She communicated values more by action than by talking about them. She taught Rohan and you the importance of simplicity and austerity. There was this one instance, in Bangalore, when you were selected for a school drama for which you were required to wear a special dress. It was in the mid-eighties, Infosys had just begun its operations, and we did not have any money to spend on non-basic goods. Your mother explained to you that we would not be able to buy the dress and that you would have to drop out of the performance. Much later, you told me that you had not been able to understand or appreciate that incident. We realize it must have been a bit drastic for a child to forgo an important event in school, but, we know you learnt something important from that- the importance of austerity.