Page 174 - Demo

S. Jaipal Reddy, former Union Minister spoke to PVG Raju's daughter-in-law and daughter about this accident 50 years later at his residence in Delhi. He remembered the details with much clarity and how as a young Youth Congress leader, he had proceeded to Chandigarh that summer. Like a number of other well wishers, he concluded that PVG Raju's accident changed the trajectory of Andhra Pradesh politics. PVG Raju's family and many of his friends thought that re-entering politics was a bad move given his condition but he was determined and as one of them wryly commented, %u201cbeing in public life is like a political addiction, once one is hooked to it, it is difficult to let go.%u201dThe accident in 1964 was a watershed in his life %u2013 and as his son Ashok Gajapathi Raju puts it, 'there is a PVG Raju before and a PVG Raju after.' He had come back to life but the quality of that life had deteriorated in many ways, not just physically. He had had no secrets in his life. He was a public figure and people were very well aware of the troubles that he had gone through. He was constantly surrounded by people and had no privacy in battling the new challenges. He suffered. He was weakened and no longer the confident resolute man he was in the early sixties. He was slower in resolving issues, he often let them drift. He had become a dependent man in many ways, something which offended his sense of self deeply. It is possible that his later shift in Parliament in 1971 had something to do with this. He may have wanted to distance himself from Vizianagaram and the people who knew him so closely. It is possible that he did not like people close to him to get to see another side of him which he did not like himself.Life had changed for him totally. He was in different circumstances from what he was born into and what he grew 160