SOUTH
Enigmatic Jayalalithaa would have turned 69 on February 24. The people’s leader Jayalalithaa entered Tamil Nadu’s politics when she joined AIADMK in 1982 after being a popular actress.
Over the years, Jayalalithaa became one of the most influential and indomitable politicians in Tamil Nadu politics. She was a private person who rarely allowed anyone to peek into her personal life or gave emotional details about herself.
However, in this interview with Simi Garewal, she unveiled a different side of her personality and let her guard down while speaking about her mother, childhood, political life and everything else.
Here are few revelations that made in this interview:
Jayalalithaa while living in the maternal grandparents home in Bengaluru away from her mother who lived in Madras and occasionally visited her, “I remember that during all those four years I was in Banglore, I was pining for my mother every second.”
On schools, “The days I spend at school were the happiest, most normal days of my life.”
On being a leader and emotions, “When you are a leader you learn to control your emotions, you learn to keep them in control. I keep my emotions to myself. I have never lost my temper in public, I have never wept in public."
On movie career and being a success, “Once I take up something, once I decide to do something whether I like it or not, I give it my all. I must excel in it; I must do it superlatively well.”
On MGR, “He was a very warm and caring kind of person, and after mother had died, he replaced her in my life. So he was everything to me mother, father, friend, philosopher, guide; everything to me.”
On politics and mudslinging, “if I would have been an academician if I would have been a lawyer no one would have said such nasty things about me.”