The Amazing VK family

There  are  just  three left now. Out  of a brood of 11. And what  a brood – bright, strong, temperamental, tempestuous, best of friends, best  of enemies, innocuous conversations leading to massive fights where  some wouldn’t talk to each other for months, years. The VK family fights and politics were legendary. And if any of us cousins railed against this or ribbed them about it, the combined put  down was swift – we may have our fights, but in times of trouble we will always be with each  other. And as one aunt married into the family said today – look, they always used to say they would be together despite all the squabbles and so Babu and Sukumaran went within days of each other and  Mythili (my aunt, sitting) and Ranga (my mother, standing) within less than 24 hours.

I often used to say the oddballs of  the VK family need to be chronicled, but today I will forget about their eccentricities and celebrate them.

The VK referred to V. Krishnamachari, my grandfather. He trained as a lawyer but refused to practice after a point because he didn’t want to wear trousers – his way of opposing British rule. So he became a journalist in The Hindu. He  retired as assistant news editor and was a legend there. G. Kasturi particularly held him in high regard. My mother and her elder brothers have read proofs of pages carrying news of World War II that used to come home for checking. But journalism was such a badly paying job that he didn’t want any of his children to become one. Many years later, his youngest son (who was just four when he died) became one – in The Hindu. And then two granddaughters also did, one me and the other  in The Hindu again.

Then there was his wife Chellama. Daughter of a railway  official, my mother is not sure if she went to school but she was a voracious reader in Tamil and English and  apparently even wrote short stories in a little notebook. So broad-minded was she that when  my mother nervously told her that my eldest sister wants  to marry a baniya from Uttar Pradesh, she said, if they are decided  then  just  fix the earliest auspicious date.  And when my second sister took her Kerala Christian husband to meet her, she immediately took my sister to buy her utensils. Not once did she come in the way of her daughters’ education.

Between VK and Chellama, they raised a remarkable brood, particularly the four daughters.

My grandfather was insistent that  all his daughters would be at least graduates. My mother, Rangamani (sibling number 3, daughter number 1) was married straight after school, but when searching for a groom, my grandfather insisted that she should be allowed to go to college and become a graduate.  She went on to do her BA (she was pregnant with my eldest sister while giving her third year exam), MA, B.Ed and PhD (she was pregnant with my youngest sister then).

After her was Mythili (sibling  number 4, sister number 2), who became a doctor. When VK died of a heart attack a few months after my birth, his youngest son was only four years old. Mythili shouldered the burden of educating all her younger siblings, deciding to remain unmarried.

Sister number 3 (sibling number 6) Shakuntala Chellappa (the second of the siblings to die) was a school teacher as well as a gifted singer who was a staff artiste on All India Radio, Hyderabad. She passed on her musical genes to her daughter, Nandini Srikar. Daughter number 4 (sibling number 8) Vatsala Mani is an economics PhD from the precursor  of JNU - School of International Studies. By the way, all the daughters had to learn music.

The sons were qualified and highly respected professionals – from a telecommunications engineer (V. K. Aravamudhan, a crack solver of cryptic crossword puzzles); a veterinary  doctor (V. K. Seshadri, a voracious reader who could quote passages out of books he had read years earlier); a mining engineer (V. K. Raghavan); IAS (V.K. Srinivasan); IPS (V.K. Rajagopalan); journalist (V.K. Raghunathan). V.K. Soundarajan was the only one who lagged behind, thanks to an overdose of anasthaesia when he broke his arm as a child. The reputation of Srinivasan and Rajagopalan for being non corruptible bureaucrats and sticklers for rules was legendary in IAS and IPS circles. Raghu too got drawn to music – rock music - in college and continued his interest through his career. He had his own band at one point.
All the siblings had a ear for music. With Tata Sky, Srinivasan, Mythili and my mother would often be tuned to Carnatic music programmes on various channels and would be constantly calling each other almost every  evening to listen to this new singer on this channel or an established singer on another channel. 

I’ve just read this again and it reads flat. That’s because the eccentricities of the VK family don’t figure. But that’s for another day.