We Miss Them So
Eight of them who were in our class. Have passed on.
Some memories of them in school, some recounting of their life after they left school ....
Y. Rajendra Prasad
He was sitting in the doctor’s consultation room when I entered. All skull, skin and bones, except for a distended abdomen. It took a painful moment to connect him to the hero in school — champion swimmer, footballer, equestrian, basket baller, House Captain of Nagarjuna, and a member of the first beat group; Devil Kids. He was a born leader, everyone looked up to him. And he always had a smile or a wisecrack for everyone.
Yedla Rajendra Prasad was from Vijayawada, the youngest of 5 siblings. His father had a successful engineering works business. Unfortunately he died before Rajendra had passed out of school. When Rajendra went home after graduation, he had to start afresh as his siblings were not fair to him in property division. He struggled. He fell, he rose. He started making a new bi-metallic bearing for the Indian Railways. With that he rose to becoming the second biggest Railway contractor in the country.
Somewhere he over-stretched himself: he had a train ticket-vending machine built and while he was still convincing the Railways to go for it, he built a large workshop in Hyderabad to repair bogey chassis. Things didn’t work out. All came crashing down. Alas, by now, his heavy drinking became sun-up to sun-down drinking. His liver gave up. On the insistence of Venkat Akkineni and myself, he came to Hyderabad for treatment. I saw him after 3 years (when we last met was at Ramesh Ramayya’s place for a mini re-union, thanks to Halbe). The difference was shocking.
A liver transplant was done. Many batchmates from our class and Venkat’s class (one year senior) pitched in. We thought we had pulled him back from death’s door. Sadly, a week after surgery he succumbed. Sorry to have evoked those images of his last days. Erase them. Let’s just gaze at him in awe, zooming away on his Italian sports bike. For he lived life to the fullest.
V.Raj Kumar
Vuppuluri Rajkumar joined HPS B in the 9th class in 1969, if I remember correctly. He was a day scholar and was in Taxila. Raj was a quiet guy and took some time to integrate with the class. He played tennis in school. He blossomed in the inter-house dramatics with his brilliant violin performance.
He completed his B. Tech from BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru, where we met often as I was studying in Bengaluru too. I still remember the fun trip to Kakinada, AP, to attend his marriage to Kala Bharathi on 06 JUN 1979. Raj joined his father in Civil Construction and helped manage a mini cement factory they had set up.
Sadly, while driving back from Tirupati, Raj succumbed to injuries in a car accident on 29 APR 1993.
Kala Bharathi and Raj have two sons. Kiran who passed out of 10th class from HPS B and did his B.Tech in Electrical Engineering. He then graduated with an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia. He is in the Property Development business. Their younger son Yashwant did his B.Tech in Chemical Engineering and then an M.S. in Solar and Renewable Energy from UNSW, Sydney, Australia. He is now engaged in the Solar PV project construction business. Yashwant named his second child, born on 09 Feb 2021, after his father and christened him V. Raj Kumar Jr. The family lives in Hyderabad.
The Class of 1971 ISC pays homage to Raj on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee ReUnion in Jan 2022, and cherishes his memory as an affectionate classmate and wishes his family godspeed.