By Jenny Song

The Measure of a Life

Subha Barry’s cancer diagnosis made her rethink her notion of success

By Jenny Song

Photographs by Sylvia Plachy

Above the stainless steel sink, leaning against the windowpane in Subha Barry’s kitchen, sits a small framed tile board. There, hand-written in green ink are two quotes. The first is a well-known maxim by Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” The second Barry wrote in remembrance of her close friend and colleague who died in 2007. It reads: “Knowledge is wisdom. Action is a virtue.”

These two quotes sum up the aim of Barry’s life.

“I’ve realized that at the end of your life, you cannot measure your success by the physical, worldly things you have,” says Barry. “You measure your success by the impact you’ve had on the world around you.”

That lesson was a long one in the making.

At age 21, Barry came to the U.S. in 1983 from India. The first unmarried girl in her family allowed to leave the country, she left with a one-way ticket to Texas, a full scholarship to Rice University in Houston, $1,000 to her name, and a chip on her shoulder to prove herself. When she boarded the plane for the U.S., she never looked back.

“I was driven, ambitious, and motivated to prove that I was going to be a big success,” she says. “It was very important to me. At that point in time, success was something I measured in monetary terms.” A big house and big car were the easiest ways to show people back home that she’d made something of her life, Barry says. So after graduating with two master’s degrees, in business administration and accounting from Rice in 1985, she hit the ground running, fighting her way into the corporate world and eventually landing a job at the financial advising firm Merrill Lynch. She put in 75 hours a week and became one of the top-100 producers among a pool of 16,000 in the private client business of her company.