Superman

Twenty two years back, all that mattered to me was comics and my imagination. Superman and Phantom were two of my greatest heroes, I would talk for hours together about them, either telling the stories that I read of them in the comics book or conjuring up my own stories of those heroes. I would narrate and re-tell the stories, to all those who were willing to listen to me, not that there were many to lend an ear to an 8 year old's fascination and imagination and if nobody was there to listen, I would talk and imagine the stories, all to myself.

Spiderman was another huge hit with me, but he came quite late in my life, he has held my fascination and imagination much later and is certainly more relevant at an older age. Back then it was only Superman, but I must add, initally I was held in awe more by Phantom than Superman. But Superman really became a hit with me only after watching the Christopher Reeve - Superman movies. Probably the biggest reason of Superman's hit with me was not his out-of-this world strength or the X-ray stare, but it was that, that Man could Fly. As a child, I always wanted to fly, soar away endlessly.

Christopher Reeve's death, few days back certainly brought in some poignant memories. You think of this man, whole-hearted and healthy, and he really was huge, imposing and regal and then the other images of him, bound to a chair comes to mind. Recently I saw him in one of the episodes of the television serial - The Practice.

Irony of the whole thing is that the man who could fly in reel life, was bound to a chair for almost a decade in his real life.

I also got to watch some coverage of Superman's rather Christopher Reeve's on BBC News and got almost angry after seeing the news article. It's ironic that the word 'Irony' is not suitable to explain, what happened to Reeve in his last movie. The last movie in which Christopher Reeve acted was a movie about a cop, who meets with an accident and gets paralysed and has to go through the trauma of such an handicap. The BBC had clippings of an healthy Christopher Reeve, peering at you, from the screen, talking to some media chap, just months before the accident that paralysed him , talking about how he really understood , through his portrayal of the paralysed cop, what a person would go through after such an handicap and pain.

Later, he met with an accident in his real life and was paralysed. The Nature seesm to have really mocked at him. The last role that he played was being ridden to a chair and then few months later, it really happens to him.