She was born in 1940. The second of five children born to Vedaranyam Seshadri and Rajalakshmi ammal. She passed away after a brief illness in November 2006. How will Jagada be remembered?
How does one pay tribute to someone who passes away at an age of 66? Not an early death… by demographic standards, but definitely not the age to die. There are thousands out there who are some decades older than her who want to, wish to die…but don’t. Here’s Jagadakka who succumbs to the call of Yama at a mere 66.
We shall remember her as a woman of substance…astonishing substance at that! We had heard of stories of her daring at a time when a woman’s place was considered to be definitely within the four walls of her home. In 1956 she created waves when she, clad in white shorts and short clinging shirt, played tennis at Country Club with youngmen, waves which turned into tsunamis of communal outcry when she posed in a two piece bikini for a local magazine. As expected she was ostracized and exiled by an influential father and a livid elder brother to London where she blossomed into a headstrong young woman, under the tolerant care of her maternal aunt. She was a great oarswoman and was the trailblazer in forming the first ethnic women’s team in Oxford.
I met her with a sense of trepidation a couple of summers back, when I was on an official trip to London. Will she agree to meet me? I wondered… She did… very charmingly and affectionately and I fell for her charms-- hook, line and sinker! She was very candid about her life and did not try to justify any of her actions. I was a futuristic anachronism, she laughed, patting my cheeks. My only regret is that I could not apologize to Appa for the heartache I had caused him. I hope I can apologize to Anna at least, before…! Don’t you worry, I cut in resolutely. I will arrange a family reunion and we will all be family once more. It took me two years to thaw the stone-hard heart of my 70 year old brother and finally my exiled eldest sister Jagada returned home on 13th November. 14th was her birthday. Manni and the other women in the family had prepared a feast fit for kings and Jagadakka had enjoyed herself. The kids laughed out loud watching her slurp paalpayasam noisily and not very successfully. At last, that last missing piece in the family jigsaw puzzle had been fitted in… Yet, Gods were jealous…Jagadakka succumbed to her terminal illness last week. But the banished princess had returned home to roost in our memory for ever!
