"Manjula Rangarjan, my eldest sister is the first born of the family. We call her Talli. She leads the way for all of us. With her and my elder sister, I never felt the loss of not having an elder brother. Personally, I think they have done much better than a "real brother"- I do not mean any offense to brotherhood!!
Manjula being the first born seems to have gotten the majority of our father's brains, rest of us are good too, but she is a wizard. For some people like my sisters education and learning comes automatically I guess. It was me who had to work real hard to get through school and college. So, Talli had a very colorful school and college life, always being first in the class and also graduated with flying colors. She is a rank holder (University first) in M.A Sociology from the University of Madras. Not intending to stop with that, she went on to write the IAS exams (Indian Administrative Services) and not surprisingly secured good rank and opted to take the IRAS (Indian Railway Accounts Service). She is a senior member of South Indian Railways and presently works in Chennai.
Talli got married to R.S.Rangarajan in 1984. Our eldest brother-in-law is a wiz himself. He did his B.A in Political Sciences and went on to complete B.L (Bachelor of Law) from Madras. He too wrote the IAS exams secured a high rank and opted to take IAAS (Indian Audit and Accounts Service). After working in different places in India and also serving in the External Affairs Ministry, he is now the Accountant General of Tamil Nadu. Talli is blessed with two kids, eldest being a daughter, we call her Chanti, she is presently studying in the US, younger one a boy, we call him Maloo. Maloo is doing his undergraduation and is a very good cricket player. He holds a lot of promise and hopes to play for India someday."
"Mangala Sivaneri is my elder sister and the second born. We call her Bujji. She is another wiz kid. She holds degrees in Commerce (B.Com and M.Com) and in Political Sciences - University Rank Holder-(M.A) - these are from Indian Universities, and Masters in Business Administration (M.B.A) from USA. She is now settled in US and works in New York.
Bujji and I used to often tour with our father during his meetings in different parts of Andhra Pradesh. In fact, I think she had accompanied our father on more tours than I. I remember that for most of the meetings, we were given the choice to sit on the dias/podium with our father, but we used to be so scared of the crowd that we had always avoided the dias. Guess its the 'stage fear'! I also remember one of the classic photographs of Bujji combing the hair of our father in Vijayawada, when they visited the 'Swathi' publications. It was taken by one of the journalist(s) there. I do not have the picture now, but maybe at a later date, I will put it here."
"Bujji is married to Cimi Sivaneri. He too has been in the US for the last 18 years and has worked in different states (within the US). He is a software engineer and graduated in Statistics and Applied Math (both of which scare me no ends!!) Bujji and Cimi both work in the same office in New York. They are blessed with two boys , elder one is called Neelan he is about 10 years now, and the younger one is called Keeran who is 5 years old."
Venkat Srirangam
"This is me, yours truly, am the third born and the only son. I am called by my nickname BAIJU, which was given to me after the famous hindi movie "Baiju Bavara" a musical hit in those days. It was one of my mother's favorite movies and hence..."
"I was born in Madras, in the month of August. In fact all of us were born and brought up in Madras. I did my preschool in Our Lady of Bon Secours, and from middle school till plus two, I studied in St.John's Senior Secondary school, which was quite close to our house in Mandavalli, Madras.
My undergraduate degree in B.Sc Zoology was from the famous Madras Christian college, yes the same college which my father had attended. And I went on to graduate in Oceanography from the University of Madras. As my eldest and elder sisters, I too got the University First Rank in the graduate program. I graduated in 1986. I then joined CMFRI (Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute) to do P.Hd, which I promptly discontinued as I was in Visakhapatnam doing my research and my guide was in Cochin, Kerala, due to which I had registration problems and was told that my work could not be recognized. This made no sense and I decided to quit.
I later worked and specialized in Aquaculture by starting to work first in Calcutta during the years 1988 to 1990 and then came south to work in Tamil Nadu for different companies like ITC., S&S Industries, Shriram Group of companies etc. In 1994, some colleagues of mine, and I decided to start a company of our very own. We called it Poseidon Aquatech and gave management and technical consultancies for many Companies venturing into the field of Aquaculture.
I switched my line of career totally in the year 1997. I started a whole new career in Information Technology and started off with Visual Basic and Oracle. I went on to learn SAP, Java, Web Application development etc and again worked in different companies in many parts of India. I was immensely motivated by my elder sister who was in the USA by then and who pushed me to get into IT by financing my efforts, and by my wife and mother who gave me lots and lots of moral support. I remember to date, the times when my wife used to stay alone with our son, while I stayed overnight in different institutes to learn and when I had to leave out of station to work.
I am currenlt working in US, I married Madhavi Ramarao, daughter of Sanka Ramanrao and Thulasi Ramarao, on July 1993. Madhavi has been the "BEST" half of me ever since and a classical example of the adage "behind every successful man there is a woman...".
Madhavi hails from Ganapavaram, Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. She has one brother and two sisters. Her brother Yashaswi Ramana is MD in Orthopaedics and has his own hospital in Guntur. Madhavi's sisters are married and settled in Ganapavaram and Vijayawada respectively. Madhavi has an undergraduate degree in B.Sc Mathematics and went on to finish Oracle/ Visual Basic etc in the IT world. Presently she is a housewife but intends to work some day."
"Our son Srinivas, is 15 years old and a freshman. He is neck deep in chess and just loves playing the game. Other interests of our man is music and he is so serious about it that he has started to learn piano with full vigor and is continuing! Let's just wait and see as to how long these passions of his lasts.Our second born is a girl, we decided on the name - Kavita, because that is what my father wanted to name atleast one of his daughters or any girl for that matter. Kavita is 7 years old now."
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Our younger sister Mala, was born in the month of April, she is a hardcore Tauran. All of us went to the same Elementary and Middle school. Mala switched her high school, graduated and went to the law school directly. She really got a break, as exactly the same year when she finished her high school, the Education Ministry of Tamil Nadu had decided to make B.L (Bachelor of Law) degree a professional course like Engineering and Medicine and started enrolling high school graduates.
Papa, as we call her, applied for B.L., attended the interview and boom! she got the seat! Boy! was hers a happy lot! Needless to say, she passed B.L with first class and now practices in Chennai High Court. She married RadhaRamana in 1993, Radha works as a Marketing executive in MRL,Chennai. They are blessed with two boys, elder one is called Prakash, he is as old as my son and the younger one is called Pradeep and he is about a year younger than my daughter. The whole family is settled in Chennai."
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