The fascinating life of J. Jayalalithaa

1. Jayalalithaa has been the only chief minister who also won the Filmfare award for acting. She won the award for best actress for the film ‘Pattikada Pattinama’ in 1972 opposite MGR. The film also went on to win the National Award for best feature film.

2. She is said to have been a voracious reader right from her childhood. Even during her acting days people recalled she would be reading whenever she was not required for shooting.

3. Her companion for the past several decades Sasikala Natarajan was a video filmmaker and was introduced to Jayalalitha by an IAS officer Chandralekha. Sasikala’s husband was working in the PR department of the state government.

4. Sasikala had sought an introduction to Jayalalithaa so that she could make a video film on her.

5. Critics claimed that Sasikala brought 40 domestic helps to the chief minister’s home in Poes Garden, Chennai to attend on the household. Everyone at Poes Garden at one time, right from the driver to the cook, was from Mannargudi from where Sasikala hailed. Her one-time friend Subramanian Swamy, who filed a case of disproportionate assets against her, called it the ‘Mannargudi mafia’.

6. The ‘Mannargudi mafia’ was expelled from Poes Garden in 2011, people say, after tests on Jayalalithaa revealed traces of arsenic. It is also claimed that she was alerted to the possibility by the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

7. While there has never been any formal or official confirmation about these allegations, mystery also shrouds the return of Sasikala to the household in 2012, after she allegedly disowned her family and claimed that she was not aware of the plots that may have been hatched by them.

8. When the corruption case was filed against her in 1996 , Jayalalithaa vowed not to wear any jewellery till she was exonerated. She, however, relented in 2012 under pressure of party workers.