Ananda Krishnan (right) with his son Ven AJahn Sripanyo. - File photo via india.com
KUALA LUMPUR: The son of Malaysian billionaire Ananda Krishnan, who renounced his immense inheritance to pursue an ascetic life as a Buddhist monk in a monastery on the Thai-Myanmar border, has flown to Kuala Lumpur to attend the funeral of his father, who brought satellite television into millions of Malaysian homes.
The country marked the passing of the reclusive tycoon Ananda - commonly known by his initials AK - who died last Thursday (Nov 28) aged 86 after a prolonged battle with lung disease.
His son, Ven AJahn Sripanyo (pic), reportedly arrived on Tuesday (Dec 3) for the memorial service in Kuala Lumpur’s ethnic Indian enclave of Brickfields, where Ananda was born in 1938.
Sripanyo maintained a low profile on his arrival at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, but local media ran pictures of him walking alone through the airport, dressed in orange monk robes and carrying a duffel bag.
He was later seen at his father’s wake, with a short video circulating on Malaysian social media showing him giving blessings to a few people who had lined up to pay their respects.
The wake itself was low-key even as hundreds of people turned up, befitting the profile of a tycoon who was among the country’s richest men at his death yet shunned the limelight despite his influence over modern Malaysia.
The family had earlier advised the public against sending wreaths, flowers and garlands as commonly done by Malaysians as a gesture to express their condolences.
Ananda was a deeply private person who averred media attention. Despite that, he went on to establish satellite operator Measat and local broadcast giant Astro and built Maxis into one of Malaysia’s largest telecommunications companies.
His only son, however, decided early on that he would not be following in his father’s footsteps, a sharp contrast to the scions of many of Asia’s richest families.
Educated in the UK, Sripanyo decided to renounce his share of a US$5 billion inheritance set aside by Ananda, choosing instead to pursue spirituality as a forest monk after a brief encounter with the ascetic life at a Buddhist retreat when he was 18.
It has been more than two decades since that decision, and he now serves as abbot at the Dtao Dum Monastery near the Thailand-Myanmar border.
Ananda, a devout Buddhist, was once married to a Thai princess, with whom he had three children.
He rose to fame in the 1980s as the man who worked with Irish rock star Bob Geldof and provided funding to stage the legendary Live Aid charity concert.
Ananda was also seen as instrumental in persuading two-time former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad to build the iconic Petronas Twin Towers.
In a statement last Saturday, Ananda’s children said their father had shared with them in his final months how fortunate he felt to have made good friends and received so much goodwill and support over his life.
“But being a private man, he kept his thoughts largely to himself and was certainly not one for sentimental goodbyes,” they said in the statement run by local English daily New Straits Times.
His children said he managed to spend the past summer on his boat in Turkey while working on his projects, but later succumbed to his condition not long after returning to his home in Switzerland.
“So as his children, we would like to take this chance to say farewell to you on his behalf, with gratitude for your part in his journey. And now he is moving on,” they said. - South China Morning Post
