Shanta rameshwar rao husband
The rebel that was Shantamma
Shanta Rameshwar Rao, founder of this institution of over 50 years, clearly played many memorable parts during her long and momentous career that came to an end on Sunday, as she breathed her last.
She is survived by her daughter Vidya Rao, a popular classical singer, and granddaughter, Aditi Rao Hydari, a Bollywood diva.
But it wasn’t Rao’s intellectual prowess alone that earned her an enviable number of ‘disciples’ who saw in her a mother, a mentor and even a magician who could floor anybody by the end of a conversation.
She oozed warmth, was extremely hilarious (when not irritable) and took immense pleasure in the simple things in life. At such times, she seized to be the eminent teacher-turned-author and became the loving Shantamma – a name Rao is better known by today, among her people.
Perhaps that explains why, graduate student Rajaa Farhan gave her college a miss on Monday to make a dash for Vidyaranya instead.
Her only wish: to catch a last glimpse of Shantamma before her body could be taken away for the last rites. “As a student, each time I visited this school, I realised it was very different from ours. The atmosphere here was very liberating, unlike ours that was dictatorial.
Biography of shanta rameshwar rao pdf Archived from the original on 30 May For some, she was a role model; for others a revolutionary educationist who gave Hyderabad an unconventional school where learning, for once, was fun and not limited to textbook pages. Rahman Ramanand Sagar S. Sivaraman Jitendra Abhisheki Adyar K.I am glad I put all my three children there,” shared Rajaa’s father, Farhan Ashar, while speaking about his daughter’s reaction on hearing about Rao’s death. As for himself, he remembers the author of the children’s Mahabharata – peppered with illustrations by Badri Narayan – as someone who loved a good argument. “And by the end of it, I always walked away more enriched,” Ashar said.
Rao’s impact on Sita Murthy, principal of Silver Oaks School, has been no different.
“She was my ultimate inspiration. Her students had an individuality of their own,” Murthy recollected, counting her blessings for being able to play host to Shantamma when she visited her school as chief guest for a certain event.
“With her at the helm, learning was free of pressure, stress and fear. There were no boundaries between teachers and students,” reminisced Vaneeta Bhattacharya, who calls herself Rao’s “forever student”.
When Bhattacharya, years after leaving school, went back to teach at Vidyaranya, she was surprised to find it still unaffected by the business of education.
Biography of shanta rameshwar rao in hindi Delete Cancel Save. All rights reserved. For some, she was a role model; for others a revolutionary educationist who gave Hyderabad an unconventional school where learning, for once, was fun and not limited to textbook pages. Bibliography [ edit ].
Not surprising then that young architect Neha Vadaddi, who went to school many years after Bhattacharya, was equally enamoured by Shantamma and her little morning assembly lessons; most often about Indian classical music.
“But she was not always solemn,” confessed Bhaswati Sengupta, recollecting how Rao was “extremely funny and knew how to laugh at herself, just like the way she laughed at others”.
“She was agile and had a great sense of the absurd,” Sengupta added. But the one thing that this ex-teacher said, which perhaps perfectly sums up Rao’s life, is this: “She needed the school, as much as the school needed her”.tnn