For Upasana Kamineni, granddaughter of Apollo Hospitals chairman Pratap Reddy and the wife-to-be of Tollywood star Ram Charan Teja, college was the time of her life. Though she has been keeping a low profile ever since her betrothal was announced, she’s an extrovert. In an exclusive interview with edex — her first ever media interaction — she opened up. “I was always a back-bencher and active in extra-curricular activities. Be it organising events, cultural programmes or sports, I would be the first to volunteer,” she says, recalling her days as an intermediate student at Villa Marie College, Hyderabad.
She wasn’t and isn’t a bookworm and always prefers to venture out and learn through practical classes. So active was her participation in college events that her teachers instituted the Best Outgoing Student Award from that year onwards, needless to say, starting with Kamineni.
But it wasn’t all fun and frolic for Kamineni, who studied at Hyderabad Public School and Mayo College Girls’ School, a boarding in Ajmer, Rajasthan. “In a boarding school, you will not have the luxuries of home at your disposal. But it helps in your all-round personality development. That’s where I became independent and disciplined,” Kamineni muses. “You can’t have the luxury of a finishing school and get pampered at home at the same time. The schedule at a boarding school is totally packed. You wake up early, the day starts with an hour of exercise, followed by back-to-back classes. Then there are extra-curricular activities. You’re so busy that there’s no time to miss your family.”
At home, she had a thoroughly conservative upbringing. “There were study hours which we had to strictly adhere to. My father (Anil Kamineni, who is into power and infrastructure business) would give select paragraphs from textbooks and quiz me on that. That was the toughest part. And my mother, equally conversant with mathematics, would quiz me on the subject from time-to-time,” she explains.
Unlike most college-goers, Kamineni never bunked classes. “Rather I used to tell my parents or lecturers and seek permission to skip classes. That way, I was organised,” she recalls. “Pubs were out of bounds as I had to be home by 10 o’clock. I wasn’t much of a tomboy either,” she reveals.
Kamineni, who is currently the vice president of Apollo Charity and editor of BPositive, Lifetime Wellness Rx International, Apollo Group of Hospitals, has had a varied education. She completed her bachelor’s in arts from University of Pennsylvania, USA. She has also done a basic course in set designing. To the obvious question as to why she didn’t pursue medicine, pat comes the reply. “Girls are not encouraged to pursue medicine as it takes time to graduate (laughs). But that’s not the real reason. I was inclined towards arts and management.”
She has a master’s in global marketing and management from Regent’s College, London. The college is known for its specialised courses on family businesses. Summing up her experience of education both in India and abroad, she believes, western education grooms one’s personality in such a way as to make them confident.
— sunitanatti@
newindianexpress.com