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 batch mates 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!

- by Ganga Raju G

I agree Ganga Raju - We should remember Rajender for his infectious can do spirit tinged with a flamboyance which made our HPS experiences so much more interesting

- by Vasu