Page 95 - Demo

The person who came to be in the driver's seat of all of this was a young man in his late twenties. Photographs of him from this time show us a bespectacled, handsome, aquilinefeatured young man with a serious mien. One can visualise him contemplating the future, which was no easy task, for his was a complex personality interwoven with many strands. Looking back from today's perspective, the simpler choice before the young man would have been to abandon his family legacy of promoting societal goals that he did not have any legal obligation to keep alive and take to a life of luxury in urban centres focussing on passions close to his heart. He was also the head of a young and growing family with priorities of their own. This incidentally was the choice made by many of the scions of the erstwhile princely families who found themselves in this situation.The alternative was a tougher choice %u2013 that of continuing the progressive traditions of his family, which for generations had promoted education, culture, and infrastructure (hospitals, public health, and works like protected water supply) for the benefit of the larger population. The context had changed radically, and the loss of authority and power meant that translating thought to action would be that much more difficult. Perhaps the importance PVG Raju gave to continuing the values of his family trumped other considerations of a more pragmatic nature, and so it was that despite not being a Maharaja anymore he plunged into public life with vigour with Vizianagaram as his home. He did not shift his residence to urban centres like Madras or later Hyderabad like many other people placed in a similar situation did.85