Kalpakam’s son would run to her the moment she beckoned. He knew it was feeding time. Babu, as Kalpakam called her elder son, grew up to be a leader. He was seldom seen at home. On those rare occasions when he came home, Kalpakam fed him with rice and his favourite dishes. He was not allowed to leave home until he was stuffed.
“Babu was a very good boy, until he joined CPM,” says Kalpakam, the mother of party general secretary Sitaram Yechury. The politician is quick to intervene, “That’s just her opinion.”
Even at 82, Kalpakam dreams of a better life for her son. “I am not worried that he became a communist. But he did not have a good life,” she says. “A good job, good salary, big car, big house…he could have got all these. If not a doctor, he could have been an IAS or IFS officer. Why did he forsake all these? I always tell him to come home and eat,” she says.
Yechury’s mother says he is always busy with party work. “After all, he is satisfied with that. His happiness is mine too. What more could a mother want?”
Apple of the eye
Yechury’s favourite subject is economics as if he started learning it in the womb. Kalpakam was four months pregnant when she wrote the BA economics final year exams at Stella Maris College in Chennai. It was not easy for Kalpakam, then a frail girl, to carry the heavy baby. Her mother offered to raise the boy.
Kalpakam says her mother very well knew the value of a child. “I am the eighth child of my mother. Her six children had died before my brother and I were born.”
Kalpakam went on to study further. She did a master’s degree in political science from the Benaras Hindu University. She also did an M.Phil from the Osmania University on ‘India and the UN Security Council’. Though she joined as a research scholar, she got busy as an activist of the All India Women’s Conference.
“Babu was the first grandchild in our family. Everyone would pamper him. He had chubby cheeks. Everyone wanted to pinch them and carry him,” she says.
Kalpakam’s father was a judge at the High Court of Andhra Pradesh. Justice Kanda Bhima Sankara Ram’s grandchild always occupied the front seat of the car.
The little Yechury enjoyed the policemen’s salutes on the way to the court and back. Justice Ram would joke with his colleague, “My car may run without petrol, but not without babu in the front seat.”
“Babu was a good boy,” Kalpakam repeats. “His horoscope was written by my mother’s father. He said babu was a ‘yogapurush’. We did not believe him. Grandfathers always praise their grandchildren.
“We did not have to train him. He learned everything by himself. He had a routine in eating and all. He never bothered anyone. People would forget there was a child in the house.
“My father read mythological stories to him. He was excellent in studies and games. My brother gifted him a tennis racquet on the day of his religious initiation.
“My husband’s family taught him Vedas and mantras for four days starting with Upanayanam. Babu would roam around with only tufts of hair on five places on his head. As a naughty school boy, he would ask his mother if he could recite English poems like the Gayathri hymn.
“I forbid him,” Kalpakam says.
Later, when the parents listened to some of Yechury’s speeches, Somayajalu would tell Kalpakam, “Babu must have recited Gayathri in the morning.”
Great expectations
Sitaram was a decent and patient boy. Kalpakam wanted him to be a doctor. She thought her younger son Shankar would become a politician going by his behaviour.
“Shankar was rowdy when he was a little boy. Babu would not retaliate even if someone hurts him. Shankar would challenge anyone who disturbed Sitaram. He even broke a boy’s head with a stone for hurting his brother,” the mother says.
Shankar studied engineering and became an employee at Maruti. He retired recently.
Things changed when Sitaram went to Jawaharlal Nehru University. “We did not realise that Babu was interested in politics. Even when he stayed away from home for days, we thought he must be touring with friends. We thought something was wrong when Shankar started packing food for Sitaram and friends daily,” Kalpakam says.
Sitaram was caught by the police during the Emergency when he went to get his father discharged from the hospital. Somayajalu told his son, “Do not flee. It is better to surrender.”
Kalpakam packed food for her son and went to the police station the next day. There she saw her son sitting on a table and lecturing the policemen in Hindi on politics. The policemen consoled the mother, saying such people make great leaders in future, before sharing the food.
Somayajalu and Kalpakam gradually came to know their son.
“We realised that babu was not going to earn anything. That’s why his father decided to buy him a house with his retirement benefits and the money raised from assets in Kakinada,” Kalpakam says.
“His father would buy him a new kurta as he was always shabbily dressed. He would give it to someone and come back the way he was. If I ask him about the new dress, he would say it’s been put to better use.
“Babu is very talented in one thing. He could talk to you and convince you on anything. Everything in his life happened that way,” she says.
Yechury’s entry into CPM also needed one such try.
“Both mine and my husband’s families were Congress backers…followers of C. Rajagopalachari who said communists were the enemy No. 1. It was natural for us to go with the Congress in the era of freedom struggle. But we never objected to him being a communist. I have cooked for many communists including P. Sundarayya,” Kalpakam says.