Watch: Jayalalithaa talks about life, love and sings at this rendezvous

 

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.”