"I guess looking into his personal life means, to know about his family, kids etc, right? And that's exactly what I intend to do here. I am going to give you a list of his family members, you are welcome to click the respective names to have details of that individual or just read about the website matter which is Sri Sri.
We (his kids) call him Appa. Somehow he did not like us to call him Nanna., thinking back, I do know why, now!!, but that's a totally different chapter and does not call for here. Suffice it to say that our father wanted to maintain a kind of friendship with all his kids. You can't do this (have a friendly relationship) when you end up calling somebody "garu", right?"
The Family members:
" So, what was Sri
Sri's personal life like? Appa was born on January 2nd, 1910 in Visakhapatnam,
Andhra Pradesh. It also happens to be the year when the Hailey's comet made its
once in 76 years appearance. From some of the stories I heard from him, he had
a pretty good childhood, at least till his father died. His mother expired soon
after giving birth to him and just to make sure that he did not feel that
"void" his father had pampered him so much that, he had literally
anything he asked for.
Many of his personal details are already given in
his autobiography. I am not sure of the exact year when my father moved to
Madras, my guess is that it was in late 1920's. I do know that he did his
undergraduate studies in Madras Christian College, which was located in the
Parry's corner of Madras during those days. My father got honors in B.A
Zoology! And graduated in the year 1931.
His first marriage was to Ramanamma. They did not
have any children and ended up adopting a girl, she was called Ammaji. Ammaji
akka, as we used to call her has two children, a boy and a girl. The last time
I saw them was a decade and a half ago. They were still staying in my father's
house - 11 Canal Bank Road, Raja Annamalai puram, Madras.
Sri Sri's second marriage was to U.Saroja. He
married her on 1956. They really formed a great pair, both on the domestic and
professional fronts. Our mother used to assist him in dialogues, songs, music
etc of dubbed movies. Then the four of us were born, starting with my eldest
sister in 1959.
Sri Sri's first wife died in early 1970s. He later
moved to our another house in Mandavalli.
Sri Sri had visited many foreign countries. The
first trip was in 1954 when he visited Russia, UK and France. There after he
visited Russia couple of more times in 1967. He then visited China in 1976 and
came up with the book "China Yaanam". He was mighty impressed by
China and its culture. He again visited UK in 1980 with his wife. It was during
this trip that the London Edition of Mahaprasthanam got published. This edition
was different in that, the whole book is in Sri Sri's own hand writing and the
book also contains a cassette with poems narrated in his own voice. His last
foreign visit was to USA in 1981 again with his wife. I believe they had
visited about 30 states (within the US). And again it was during this trip that
the cassette "Kavita-O-Kavita" was brought out. It was composed and
recorded in Houston, Texas.
It was after the US trip, that Sri Sri was
diagonsed as having cancer of the Larynx. He was attended to by
Dr.Sathyanarayana one of the best ENT surgeons in Tamil Nadu. In fact it was
Dr.Sathyanarayana who had removed the bullet from Dr.M.G.Ramachandran's
(popularly know as MGR, the matinee idol and former Chief Minister of TN)
throat.
I had spent a lot of time with my father when he
underwent the treatment (for cancer). In fact, I had taken him to most of the
radiation appointment and we used to talk a lot. In my opinion, my father had
made a grave mistake when he had all his teeth pulled out and had dentures
made. This, when he was undergoing treatment for cancer! I remember that he
used to complain about how the dentures did not set properly. This ended up in
him not wearing the dentures and in turn it heavily affected his food intake
and diet. He started becoming weak because of this, and had just liquid diet
during the last few weeks of his life. Anyways, all the radiology and
medication could not save Sri Sri and he breathed his last on June 15th
1983."
Source : www.mahakavisrisri.com
No comments:
Post a Comment