An international renowned celebrity, who richly deserves mention in this context, is the one and only Charlie Chaplin. Despite a hard and tough childhood, and the loss of his mother to insanity caused by starvation and malnutrition, Chaplin faced, and overcame, many formidable challenges, to become a rich and popular comedian, who, quite literally, made the whole world laugh

A classical example, from my own experience, of a person starting out as a shy and reserved type of person, and blooming, in later life, into a great leader with extraordinary oratorical ability and charisma, is that of my nephew, Sitaram Yechuri.

When as a three year old, he first came to live with my parents (father was then a Judge in the High Court at Guntur), he was quite the cynosure of all eyes at home. One problem that worried everyone at home was that he only began to speak distinctly at age five. And, decades later, as a fiery leader of the Communist Party (Marxist), the same Sitaram could converse, at a breakfast table in Beijing, with stalwarts such as Surjeet, Namboodiripad and Jyoti Basu, in Punjabi, Malayalam and Bengali. Jyoti Basu was later to remark that Sitaram had the knack of conversing with every person, individually, with no one else understanding what was going on!

Stephen Hawking, the famous theoretical physicist and cosmologist, was an extraordinary person. At age 21, in 1963, he had been diagnosed with an early-onset, slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease), a fatal disease that affects the motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord, which gradually paralysed him over decades at time, doctors had given him a life expectancy of two years. After the loss of speech, he had communicated through a speech-generating device, initially through use of a handheld switch, and eventually by using a single cheek muscle. In the late 1960s, his physical abilities declined and he began to use crutches and could no longer give lectures regularly. The physicist Werner Israel later compared his achievements to Mozart composing an entire symphony in his head. Hawking was fiercely independent and unwilling to accept help or make concessions for his disabilities. He preferred to be regarded as “a scientist first, popular science writer second, and, in all the ways that matter, a normal human being with the same desires, drives, dreams, and ambitions as the next person”. His wife Jane later noted: “Some people would call it determination, some obstinacy. I have called it both at one time or another.” He required much persuasion to accept the use of a wheelchair at the end of the 1960s, but ultimately became notorious for the wildness of his wheelchair driving.

In late 2006, Hawking revealed in a BBC interview that one of his greatest unfulfilled desires was to travel to space. On hearing this, Richard Branson offered a free flight into space with Virgin Galactic, which Hawking immediately accepted. Besides personal ambition, he was motivated by the desire to increase public interest in spaceflight and to show the potential of people with disabilities. On 26 April 2007, Hawking flew aboard a specially-modified Boeing 727–200 jet operated by Zero-G Corp off the coast of Florida to experience weightlessness.

Another international renowned celebrity, who richly deserves mention in this context, is the one and only Charlie Chaplin. Despite a hard and tough childhood, and the loss of his mother to insanity caused by starvation and malnutrition, Chaplin faced, and overcame, many formidable challenges, to become a rich and popular comedian, who, quite literally, made the whole world laugh.

There are, in the realm of fiction, instances of the same person being two different personalities, at different times, following the consumption of a potion. For example, in the book. ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, by the inimitable, Robert Louis Stevenson, one comes across the strange case of Dr. Jekyll, a kind, well-respected and intelligent scientist. Jekyll meddles with the darker side of science to bring out his ‘second’ nature and transforms himself into Mr. Hyde, his evil alter ego, who does not repent, or accept, responsibility for his evil crimes and ways.

Likewise, again in the field of fiction, but this time in a movie called ‘The Nutty Professor’, the irrepressible Jerry Lewis enacts the role of Julius Kelp, a college professor. Clumsy, awkward, inarticulate, and unattractive, Julius is a hopeless case with women, but desperate to impress the beautiful Stella Stevens, a student of his. He uses his knowledge of chemistry to concoct a potion, which turns him temporarily into a wholly new man, dashing and debonair.

Time now to wind up this piece with another of PGW’s characters, Sir Galahad (Gally) Threepwood. Gally, who also figures in many of PGW’s novels, especially those set in the picturesque Blandings Castle, in rural England, is the younger brother of Lord Emsworth. In his fifties, and a confirmed bachelor, he is widely travelled and extremely popular. He is a sprightly and dapper man with bright eyes, thick grey hair and a jaunty posture. His wilderness and reputation as a racy and compulsive raconteur, make him very popular with the members of the servants’ hall of the castle, but not so with his sisters, who find him an embarrassment, particularly when recalling stories of their now-respectable friends.

Gally is in remarkable shape, despite the fact that he apparently “never went to bed until he was 50”, causing his niece Millicent once to remark that “it is extraordinary that anyone who has had such a good time can be so amazingly healthy.” His wildness made him very popular with the members of the servants. The various stories are replete with the good deeds Gally does, especially for those in trouble and needing to be rescued and young lovers needing to be united. When he resorts to unusual and marginally unscrupulous ways, his means to achieve, his wry defence is that one has to break eggs to make omlettes, which, he adds for the readers’ enlightenment, is not something Shakespeare said, but he did!

(The writer was formerly Chief Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh)