O Captain! My Captain!

He contributed his verse and the powerful play went on. Unfortunately for the rest of us, it was too short a verse for somebody of his kind.

Here’s to Robin Williams. The artist. The misfit. The crazy one.

The world identifies him as an actor, but I think he represented so much more.

It’s recently been a year since he passed away. His genius is such, that it never felt like there was an actor playing out a role when we saw him on screen, it was as if he were just being himself. That, in itself, should be a huge compliment for an actor. But let me tell you why he’s more than just another actor. After he passed away, it was revealed that he was constantly living in depression. Nobody, not even his closest friends and family, knew about this. Ponder over it for a minute.

He was acting, his entire life, all the time.

It might be true what they say about people who try to make everyone laugh all the time, they hide their sorrow behind the mask of a funny face. Call it their defense mechanism. They don’t want other people to be sad for them, because of them or with them. Because what good would that do?

It’s funny how I know so much about him and I might even dare say that I understood how he felt about life, I can’t really say that I “knew” him, because we didn’t know each other personally. We’ve never talked to each other.

But you know what? Talking is overrated. People lie when they talk. He’d been lying his whole life to his friends and family every time he said “I’m okay” to them, if they asked how he was feeling. But when you experience somebody through their work, which they’ve poured their heart over, then you say you truly know them. Because nobody can do inspiring work while pretending to be someone else. They have to expose who they really are. The goofy person we all loved to see on screen was the real Robin Williams.

I like to think that anything which elicits emotion, is art. He’s made us laugh, and he’s made us cry. He’s an artist by every sense of the word.

A popular saying goes like this: “Leave the world a better place than how you found it”, and he has.

Thank you, Robin, for touching our lives on so many levels. You will be remembered.

by Mrinal Dhar & Amitha Reddy