Hailing a taxi from
a hotel in Colombo, I gave the address of the destination to the driver.
“Sorry”, he said. He didn’t know the place. Desperate, I pleaded
that I would miss my appointment with Arthur C Clarke. “Sir Arthur?
Why didn’t you say that before?” He drove me right up to the imposing
gates of Arthur’s office-cum-home where the scientist-author has lived
for more than four decades.
The salt
air had oxidised the all-Sinhala brass nameplate. I pressed my finger
against the bell and the iron gates slid open. Crossing the unobtrusive
portico, I followed the stairs to an office, where, amid stacks of files
and papers, two men worked diligently on computers. I entered the next,
smaller room, where Nalaka Gunawardane, Arthur’s aide, welcomed me.
“You’re early!” he exclaimed. Tearing my eyes away from the citation-choked
walls, I looked at my watch:10.30a.m. My appointment was from 11 to
11.05 a.m. We chatted as Arthur “was going through physiotherapy”.
Suffering from post-polio syndrome, he gets tired easily; Nalaka tells
me. Fifteen minutes later, I was ushered into a huge wood-panelled study
lined with books and replicas of scientific models, globes and other
memorabilia.
The words
jumped out from the black T-shirt worn casually over a pale grey sarong:
“I invented the satellite and all I got was this lousy T-shirt”.
I smiled. What do you do when you find yourself face-to-face with the
world’s most popular scifi writer - who, in a 1945 paper, anticipated
the geostationary satellite - who declines to be interviewed because
“there’s nothing you’re going to ask me that I haven’t answered
before”? Dive to the floor and knock my forehead in a show of devotion
and admiration? Or take his hands in mine and tell him he’s the greatest?
I stood there, transfixed, as 30 seconds of precious time ticked away.
The youthful 88-year-old, seated behind a large desk in his wheelchair,
waited. “Hello”, I squeaked, “Thank you for seeing me”.
Arthur C Clarke leaned
forward and handed me a bookmark. “Look at the hologram on it” ,
he said. “Take it to the window and hold it against the light”.
Against the morning sun, the hologram shark opened its jaws wide, revealing
a row of sharp teeth. When I moved it slightly, the jaws closed, and
the shark turned its head - first to the right, and then to the left.
It was beautiful. “Thank you, Sir”, I said, turning to the author
of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Childhood’s End, and scores of other creative
works including the Rama series. His writings inspired the creation
of the World Wide Web.
‘’Are you giving
this to me?” I asked. He looked at me against the light”. Against
the morning sun, the hologram shark opened its jaws wide, revealing
a row of sharp teeth. When I moved it slightly, the jaws closed, and
the shark turned its head - first to the right, and then to the left.
It was beautiful. “Thank you, Sir”, I said, turning to the author
of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Childhood’s End, and scores of other creative
works including the Rama series. His writings inspired the creation
of the World Wide Web.
‘’Are you giving
this to me?” I asked. He looked at me uncertainly. “But it’s
the only one I have...”, he replied wistfully. I handed the shark
back to him and we smiled. Nalaka whispers to me: “I think a visitor
like yourself presented it to him”. I looked at the spray of Birds
of Paradise I’d brought for him and whispered back that I wished I’d
brought something more exciting as a gift.
“Would you
like to have a reprint of my 1945 article?” Arthur asked, almost as
a compensation for not giving me the shark. His paper, “Extraterrestrial
Relays”, first published in Wireless World in 1945, anticipated
satellite communications that came 20 years later. “Yes,
thank you”, I said as he carefully wrote out my name on the reprint,
followed by: “All the best! Arthur C Clarke, 22/07/06”.
I pulled out
the book I was reading Time’s Eye - that Arthur recently co-authored
with Stephen Baxter, the first of two books on A Time Odyssey, exploring
a world presented as a patchwork of eras, from prehistory to 2037, each
with its own indigenous inhabitants. Arthur autographed the page carrying
Kipling’s verse: “Cities and Thrones and Powers/ Stand in Time’s
eye,! Almost as long as flowers/ which daily die;/ But, as new buds
put forth/ to glad new men,/ Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth/
The Cities rise again”.
The encounter
lasted 20 minutes. Arthur gently dismissed my attempt to talk of immortality
with a graceful sweep of the hand. “Thank you for coming”, he said,
even as I fumbled for words to thank him - for seeing me, for taking
us with him on fantastic journeys into far-flung space and the even
farther reaches of the human imagination.
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