 | | Sanjaya’s Secret Heartache | | |  | SANJAYA MALAKAR’s near-poverty during his early childhood and parents’ divorce prepared him for all the criticism he faces on American Idol.
Celebrity Weekly, Star Magazine takes a trip down memory lane with Sanjaya, 17.
In October of 1992, Sanjaya’s world fell apart when he was just 3 years old — and his sister Shyamali, another Idol contestant, was 5 — after his father, Vasudeva Malakar, 44, filed for divorce from their mother, Jillian Recchi, 41. According to documents obtained by Star from Snohomish County (Wash.) Superior Court, the parents, who had separated a year before the divorce filing, were followers of the Hare Krishna movement (see box, left). Since their marriage in 1985, they had been members of a Krishna temple in a small town 17 miles east of Seattle.
When the divorce was filed, the family had almost no money coming in. Jill and the children were living in a Seattle apartment, and her only income was $531 a month from welfare. Dad Vasudeva, meanwhile, listed his yearly income as zero, and the couple’s home in a northern Seattle suburb was up for sale.
After the divorce, “Vasudeva was allowed visitation rights and spent as much time as possible with the children, but Sanjaya and Shyamali lived mostly with their mother,� reports Harry Terhanian. Sanjaya himself has said his mom, Jill, “taught me pretty much everything I know about life and how to live it effectively.� In 1996, Jill and the kids moved to Hawaii, where they lived for four years before returning to Washington. Jill remarried shortly thereafter, but her husband passed away, says a friend.
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