RIP Raghuvaran

Actor Raghuvaran passed away this morning at Chennai.

http://sify.com/movies/tamil/fullstory.php?id=14625366

Raghuvaran has always been one of my favorite actors who commanded respect in all his roles. Right from his first movie (Ezhavadu Manidhan), to a villain, to a gentle father (Anjali). I have always felt that he was capable of much more. In fact in the mid-late 90s there were some rumours that Shankar was going to use Raghuvaran as the hero in his next movie and I kept waiting for that to happen. Still remember seeing him, Rohini and his son at the Devasthanam temple in T.Nagar when I was still in school. RIP!

There are some people that I've never met, but I feel some sort of connection with them. Feels like the end of an era when they die, and it affects me deeply. For instance, when writer Sujatha paased away sometime back. I've never read any of his books, but K has regaled many Ganesh Vasanth stories to 4 wide eyed kids, sitting on a mat on the terrace.

And John Ritter. I was just watching some episodes of "8 Simple Rules" and I couldn't stop tearing up during the episode where they write in his death. During the days of Pilani and Zee English, I would wake up at 7:00 a.m to catch reruns of Three's Company when I came to Chennai for holidays. It was impossible not to like Jack Tripper. I was awesomely pleased when Zee Cafe started showing his new "8 Simple Rules" and though he looked older and puffed up, watching him seemed to be a thread of connection to my careless days as a college student.

Death is the most irrevocable change I can think of and every time something like this happens, I wonder about my own moratality and if I will truly start existing after I die. I know the brain controls my thoughts, but I always think of my mind as being right behind my forehead and not in the middle of my head. So what happens to my thoughts, my feelings when I die. I have trouble believing eveything vanishes when blood stops going to the brain. But there are cases of amnesia, where damage to some parts of the brain, causes people to forget things. So is this all there is to an individual, some pieces of wrinkled tissue bathed in blood?

Updated: Was talking to my dad about this and he said that I was named Sujatha (which is what my family calls me) 'coz my dad was a big fan of his work.