“I AM VERY MUCH ALIVE & WISH I HAD BAGGED A TOTAL OF 16 NATIONAL AWARDS TILL DATE”

Jyothi Venkatesh

Senior actor cum writer cum director Ananth Mahadevan has just come up with an informative book on the evolution of TV called Once Upon A Prime  Time is undeterred that recently a web site carried the news of his death. When I contacted Ananth who has been my colleague in journalism for the last three decades or more, he quipped calmly. "Though let me confess to you that when I heard the news that I have died due to age related complications, to tell the truth ,

I was quite shocked, I also wish that I was a 16 time national award winner as mentioned by this web site wrongly. I have to say that I guess every artiste, filmmaker or for that matter human being 'has' to die once in the media during his or her life time. This time, I guess it was actually my turn. Wonder who the selectors were but the 16 times national award winner is something that I liked very much. As I have two already, I suppose I need to get 14 more awards so that means I have to live for a long time because the real Jury  is not so generous as that Jury. But then on a serious note, I think that we have had enough unfortunate deaths in the film industry in the recent past, that I feel that it is now to time to die, with apologies to the Bond.

The atmosphere right now is too morose to absorb any more deaths and hence I am sending a long life wish to all of you out there in the Universe today.  I have not yet recovered from the grievous losses of the deaths of our brave soldiers like Irrfan Khan, Rishi Kapoor ji and Bomi Kapadia yet. All that I like to entreat to websites like the one that had published my death news is that they should stop immediately forthwith  put an halt to spreading such imaginary news in future.