Biography
ISC# 24021948
Early life, education and family
Jayalalithaa was born on 24 February 1948 as Komalavalli after her grandmother at Melukote, Pandavapura taluk, Mandya district, then in Mysore State (now Karnataka) to Jayaram and Vedavalli (Sandhya) in a Tamil Brahmin Iyengar family.
She was fluent in several languages, including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Malayalam and English. She spoke with actress Saroja Devi in Kannada regularly as they were close friends and would talk to each other only in Kannada. She often conversed with Karnataka Chief ministers in Kannada. Basavaraj Bommai, the former irrigation minister of Karnataka said, “I was astonished by her Kannada slang and fluency.”
The name Jayalalithaa was adopted at the age of one for the purpose of using the name in schools and colleges. It was derived from the names of two houses where she resided in Mysore. One was “Jaya Vilas” and the other “Lalitha Vilas”. Her paternal grandfather, Narasimhan Rengachary, was in the service of the Mysore kingdom as a surgeon and served as the court physician to Maharaja Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV of Mysore. Her maternal grandfather, Rangasamy Iyengar, moved to Mysore from Srirangam to work with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. He had one son and three daughters—Ambujavalli, Vedavalli, and Padmavalli. Vedavalli was married to Jayaram, son of Narasimhan Rengachary. The couple Jayaram-Vedvalli had two children: a son Jayakumar and a daughter, Jayalalitha. Her mother, her relatives and later co-stars and friends referred to her as Ammu.
Jayalalithaa’s father, Jayaram, was a lawyer but never worked and squandered most of the family’s wealth. He died when Jayalalithaa was two years old. The widowed Vedavalli returned to her father’s home in Bangalore in 1950.Vedavalli learnt shorthand and typewriting to take up a clerical position to help support the family in 1950. Her younger sister Ambujavalli had moved to Madras, working as an air hostess. She also started acting in drama and films using the screen name Vidyavathy. On the insistence of Ambujavalli, Jayalalithaa’s mother Vedavalli also relocated to Madras and stayed with her sister from 1952. Vedavalli worked in a commercial firm in Madras and began dabbling in acting from 1953 under the screen name Sandhya. Jayalalithaa remained under the care of her mother’s sister Padmavalli and maternal grandparents from 1950 to 1958 in Mysore. While still in Bangalore, Jayalalithaa attended Bishop Cotton Girls’ School, Bangalore. In later interviews, Jayalalithaa spoke emotionally about how she missed her mother growing up in a different city. She had the opportunity to visit her mother during the summer holidays.
After her aunt Padmavalli’s marriage in 1958, Jayalalithaa moved to Madras and began to live with her mother. She completed her education at Sacred Heart Matriculation School (popularly known as Church Park Presentation Convent or Presentation Church Park Convent).
She excelled at school and was offered a government scholarship to pursue further education. She won Gold State Award for coming first in 10th standard in the state of Tamil Nadu. She joined Stella Maris College, Chennai; however, discontinued her studies due to pressure from her mother and became a film actress.
The Poes Garden plot was bought by Jayalalithaa and her mother in 1967. Jayalalithaa’s mother sandhya died in November 1971 at the age of 47. Jayalalithaa herself held the house warming ceremony of her residence Veda Nilayam (named after her beloved mother Vedavalli alias Sandhya) on May 15, 1972, early in the morning, followed by dinner and a Veena recital by classical musician Chitti babu in the evening. Her brother’s wedding took place at her Veda Nilayam home in Poes Garden in 1972. Her brother Jayakumar, his wife Vijayalakshmi and their daughter Deepa Jayakumar lived in Poes Garden with Jayalalithaa till 1978 and then moved to T.Nagar Madras at the bungalow ‘Sandhya Illam’ which was bought by mother of Jayalalithaa. Her brother was unhappy with adoption of Sudhakaran, a relative of Sasikala, as foster son of Jayalalithaa.
Jayalalithaa had adopted Sasikala’s nephew Sudhakaran in 1995 and disowned him in 1996. Her brother died in 1995 of heart attack.
She was fond of having dogs as her pets. But after the death of Julie, a spitz, in 1998 she could not bear the loss and hence discontinued keeping pet dogs at her home.