Choreographer Pony Verma’s first impression of Prakash Raj was of the ‘old man in a wheelchair’ in the 2003 Telugu film Amma Nanna O Tamila Ammayi. After working with him on numerous films, she recalls their friendship slowly turning into love and, eventually, marriage. However, her friends and family were sceptical about her marrying the South Indian Prakash, given her Punjabi roots.
Pony and Prakash met when she was mourning her mother’s death, and he was going through a divorce from Lalitha Kumari, whom he had married in 1994. My friends were like, why are you getting married to a man who’s 12 years older than you? Prakash married actor Lalitha Kumari in 1994, and they have two daughters, Meghana and Pooja. Their son Siddharth died in 2004 when he was five, after sustaining injuries during a fall while flying a kite. The couple divorced in 2009, and he married Pony in 2010. Their son Vedhanth was born in 2015. At the ABP Southern Rising Summit 2024, Prakash spoke about grieving the losses in his life and said, “Pain is a very personal thing, whether it’s my friend Gauri (Lankesh) or my son Siddharth.
Because it eases the personal pain, and I don’t want to brood on it, he also added, “I would rather share my joys than my pain. “They had no idea about South Indians. They’re telling me, every day you’ll eat sambar, you’ll die. We eat idli sambar sometimes at a hotel; it’s good. A big hue and cry happened. But then I just can’t become selfish. I have daughters, I have a family, I have a profession, I have people. As a human being, I have a life, and I am accountable for that too. Some wounds are deeper than flesh, and you need to live with that.”
The choreographer recalled on Prema’s YouTube channel how her family reacted when she told them she wanted to marry the actor. I said, no, but I like sambar.
