Sir. Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008

Sir. Arthur C. Clarke passed away today at a hospital in Colombo at the age of 90. A lot is mentioned about him in the net, so I will keep it brief and just share with you my fortunate encounter with this great man.

In 2001; in my desk job days, I made ground arrangements for the Sri Lankan episode of the Canadian reality TV show; My Global Adventure - a centred on a twenty-something women from Calgary named Asia (Anastasia) Nelson (picked from over 500 other candidates) on a globe-trotting adventure covering 24 countries in 6 continents in 8 months. It was produced by Minds Eye Pictures and its Director Tom Davidson had an express pre-tour request, which was (you guessed right) to meet Sir. Arthur C. Clarke, who had been one of his heroes from childhood.

I arranged this meeting and was lucky enough to accompany him on this visit to meet Sir. Clarke who was at his study browsing some super-magnified pictures of the Mars in his Laptop when we met him. Showing us those Martian pictures soon and pointing to a pale coloured straight line captured clearly in one of them, he asked what we think about it! We gazed intently at the screen trying to put a proper sentence together and soon noticing our sorry faces, Sir. Clarke helpfully intervened with a smile ‘it looks like someone has driven a pretty large vehicle!’

He thereafter showed another picture showing closely-spaced circular crown-like things scattered all over in varying sizes looking remarkably like tree crowns for us laymen. He chipped in smilingly that they look like huge Banyan trees! So we weren't hopelessly bad! As far as I remember, he didn’t know what they were exactly. It was such a great experience chatting to him. We were also shown his ‘Ego Chamber’ —filled with photos and other memorabilia of his career, including pictures of him with Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. Sir. Clarke was kind enough to present an autographed copy of one of his books to Tom, which was great appreciated. We didn’t take any camera to this meeting, a thing we would regret to the rest of our lives as one his aides took a photograph of us, promised to send it to us but failed to deliver!

I wouldn’t be surprised if a ‘Sir. Arthur C. Clarke Museum’ would be established in Sri Lanka one day to celebrate this eminent personality who lived in Sri Lanka since 1956! I hope my Clarkian prediction will come true!