No man is an island, the poet John Donne wrote in the 17th century. But as far as Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer, is concerned he would make a strong case that he and the island nation of Sri Lanka are practically one.
Certainly it’s part of the reason why Sri Lank celebrates Arthur Clarke’s birthday every year as almost a national holiday. A special party is held at the B’Mich in downtown Colombo; it is regularly attended by ministers and workers, white-haired men and children — as eclectic a mix of people as you could find anywhere but nevertheless representative of Sri Lanka as it is today.
In any case, it will soon be 50 years that Arthur Clarke has lived in Sri Lanka, the tear-shaped Indian Ocean nation just off the southern coast of India. He has made the island famous — notably with such books as "The Fountains of Paradise" and of course, his best-known work "2001: A Space Odyssey."
In space, it’s as if Arthur Clarke had turned to the depths of the universe to pursue the answers he’s so persistently sought, usually unsuccessfully, on earth — just as the 27-year-old Arthur Clarke began to give a sense to his own universe with the discovery of Sri Lanka in 1954. It’s certainly not for naught that the Clarke Orbit, named in his honor, passes almost directly over his house at Barnes Place in Colombo 7 — next door to the Iraqi Embassy, he likes to tell visitors. His house is somewhat of a spartan time capsule in which he lives with his pet chihuahua, Pepsi, the woman in his life, certainly the principal source of his inspiration. The tiny dog lives in his shirtsleeve. Not for anything either that he evolved the idea for a space-elevator that might one day allow him to make his way up into the skies, heave himself out of the wheelchair he’s now been in for over a year — and reach the very orbit that bears his name.
And as with most people who turn to the stars in their quest for answers, Arthur’s greatness lies in his having remained faithful to his childhood, to the little boy he once was. I always think of Arthur when I quote one of my favorite lines from a French writer: "Qu’importe ma vie? Je veux seulement qu’elle reste jusqu’au bout fidele a l’enfant que je fus." (What is my life worth? All I want is to keep it faithful to the child I once was). No childhood’s end for Arthur. It never ended, indeed he became more childlike over the years.
And it is not for anything that he chose as part of his e-mail address the word "Blenheim". This is undoubtedly as near a Rosebud as any for Arthur, as it was the street — 4 Blenheim Road — where he was born on Dec. 16, 1917 in his grandmother’s house in Minehead. Everything started there but in ways that I’d never envisioned before meeting Arthur many years ago in Colombo.
Arthur, certainly a man of vision, but a man who also knew how to see, who saw, who sees — to quote the great French painter Henri Matisse — "with the eyes of a child." For the little boy he’s remained has, over time, learned to see increasingly with the eyes of the little boy who managed, while only in his early teens to build his first refractor telescope.
Although during a recent visit with him at Barnes Place Arthur noted that he was "coasting along" and probably would no longer write, I do hope he’ll change his mind. As I’ve often suggested to Arthur — Sir Arthur as he now is — he should now focus on having Pepsi write her account of life with Arthur — for if anybody knows Arthur, the man and the child, it is undoubtedly Pepsi. "All explorers are seeking something they have lost," wrote Arthur in "The City and the Stars" and certainly the little boy lost has at last found in Pepsi the wings with which to fly even further toward the sun and into the stars, and, at last, to find his way.
In looking at one of my favorite photos, one of Sir Arthur and Pepsi that I took several years ago, I like to remember another line of Arthur’s, delivered during a lecture tour in 1959: "Six thousand miles from where I was born, at last I had come home."
– Arab News Features 19 December 2002
