Other than music, he was very passionate about Sports, Movies and Books. He was not a typically social person but once he got to know people, he would open up a lot, and used to be great fun to be with, often causing riotous laughter all around.

Sports Interests:

1. Cricket:
   • Like a billion other Indians, he was just crazy about Cricket. An ardent die-hard supporter of the Indian team, he would never utter a neagtive word on the team, even if they had lost on the day, and would admonish anyone who did that in his presence. In his view, it was a privilege to be representing the country and he always felt that the players are trying their best.
2. Tennis:
   • He loved this game too, and whenever time permitted, he would watch the Grand Slam matches - particularly the Wimbledon Finals. He loved the history and traditions that surrounded the sporting event.
3. Chess:
   • Chitti Babu followed this sport with a very keen eye. He had books of older Russian Chess players and played those games with other enthusiasts and relished discussing every strategic move of the players. The Russian Grandmaster, Alexande Alekhine was a big favorite of his, and he keenly studied the games of many other masters as well
   • He took great pride in the ascent of V. Anand as he scaled new heights regularly

 Movies:

He was very fluent in Telugu, Tamil and English and so old classics were a favorite from any of these languages. He would watch, rewind and watch again all the classic scenes and analyze every aspect of that scene with family and friends around him. Everything from the actor's performance, the director's touch, to the music behind it had to be analyzed and relished and he would do so with child-like enthusiasm.

Music:

"Now, as a great musician himself, whose music did HE listen to??" - is an often asked question by many people.

1. He would listen to many other classical greats - Balamurali Krishna, MS Subbulakshmi, ML Vasantha Kumari, Flute Mali, MD Ramanthan, Ramnad Krishnan, GN Balasubramaniam to name a few.
2. In the next generation, he had immensely liked Chitravina Ravi Kiran, Mandolin U Shrinivas and Flute Shashank amongst instrumentalists, and also Bombay Jayashri, Sudha Raghunathan amongst vocalists.
3. In the Hindustani Music style, he loved many of the artistes, but his particular favorites were, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia,  Bhimsen Joshi, Pt. Jasraj, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Begum Parveen Sultana. Amongst the next generation he had liked Ajoy Chakraborty and Shujaat Khan,
4. Ghazals - he loved listenting to - Mehdi Hassan and Ghulam Ali - the Masters of Ghazal - as he called them
5. Film music was also something he had enormous respect for - whether it was Ghantasala and SP Balasubramaniam in the South, or Lata Mangeshkar and Mohd Rafi in the North, and MS Viswanathan and Saluri Rajeswara Rao in the South or Madan Mohan and Naushad in the North, he loved them all.
6. Soulful western numbers also captivated him always

BOOKS:

He really enjoyed reading a lot. He would always read Reader's Digest and share jokes and quotations from the various regular sections in there.

He also poured over Telugu and English books and his favorites were PG Wodehouse, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw in English and great works of a host of literary masters in Telugu including, Devulapalli Krishna Shastri, Arudra, Viswanatha Satyanarayana, Karunasri, among others. Although he could not read Tamil, he spoke very good Tamil, and enjoyed watching great debates on TV, and stimulating discussions of Tamil literateurs, as well.