Four early exits

Four young people I knew died recently. One was famous, the second was well known in artistic circles (and on the threshold of wider fame), and the third was too busy enjoying life to bother about fame, or even good health. The fourth was as unlucky as the other three, although she didn’t belong in the same class.

Raju Ananthaswamy had acquired a well-deserved reputation as a star singer and composer. I first saw him when he was a schoolboy, and even at that young age, he could sing with amazing sweetness. As he grew up, he performed on stage and TV, becoming a big name in Kannada music. He had his inconsistencies, but I haven’t heard another sugama sangeeta singer who could compose such complicated stuff and pull it off on stage so effortlessly. He had been in and out of hospital with a liver problem, and suddenly, one day, news broke on TV that he had died. He was just 39.

Raghav Shreyas was more intellectual, but hardly the stuffy sort. He was a classically trained mridangam player, and was simultaneously drawn to experimental music. He read widely, and wrote insightful art reviews for The Hindu. His passion was black and white photography. We were friends, but for a long time I didn’t know much about his versatile background. One day, he showed me prints of photographs he had taken of Bangalore’s Central Jail, parts of which had already been demolished. I was stunned by the artistry of what he had clicked. A little after that, he developed a tumour in his brain. His mother Vasanthi bravely helped him fight it, and it looked like he had almost come back, but he was suddenly gone one day. He was in his 30s.


Four or five days before she died, 26-year-old Navneet Wasu, sometime colleague at MiD DAY, mailed me an angry response to an article I had written. I had ridiculed actor Ambarish for smoking and gambling away through his term as information minister. It wasn’t so much about his smoking and gambling as about his irresponsibility in frittering away the opportunity to do something for his artiste fraternity. Navneet, who loved junk food and hated anything green on her plate, asked me bluntly, “What’s wrong with smoking?” Nothing, I replied.

I don’t know if cigarettes had any connection at all with their early passing, but I often think about my friends, and I’m not so sure I will say ‘Nothing’ the next time someone asks me that question.

The fourth to die this past year, Kasturi, was illiterate, and had a heart valve problem. The smiling, good-natured domestic help exerted herself to earn money to get her drunkard brother treated at a deaddiction clinic. She died at 24.