It has been a season of deaths. Sometimes it happens that way. 4 years back, I had to contend with deaths of close ones back to back. As if it happened by clockwork precision. It was my closest friend & colleague in January and my ex boss the next month and my dog ( which I hate to call so, but calling it first daughter in this context is so very painful ) in March.
Now it kind of repeats! It started off with Sujatha. And now on a single day Raghuvaran and Arthur C Clarke! The first one was apparently 60. Who knew that? For me when I was 22, he appeared as if he was my contemporary. Much like Shah Rukh ( with whom he even shared a resemblance & of course with Benecio Del Toro ) he started in an amazing TV serial and all of us went around shaving our moustache trying to look like him and ended looking like monkeys. Later he understood Tamizh cinema so very well that he gave necessary doses of overacting in popular movies and went along silently with awesome performances in real good movies. He was in constant search of something starting from liquor, drugs, great love, guitar, divorce and at last spirituality. Just as I was thinking he made it somehow, he just walked off into death.
Arthur C Clarke was another guy! He created that interest in me for sci-fi unlike the others in the world who swore by Asimov. And later moved over to explore the sea, when he candidly realized that there is 3/4th of earth that is still unexplored and he had no business imagining about space. But his story about the notice to destroy Earth by superior aliens to build an inter-galactic highway smartly juxtaposed with our officials doing the same thing for constructing a flyover lives in my heart.
Certain guys really don’t die. They just cease to exist for you to believe that they did.
My homage to these two great entertainers is an ode that follows.
It has this uncanny knack
Of hitting you with shock
Long hands that can reach anywhere
Pauper or king you go nowhere
Makes you think how much you miss
Just when you are sunk in bliss
You dismiss it as no big deal
But bites you with astonishing zeal
You never sit and think about it
But it’s never far, this exit
You think you are racing ahead
Isn’t it always to meet it head to head?
It’s all pervading and powerful
But haven’t it always been sleightful?
Death let it be damned to hell
You just want to yell
When it takes away loved ones
Letting you grieve in tons
Now it kind of repeats! It started off with Sujatha. And now on a single day Raghuvaran and Arthur C Clarke! The first one was apparently 60. Who knew that? For me when I was 22, he appeared as if he was my contemporary. Much like Shah Rukh ( with whom he even shared a resemblance & of course with Benecio Del Toro ) he started in an amazing TV serial and all of us went around shaving our moustache trying to look like him and ended looking like monkeys. Later he understood Tamizh cinema so very well that he gave necessary doses of overacting in popular movies and went along silently with awesome performances in real good movies. He was in constant search of something starting from liquor, drugs, great love, guitar, divorce and at last spirituality. Just as I was thinking he made it somehow, he just walked off into death.
Arthur C Clarke was another guy! He created that interest in me for sci-fi unlike the others in the world who swore by Asimov. And later moved over to explore the sea, when he candidly realized that there is 3/4th of earth that is still unexplored and he had no business imagining about space. But his story about the notice to destroy Earth by superior aliens to build an inter-galactic highway smartly juxtaposed with our officials doing the same thing for constructing a flyover lives in my heart.
Certain guys really don’t die. They just cease to exist for you to believe that they did.
My homage to these two great entertainers is an ode that follows.
It has this uncanny knack
Of hitting you with shock
Long hands that can reach anywhere
Pauper or king you go nowhere
Makes you think how much you miss
Just when you are sunk in bliss
You dismiss it as no big deal
But bites you with astonishing zeal
You never sit and think about it
But it’s never far, this exit
You think you are racing ahead
Isn’t it always to meet it head to head?
It’s all pervading and powerful
But haven’t it always been sleightful?
Death let it be damned to hell
You just want to yell
When it takes away loved ones
Letting you grieve in tons
2 comments:
Watched Raghuvaran in Shiva and Anjali in Hindi. I do not know about the overacting , really. He seemed amazingly restarined for filmy villain of that time..no sneering,menacing face-making. Just cold stare and stoic face with matter-of-fact orders to kill and maim. Chilling!
Arthur C Clarke indeed is a great loss. Have been a great fan.His attempts at rabble-rousing to bring peace to Sri lanka had raised him in my esteem as a human bieng too.
One small correction though- The notice to earth for construction of inter-galactic super highway was in "Hitchhikers Guide to The galaxy" by Douglas Adams.Thats how the first of novels in the series begin. The humans inhabiting the earth was classified by the aliens simply as "Mostly Harmless" :)
You must get the full edition(with all five novellas)- its a heady mixture of farce, hi-tech sci-fi and black comedy.I will even recommend the "Dirk Gentley" novels, the space age detective and his "Holistic Detective Agency". Adams will crack you up, really
I stand corrected Sid. Its been ages since I read the story. Got it mixed up. :)
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