1. Sathya Sai Baba
When Sathya Sai Baba, the Godman from Puttparthi died on April 6th earlier this year, he left behind an empire estimated at Rs 40,000 crore, and no will. This was wealth accumulated from a lifetime being a self-proclaimed Godman and the largesse of rich benefactors.
Sai Baba had millions of followers all over the world. His devotees included some of the popular celebrities and powerful politicians like Sachin Tendulkar, Amitabh Bachchan and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
He was worshipped as an incarnation of another saint, Shirdi Sai Baba, and believed to have God-like qualities. But he had his detractors, who claimed that all the miracles he performed, like pulling watches out of thin air, were merely cheap magic tricks. Rumors of child and sexual abuse at his ashram were also rampant, so much so that the US government had issued a warning about him to American citizens traveling to India. There was even an attempt on his life in June 6th, 1993 in his ashram; the attack left six dead, and Puttaparthi rattled. Sai Baba dismissed the idea that the attack was an attempt on his life.
But his legacy will live past these minor negative incidents. Perhaps the biggest contribution of the seer was his philanthropic activities. He has provided many villages with clean drinking water through his organization Sri Satya Village Integrated Programme (SSVIP). He set up the Sri Sathya Sai University, which delivers high-quality education with three colleges under its belt. His setting up of Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s Super Speciality Hospital has been very well received, where thousands of patients have been treated free of cost.
What will be important to follow would be the ability of his Trust to continue with his philanthropic activities long after he’s gone.
2. Shammi Kapoor
Shamsher Raj Kapoor, born on October 21, 1931, to Prithviraj Kapoor and Ramsharni Kapoor, was their middle son, and brother to Raj and Shashi Kapoor. He spent his childhood years in Kolkatta and Mumbai, and began his career with his father’s theatre company, Prithvi Theatres. Four years later he left to pursue a career in film. He shortened his name to Shammi Kapoor and made his debut with Jeevan Jyoti, but he was met without a blip at the box office. The next three years saw 20 films that crashed and burned. Deciding to change things around, Kapoor shaved off his pencil moustache, cut his hair and donned an Elvis Presley swagger. With films like Dil Deke Dekho and Tumsa Nahin Dekha, Kapoor cemented his image as the boyishly goodlooking playboy and stylish youth icon. His cry “Yahoo” in the film Jungleeencapsulated his image as a rebel, and the exclamation came to always be associated with him. With successful films opposite stars like Asha Parekh, Saira Banu, and Sharmila Tagore, and his trademark dance moves, there was no looking back for Kapoor; he won his first Filmfare award in 1968 for Bramhachari.
Kapoor went through a difficult period when his wife Geeta Bali, mother to his two children Aditya Raj and Kanchan, died of small pox. It was eight years before he remarried, this time to Neela Devi Gohil. He soon retired from playing leading roles, taking instead to character pieces, and moving behind the camera as director. In 1995 he was given the Filmfare lifetime achievement award. Coming out of retirement for his cameo in the film Rockstarwith his nephew Ranbir Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor worked while simultaneously dealing with kidney dialysis. He eventually passed away from chronic renal failure on 14 August 2011 at Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai. The entire Kapoor family and many of Bollywood’s biggest names came together to pay their last respects at the funeral of an actor whose legacy remains in Indian cinema.
3. Maqbool Fida Hussain
Maqbool Fida Hussain, better known to the world as MF Hussain, died on June 9th 2011, at the age of 95. Hailed as India’s Picasso, he played a significant role in putting Indian art on the world map. Known for his use of vibrant colour and depictions of dynamic movement, frequently featuring women and horses, Husain was the first living Indian artist to command a price of $1million for his work.
Husain was born in Maharashtra on September 17th, 1915, to an accountant father, and a mother who died when he was barely 18 months old. At the age of 19, Husain came to Mumbai and found work as a painter of Hindi film posters. As his popularity grew, Husain also found himself increasingly in the eye of the storm with his series on Hindu divinity, portraying the goddesses Durga and Saraswati in the nude. Criminal charges that were filed against him for hurting religious sentiments were eventually quashed, but the death threats from Hindu extremists continued. In the face of such harassment, Husain was forced moved to Dubai, and the state of Qatar offered him citizenship.
The barefoot but flamboyant artist who created over 60,000 pieces of art died in exile in a hospital in London. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called his death a “national loss,” and India’s President Pratibha Patil said his death left a void in the world of art.
4. Bhupen Hazarika
Bhupen Hazarika, one of north-east India’s most important cultural figures, was a singer, lyricist, filmmaker, author and political activist, in a career that spanned 70 years. By the age of 10 he was composing music, and a year later performed for the first time on All India Radio. In 1939 at the age of 12, he catapulted into stardom after singing in the second Assamese film to be produced, Indramalati. He attributes his musical ability to his mother Shantipriya, “”Although listening to the rhythms of tribal music growing up developed my love for singing, I inherited my voice from my mother, who regularly sang lullabies to me as a child.” Hazarika was the eldest of 10 children, and his father imbibed him with a deep respect for education. Later, as he was drawn into India’s freedom movement, he would realise the connection between education and freedom, and this idea was clearly voiced in his music and writing at the time.
Hazarika schooled in Guwahati, and majored in political science at the Banaras Hindu University. He completed his PhD in mass communication at Columbia University, New York. In New York he met singer Paul Robeson who became a great influence on his music and his politic; he joined him on many civil rights rallies, and the famous ‘Bistirno Parore’ is an Assamese version of ‘Old Man River.’
Hazarika worked for a brief while as producer for All India Radio, and even taught at Gauhati University after returning from New York before he became involved with Assamese cinema. His popularity was unmatched at the time, as his music addressed important social issues and connected with his listeners. In 1992 he was awarded the Dada Saheb Phalke for his prolific contribution to film. He was also awarded the Padmashree in 1977 and Padma Bhushan in 2001. On November 5th 2011, he passed away after being admitted into the ICU for multi-organ failure. He is survived by his companion of many years, filmmaker Kalpana Lajmi, “I have lost my father, my brother, my lover, my husband, my friend, my mentor and guide. I had a relationship with him for 29 years, and he is gone now.”
5. Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi
What if MAK Pataudi had the use of both his eyes? That question will dog cricket aficionados for years to come.
Blessed with immaculate talent and unparalleled leadership qualities, the Naawab of Patuadi was handed the captaincy at the tender age of 21, when the then captain Nari Contractor got injured.
“Tiger” Patuadi scored 2793 runs in Test Cricket at an average of 34.91, he was the son of a famous father, who had played for England before the Second World War and then captained India in England in 1946. He went on to Captian India in 40 Tests, and even though India won only nine of those, his greatest contribution was to ensure that the Indian team became a tight unit under him. This was acknowledged by Bishan Singh Bedi, who captained India after Pataudi did.
Devoid of fast bowling options, he helped put together India’s famous spin quartet, Bishan Singh Bedi, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Erapalli Prasanna, and Srinivas Venkataraghvan.
Being a fantastic fielder himself, he laid a lot emphasis on fielding.
After he retired in 1975, Pataudi dabbled in media and also as an administrator, but both of these stints dint last for long.
6. Jagjit Singh
By the time he died at age 70, Jagjit Singh, India’s ghazal king had already recorded 50 albums in his 46-year career. When Singh started his career, because of its classical form the ghazal had a niche audience. One of Singh’s biggest contributions was to simplify the ghazal, and make it accessible to a global audience by using western instruments like the saxophone and guitar, along with Indian instruments like the sitar and tablaa.
This helped transform the Ghazal, a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, whose origins go back to the 12th century. Singh’s efforts ensured that he became famous not only in India but the world over.
But that was not always the case; he struggled through most of his early days as a singer, eking out a meager living belting out jingles for advertisements.
Singh’s life changed after he met the singer Chitra Dutta, whom he married in 1969, and had a son with, Vivek. The singing duo at first had only low-level success because ghazal music was a niche genre dominated by mainly Muslim artists, and Bollywood ruled the musical mainstream. Success soon came along after the release of their first studio album and they never looked back.
Singh’s personal life was punctuated with loss, grief and depression. None more painful than the passing away of his only son Vivek, who died tragically at the age of 19, this prompted his wife Chitra to shun singing in public forever.
7. Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs, tech visionary extraordinaire and co-founder of Apple is reminiscent of Howard Roark, the protagonist of Ayn Rand’s eponymous novel ‘The Fountainhead.’ Roark’s character in the novel spends most of his life fighting the system and being uncompromising when it comes to putting the self above the collective. Jobs must have felt just like Roark after his few attempts to upend a fledgling personal computer industry.
Apple had already garnered a cult following after it introduced Apple II, the first popular mass-produced micro-computers computer in 1997 and the Macintosh, the first PC to use a mouse and a graphical user interface. First he saw bitter rivals Microsoft win the PC game with their software play. Then he faced the ignominy of being forced out of his own company by John Sculley (hired by Jobs after he fell for the famous line, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”) and the board.
Thus began his second journey and a renaissance that transformed Jobs and eventually Apple. Ousted out of his own company Jobs formed two companies: NeXt and Pixar. In an ironic twist of fate Apple bought NeXt, and Jobs’ second innings at Apple began. Pixar, meanwhile had produced the world’s first animated feature film and notched up quite a few successes with movies like ‘Finding Nemo’ and ‘Toy Story’.
Jobs’ real genius came together 4 years after he came back to Apple 2001 and he unveiled the iPod. Post which he never really looked back, and with the success of the iPhone and the iPad, he transformed a company which was on the verge of bankruptcy to the most valuable tech company in the world. Jobs might be criticized for being too autocratic and a control freak. But the legacy he has left behind will take a long time to be forgotten.
8. Dennis Ritchie
Some might say. No Dennis Ritchie. No Apple. The OS used by the world’s biggest technology company has UNIX under its hood because Jobs was a huge advocate of the programming language.
One of the tech pioneers who helped ‘shape the digital era’ Ritchie was instrumental in creating the C programming language and co-creating the UNIX operating system with his colleague Ken Thompson. Linux, the free, open variant of Unix powers servers at tech titans like Amazon and Google.
Not before he had almost every major honor in the computer science bestowed on him including the Turing Award from the ACM in 1983, the Hamming Medal from the IEEE in 1990 and the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton in 1999.
Ritchie started his career in Bell Labs, the same revered company that his father Alistair worked for earlier; his mother Jean McGee Ritchie, was a homemaker. Most of his early work was done with his colleague Thompson that paved the way for the software and tools that power most of modern computing from mobile phones to the internet.
Ritchie retired in 2007 as the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department. After suffering from heart disease and prostrate cancer for some time, he passed away on October 13th.
9. Amy Winehouse
Amy Jade Winehouse was born on September 14th, 1983 in Southgate London to Jewish parents. Her father, Mitchell, a taxi driver, was a jazz enthusiast who often sang to Amy in her growing-up years. Her parents divorced when she was nine, and she continued to live with her mother, although she remained close to her father.
At the young age of eight, Amy began attending stage school, including the Sylvia Young theatre school, and the Brit school in Croydon. Although she was expelled from one of them for “not applying herself,” Amy continued to write songs and sing with jazz bands and the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. Her boyfriend of the time passed on a recording of her to a record company, who were so impressed with her sound that she landed her first contract at the age of 17.
A musical assistant who toured with Amy described her, “She has enormous talent and deep roots in jazz and blues; she didn’t suffer from the ‘lead singer syndrome’ and unlike most she knew her sharps and flats. And she knew exactly who she was and how she wanted to sound – which some singers only know when they’ve got 40 grand’s worth of equipment, but which Amy knew by standing on top of a piano in a pub.”
Her debut album ‘Frank’ released in 2003 and won her critical recognition and nominations for the Mercury Prize, going triple platinum in the UK. But it was her second album ‘Back to Black’ that propelled Amy into international stardom. Winning her accolades at the Grammy’s and the Brit Awards, the album went eight times platinum in the UK and double platinum in the US. But tragically, her rise to stardom also saw her steady decline into alcohol and drugs. Her tempestuous relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil added depression to the mix, and Amy found herself in and out of rehab, and in trouble with the law. Ironically it was her song ‘Rehab’ about her refusal to attend an alcohol rehabilitation centre that stuck the deepest chord with her fans.
Amy was found dead in her London flat on 23rd July, at the age of 27, joining the troupe of talented but notoriously self-destructive artists who also died at that age. Her death was believed to be caused by a suspected drug overdose. She is survived by her parents, and her brother Alex.
10. Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in Hampstead on February 27th 1932, to parents Sara Sothern, a stage actress, and Francis Taylor, an art dealer. Trained in ballet from the time she could walk, she had already performed for the British royal family at the age of 3. Her parents moved to Hollywood in 1939, and young Elizabeth Taylor’s striking beauty and violet eyes began to get noticed in those early days at her father’s gallery. She did her first film at the age of ten, with ‘Lassie Come Home,’ but it was ‘National Velvet’ that really put her on the map.
From there on, her career moved forward in leaps and bounds. From ‘Giant’ with Hudson and James Dean, to ’Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,’ ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ and ‘Cleopatra,’ Taylor’s performances earned her several nominations and three Oscars, one of which was in special recognition of her humanitarian work. Besides her work as an actress, she was also known for her astonishing beauty and grace, her many failed romances, her famous friendships, and her long love affair with jewelry. With eight high-profile marriages and divorces (two to Richard Burton, a rollercoaster relationship that was covered extensively by the media), the spotlight moved to her personal life rather than her work in the industry. As one obit put it, she was a “star at age 12, a bride and a divorcee at 18, a superstar at 19 and a widow at 26.”
Taylor was also a fiercely loyal friend, defending gays in Hollywood at a time when they were ostracized by the industry, and standing by Michael Jackson as he faced charges of misdemeanor with minors. She fought ill health through most of her career, beginning with a fall from horseback on ‘National Velvet.’ She went through 20 major surgeries, had replacement surgery for both hip joints, and was treated for drug and alcohol abuse.
Taylor was awarded the Legion of Honor, and titled Dame Elizabeth Taylor for her extensive charitable work, including her deep support on AIDS research, and for her work in the entertainment industry. In her later years she worked on several books, and kept in touch with her fans through Twitter. On March 23rd, she died of congestive heart failure at the age of 79. She is survived by her four children, ten grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Dream Dare Win
www.jeywin.com
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