"Sanjaya Malakar’s off-key performances have been rudely labeled “very weak and a little weird” by Simon Cowell, snidely mocked on Saturday Night Live, and even the subject of a barrage of ridicule from shock jock Howard Stern.
And that’s not to mention the ribbing the 17-year-old singer’s taken for his ever-changing, occasional roosterlike hairdos! But given that the Washington state native had already lived through his parents’ divorce and near-poverty during his early childhood, his toughness in the face of all that criticism shouldn’t come as a surprise!
Sanjaya’s world fell apart in October of 1992, 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. Since their marriage in 1985, they had been members of a Krishna temple in a small town 17 miles east of Seattle.
As for what caused the rift between the couple, “Their marriage was basically already over when Vasudeva began living in the temple as a full-time priest in 1992,” Harry Terhanian — known by his Krishna name of Harivilas das, and director of the Issaquah, Wash., temple — tells Star. “Sanjaya’s dad grew up in a Krishna school in India and had been fully trained as a priest.” The split was especially dramatic and unexpected since, says Terhanian, “Krishna does not condone divorce except in extreme situations.”’
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.
By December of 1992, according to court papers, Sanjaya’s father was compelled to leave the temple and get a paying job — and he clashed with child support authorities when they began to garnish half his paycheck. “I simply will not have enough left to live on,” pled Vasudeva, who insisted he and Jill had already agreed on a monthly figure of $200. “I am a priest and could have lived free of charge at my church, but I decided to go out and get a job to support my children.” By the time the Malakars’ divorce was granted in January 1993, the authorities had grown sympathetic to Sanjaya’s father’s pleas and reinstated his full pay to avoid driving his already meager income "below poverty level.'"
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