3 men; 3 stories

STORY 1
http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/may/13ravi.htm
Hard to say no to free love: Ravi Shankar
May 13, 2003 18:52 IST

Sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar has said that he found hard to say no to free love.
"Whatever happened, it was spontaneous. The spontaneity was always there; it gave me and others a lot of happiness for some time, but it brought sorrow also," Ravi Shankar said commenting on his love life in The Times daily on Tuesday.
Asked whether it caused him grief to look back on his love life, the 82-year-old said, "It is a mixed feeling, you know. I am grateful for everything that I got, but I had to pay for it with pain and torture."
Asked about his lady friends, he said, "Many are dead and gone. A couple of them I still meet and try and be friendly with. With some, of course, things are not good."
Shankar married Annapurna Devi, the daughter of his guru Ustad Allauddin Khan, when he was 21, but they were ill matched and broke up after a few years. Annapurna granted him divorce decades later. They had two children.
The ensuing years were wild. In his autobiography, Raga Mala, he said:"I felt I could be in love with different women in different places. It was like having a girl in every port - and sometimes there was more than one!"
From the late 1940s, however, his main companion was a dancer, Kamala Shastri, and from 1967 until 1981 they lived together 'as man and wife'.
In 1972, he met the 18-year-old Sukanya Rajan, who played the tanpura at his concerts.
In 1978, although she, too, was married, they became lovers. In 1981 Anoushka was born.
Meanwhile, in America, Ravi Shankar was having an affair with the NewYork concert producer Sue Jones, who gave birth to Norah (or Geetali,as she was originally known) in 1979.
For the first two years of her life, he divided his affections between them and Kamala until Kamala, after three decades, finally quit him.
The next year his divorce from his wife came through.
At first he chose to be with Sue. But in 1986 their relationship ended, although he remained close to Norah. In 1989, after much prevarication, he decided to marry Sukanya, at which point Sue banned him from seeing Norah.
On what really made someone who seems so calm and has brought so much serenity into other people's lives have such a turbulent private life, he said "I am amazed myself."

STORY 2a
Soccer's first superstar George Best dies

George Best, widely regarded as the only British footballer in the same league as Pele, Diego Maradona and Johan Cruyff, died on Friday.He was 59.

"My father has passed away," Best's tearful son Calum told reporters on the hospital steps. "Not only have I lost my dad but we've all lost a wonderful man."

Prime Minister Tony Blair, attending a summit in Malta, described Best as "probably the most naturally gifted footballer of his generation and one of the best footballers our country has produced."

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern paid tribute, describing him as a football genius who was one of his great sporting heroes.

Soccer authorities said a minute's silence would be observed at many league matches this weekend as a mark of respect.

"I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars," Best said in his most memorable comment on his roller-coasterlife. "The rest I just squandered."

Best always maintained he had achieved all he wanted.

STORY 2b

Glory before the final whistle
By Tom Clifford, Assistant Editor, International 11/25/2005 12:00 AM

Where did it all go wrong? He used to quip that's what room-service waiters would ask when they saw him with the latest Miss World. But something had gone wrong. A career cut short by wayward living, shattered relationships, violence against women and jail time.

In some ways, Best cheated death, delayed the inevitable. He was in such a sorry state twenty years ago, that people then were saying he only had a few years to live.

He was an icon of an age, the Sixties, that was full of them the dead Kennedys, Jagger, Twiggy, John, Paul, George and Ringo. The 'fifth Beatle' came to prominence at the dawn of the jet age and satellite TV. He was possibly the first real soccer superstar. Just as Northern Ireland was bubbling with political unrest there was an Irish genius dominating the playing fields of England. And all the time the sense of a fleeting moment.

This was an age not just of heroes but of dead heroes. He indulged a lifestyle that did not take tomorrow into account.

We loved him for it. Live life like the young and the reckless. To hell with Bobby or Jack Charlton telling you to calm down, to hell with players of little talent telling you to spare yourself so that you could burn longer but dimmer. Fast cars, fast women and night was for clubbing not sleeping. George Best doing something in moderation? A contradiction.

One humid London night in May 1968 Best produced not a performance but an extravaganza that helped Manchester United capture their holygrail, the European Cup. Best scored a superb goal and he later claimed that after rounding the Benfica goalkeeper and seeing the empty net, he decided to stop the ball on the goalline, lie down and head it in. But changed his mind when he realised that a trick like that would be just too outrageous. What other player would even consider such a ploy.

Yes, he was a genius, like Oscar Wilde another condemned Irishman from another era. They could both make the ordinary, prose or a ball, seem extraordinary. We knew it was a privilege to see him play, red shirt out, ball at his feet. He gave us so much pleasure but denied himself.

United and Best. As they said of another icon, let it not be forgot that for one brief, shining, moment there was Camelot.

STORY 2c

The worst side of Best
By Alexander Lindsay 12/09/2005 12:00 AM

No one likes to speak ill of the dead, but I am going to stick my neckout and take a clinical look at the recent mass mourning fest surrounding the death of a wife beater, serial adulterer, irresponsible drunk and inveterate gambler.

Oh yes, nearly forgot he was a genius footballer too.

If I may borrow from Mark Anthony's irony-laced eulogy to Julius Caesar: I come to bury George Best, not to praise him.

I bear no personal ill will against George Best for the way he conducted his life. But the sight of half a million tearful people lining the streets in a display of emotion worthy of Mother Teresa, cannot help but say something about the wayward values that have taken over Western society, led by the god of celebrity. Celebrity forgives everything, no matter how heinous.

Misty-eyed tributes came from public figures, including British PrimeMinister Tony Blair. Flags flew at half-mast on public buildings, as if some head of state had passed away. The rhetoric matched the occasion. He was described as a "perfect" human being. A man "without whom the world will be a sadder place".

Soccer might well be sadder. But the world? Debatable.

His faults were airbrushed out of existence, his life sanitised to the point of beatitude.

Let us take a brief look at George Best's scorecard off the field.

He drank to ridiculous excess and got violent with those around him.He drank to the extent that his liver packed in. He was given a transplant a precious gift from a donor who selflessly let his organ be used so that another might live.

And what does he do? He resumes his binge drinking and wrecks that liver too. A liver that might have saved another patient on a long waiting list.

According to one account, when tackled about it he cynically retorted that the new liver he was abusing had been donated "without strings attached" as to the behaviour of the recipient.

He once hacked off his second wife's hair and drew all over her body with a marker pen. On her 25th birthday he kicked and punched her after a drunken row.

There are those who argue that Best was a victim of his own celebrity. Not so.

For we already know that the god of celebrity is a forgiving god. Many achieve celebrity or have celebrity thrust upon them, yet manage to handle it.

It was Best's own self-indulgence and callous disregard for others that tainted his celebrity. He was whitewashed and the crowds turned out in their hundreds of thousands in a feeding frenzy of emotion.

And what kind of emotion? Were they grieving for George Best the man?Certainly not, for only his family and friends have a mandate to grieve for the man. The rest is artificial. Half a million people wearing their hearts on their sleeves in the name of celebrity.

George Best is acknowledged by most as the greatest footballer ever. And no one, least of all I, would want to tarnish that reputation. But in the end, as one observer cynically put it: George Best's final score: Celebrity 1, Responsibility 0.

STORY 3

John Lennon's first wife out to set the record straight

Tod Robberson The Dallas Morning News Dec. 1, 2005 6:00 PM

LONDON - She had a ticket to ride with one of the greatest rock bands of all time. But if Cynthia Lennon had known the emotional pain that would accompany her decade-long journey with John, Paul, George and Ringo, she says she would have walked away in a heartbeat.

In an interview nearly 25 years after the death of Beatles founder John Lennon, Cynthia Lennon recalled her former husband as both a genius and hugely flawed man whose insecurities drove him to commitacts of cowardice, cruelty and betrayal against the people closest to him.

He was mean, she suggested. He beat her and kept her apart from the things she loved - most notably, him.

She said he abandoned their son, Julian, for years, and his behavior became more irrational and withdrawn as he experimented with drugs such as LSD and heroin in the late 1960s. Much of her private experience differed sharply from the image Lennon enjoyed publicly as a campaigner for love and world peace.

"I always believed that idols have feet of clay," Cynthia Lennon, 66,said. "I thought it was important for the fans and the people who really believed in John ... (to remember that) he was human. He was no saint, and he was no sinner. But he had a special talent that touched everybody's hearts."

Cynthia Lennon published a best-selling book, "John," in October to commemorate his life but also, as she said, to "balance the scales"between the myth and reality.

The first half of the book focuses on the couple's romance in art school during the late 1950s, Lennon's early musical career and thes kyrocketing fame of the Beatles from the early 1960s onward. Thesecond half chronicles the Beatles' experimentation with drugs and transcendental meditation, Lennon's growing distance from his wife and colleagues and, subsequently, the couple's divorce that followed his extramarital affair with Ono in 1968.

"It wasn't a derogatory story. It was a true story. I think my intention in writing the book was to enlighten people who loved John and his memory about certain facts that I lived through - we lived through - and just to fill in a few spaces, really," she explained.

Although Lennon and Ono attracted enormous publicity with various stunts, such as their repeated "bed-ins" for peace, Cynthia Lennon said it is important to understand a fuller picture of his life.
"I knew John from the age of 18, and it was part and parcel of my life to live with this man and to see who he was, his talents and his weaknesses," she said.

She attributes his bitterness later in life to lingering feelings of loss after the death of his mother, Julia, in 1959; the domineering influence of his aunt and surrogate parent, Mimi Smith; and his upbringing without a father, who left the family after forcing John,at age 5, to choose between him and his mother.

Her book gives detailed accounts of Lennon's intense jealousy and fear in adulthood of being abandoned. He physically attacked Cynthia in 1959 after he learned that she had danced with his best friend, Stuart Sutcliffe, at a party. Conversely, she includes the text of various letters he wrote to her throughout their marriage vowing his eternal love and devotion.

Drugs and, subsequently, Ono's controlling influence turned Lennon into an unsmiling and seemingly unhappy man from the late 1960s onward, when he outwardly preached messages of inner tranquility and world togetherness, his first wife said.

Cynthia Lennon said she had received no warning in 1968 that her marriage to Lennon was over. She arrived home one day to find him sitting on the floor of the couple's bedroom next to Ono, who was wearing Cynthia's bathrobe.

Rather than talk to her directly, he announced his divorce plans to her through the British news media, she said.

Julian Lennon, their son, was subjected to repeated violent outbursts and mocking criticism by his father. John Lennon once so severely criticized the boy's manner of laughing that, to this day, Julian rarely laughs, Cynthia Lennon said.

"I think John lost an awful lot of his humor and his wit, which were part and parcel of his creativity," she said. "I felt he was fighting many, many battles. And I think he had a lot of guilt for what had happened. But John was never one to admit to anything. He would battle on and fight. I think a lot of aggression came out in his music,especially in the latter years."

In the foreword to her book, Julian Lennon, 40, described John Lennon as "the father I loved and who let me down in so many ways. ... (He) was a remarkable man who stood for peace and love in the world. But at the same time, he found it very hard to show any peace and love to his first family - my mother and me."

Ono has not responded to the numerous allegations and criticisms leveled at her in the book.
Asked whether she feared the possibility that Ono could use her wealth to bankrupt Cynthia Lennon in litigation, the author said, "I've never been afraid of Yoko. Never, ever. ... Everything I've written in thebook is absolutely true, so I don't feel particularly afraid of being sued or anything else. I've got the evidence. I have letters, I have all the things necessary."

She said she had no intention of engaging in a war of words with Ono,who is routinely described by music critics and Beatles biographers as a principal factor in the group's breakup. But she suggested that Ono's failure to make peace with her critics is something "she should think about."

Although Cynthia Lennon used words such as "cowardly," "cruel" and"brutal," to describe her former husband, her overall impression of him remains a positive one.

"He was hysterical, he was historical. He was fun. He was so multitalented. When he was good, he was really, really good," shesaid. "And when he was bad, he was horrid."