Nearly Joined Naxals to Fight Social Ill: Pawan Kalyan at Harvard

Telugu superstar, Pawan Kalyan, was invited to speak at Harvard University, and his speech was an honest delight.

Actor Pawan Kalyan. (Photo: IANS)

Telugu superstar and now politician, Pawan Kalyan, was invited to speak at Harvard University, and his speech was an honest delight.

He was greeted by loud cheering from the audience and on the whole was a popular speaker with the crowd.

Kalyan said it was strange and difficult for him to address a gathering at Harvard, seeing as he himself was a high school dropout and studied in a street school.

He recalled feeling conflicted and battling an angst in his youth, where he was consumed by social injustices and his inability to do anything about them.

At one point, Kalyan’s brother and renowned superstar Chiranjeevi was afraid Kalyan’s angst would lead him to join extremist outfits like the Naxals.

Kalyan recalled a particular lesson in school where the teacher described an idyllic studying environment, with a big playground, lots of trees and a library full of books. Kalyan found it ironic as the school he studied in could afford no such facilities.

He recalled being thrashed by the teacher for pointing the anomaly out.

From then on, he says it became his life’s obsession to look at the vast gap between what was said and what was done in practice, and trying to rectify that gap.