Bangalore :
The battle for the title of ‘oldest family in the world’ may not be over soon. Just when 13 Manja siblings from Shimoga had staked their claim in the Guinness Book of Records for the spot, another family originally from Thanjavur wants to correct that. While the Shimoga family’s collective age is 880 plus years, the new contenders – a family of 11 siblings – say their ages total a whopping 899 plus years, adding up the months and days too.
On Monday, K V Rajagopal, an 87-year-old retired railway executive currently living in Bangalore, responded to a report in TOI dated February 16 on the Manja family, and claimed that his family beat them in the age battle.
Their family hailed from Thanjavur but later migrated to Nagpur, said Rajagopal, elaborating, “We are a family of 12 siblings of whom 11 are alive. The eldest is 92 years old and youngest, 73. Both live in the US. The collective age of the Manja family adds up to 880 plus and it struck me that we 11 siblings are older by 19 years.”
Rajagopal, the third son of G V Rajagopal and Ranganayaki who are now deceased, says all his siblings were born before Independence. “We have witnessed the freedom struggle as our father was a freedom fighter. All my five aunts studied on scholarships abroad during those days itself,” says Rajagopal.
Theirs is a cosmopolitan family, pipes in his daughter Priyamvada Srinivasan. “Gujaratis, Marathis, Jews, Americans, a German and Punjabi are all in it. I am happy to be a part of this rich old family,” she says.
Currently the family has 43 members. But they have never met at one place together. “We all have flown the nest. We had an ancestral house in Nagpur, where no one lives now. Even our childhood photographs are not with us. As six of my siblings live in the US, one each in the UK and Geneva and other two in Nagpur, we hardly get to meet together at one place, but we are in touch with each other,” says Rajagopal.
“But we are not in any race. I am yet to decide on giving a representation to the Guinness authorities,” he adds. The current holders of the record are London-based Brudennel family with a collective age of 855 years.
NEWEST AND OLDEST?
Rajalakshmi Raghavan (92) lives in the US
V Srinivas (89) lives in Nagpur
K V Rajagopal (87) lives in Bangalore
V Kannan (84) lives in the UK
Kalyani Raghavan (82) lives in Geneva
Dr Maithili Schmidt (80) lives in the US
Sulochana Glazer (79) lives in the US
Rangachari Raghavan (77) lives in Nagpur
Dr Renuka Sethi (76) lives in the US
Badra Raghavan (75) lives in the US
Susheila Bhagat (73) lives in the US
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Bangalore> Namma Metro / by Sunitha Rao, R – TNN / February 18th, 2014