Arthur lived for many many years in Colombo, Sri Lanka. As
essentially the patron saint of the Sri Lankan IT Industry, he often
appeared at tech conferences organized in Colombo. The first year I
spoke at FOSS-SL he came to visit, but on a day when I was absent (I
was visiting the Naval Academy with one of the founders of the Lankan
Software Foundation at the request of the conference). When I found
out I'd missed meeting Arthur, I was very disappointed.
Dr. Sam (a really short version of his name) who had been with me at
the Naval Academy said, "I've known Arthur since I was a boy. I'll
try to set up a visit at his house for you". Dr. Sam is in this
picture http://www.flickr.com/photos/anuradha/57993643/in/
photostream/ standing on my right. I take time to show you a picture
of him because he recently passed away suddenly and he is greatly
missed (at least as much as Arthur is in Sri Lanka at least). If
Arthur was the patron saint of Sri Lankan IT, Dr. Sam was its father...
Anyway, the next afternoon I got a call to take a taxi to a certain
address. Because my hotel was already close to Arthur's house, I was
on time for once and arrived nearly 45 minutes before the rest of the
folks who came over from the conference and got stuck in traffic of
some sort (David Axemark and Sam Ruby had also been unable to meet
Arthur earlier at the conference, so also got an invitation to come
over to the house).
So I got a private audience with Arthur and Dr. Sam for 45
minutes...and Arthur was completely charming. That year was the 50th
anniversary of the publication of Arthur's original paper on
geosynchronous communications satellites. He was handing out signed
copies of the article and told a charming story about its publication
(which was something of a fluke, since the journal in which it was
published thought it was a hoax). With only Sam and me in the room
our conversation was easy and enjoyable. Arthur's mind was
completely sharp, although his hearing was definitely failing. I
admired all his tschatskes, including his MBE which was on a shelf
next to his collection of Space Odyssey action figures. He showed me
pictures of himself as a very young man and I told him he had been
beautiful, which made him very happy and we even talked about whether
he planned to father children someday. He introduced me to his
"family" the bodyguard and nurse who lived with him in his house and
happened to be married to each other...and showed me pictures of
their teenaged daughter who was away at school and whom he professed
to miss terribly. I asked him whether he believed in God and he
said, "I've thought a lot about that and I'm just not sure...but I
hope She believes in me."
When the rest of the conference party arrived there were really too
many people in the room for Arthur's hearing aid to keep up and he
was pretty frustrated but still cordial. He did tell one joke which
I remember. He asked what Melinda Gates said to Bill on the morning
after their wedding night...
Now I know why you called it "Miicrosoft".
And then he laughed so hard I was concerned he was going to fall out
of his wheelchair and die right then and there. Terrible joke,
right? But SOOO much more enjoyable to know that Arthur C. Clarke
told it.
We met in Arthur's "office" which was lined on all four walls with
tall bookcases. The one behind us in the picture was filled with
just the English language versions of his books.
I have some other pics from that day. I'll post them to my Flickr
account tonight.
BTW, not so sad a day as we might think. The man was 90 years old
and led a very rich and rewarding life. He was completely at peace
with the idea of leaving the planet when I met him, you could sense
it and in fact we spoke about it before everybody arrived. He was
getting tired of the limitations of his body. He wanted the next
adventure, but he was willing to ride this one out until the very end.
Oh, did I forget to say that we installed Google Earth on his PC?
He'd not seen it before. So I guess I got to show Arthur C. Clarke a
vision of earth from space that he'd not had before :-).
Thanks for asking, Udhay.
On Mar 18, 2008, at 7:38 PM, Udhay Shankar N wrote:
Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: [ on 07:31 AM 3/19/2008 ]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7304004.stm
Writer Arthur C Clarke dies at 90
While on this topic, here's something I found on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anuradha/57993644/
Danese/David, want to share the story behind the picture?
Udhay
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
