Kid: Grandpa! Who is god?

Grandpa: Hmm…let me try to explain. God is someone who is neither black nor white, neither woman nor a man and he loves little kids like you a lot.

Kid: Why don’t you simply say, it’s Michael Jackson.

His public life story is a parallel to any fairy tale that we get to hear. A la Cinderella who came from a family with reportedly abusive father and 9 siblings. He came to the city, turned to a prince became the king and ruled the world owning the best, built a dream land, married a princess…pause…it’s here generally the fairy tales finish as ‘…and lived happily ever after’ and nobody questions ‘what happened to them later?’

The Internet is load tested with searches from all over the planet on him and his story so I will not repeat it here but just record some of my observations, opinions and learnings from the life of a legend who I call the ‘God-of-pop’.

I was a boy in early teens during his hay days. Living in a country far from where he performed didn’t stop me and millions of my generation and generations that follow from being his fan. I still have the audio cassettes that were released by Grammy with his Billie Jean and Thriller albums. Even today when I shake a leg for any tune I subconsciously step into his shoes and imitate him (try to). As they say, ‘Imitation is the best form of flattery’, Michael is the most imitated person to ever (moon) walk on this planet. And as they also say, ‘many can imitate, none can duplicate’ – him. He was the first pop-star I saw who tried so much to bring awareness and gather support for people who are struggling in poorer countries or to spread message of peace and unity. His ‘heal the world’ could very well be proclaimed as an anthem of UN, it is my proposal to do so.

In my opinion he struggled to handle his super stardom and though he chose to live a recluse life he relied on many people to maintain his private world, and we know how it works. It reminds me of lyrics from one of the songs of Eurythmics that had won a Grammy during his times.

His later life was nothing but pain. When everyone would’ve loved to swap their life to his during the 80s, beyond the 90s people almost tried to avoid his association. Fuelled by envy and greed, he was in the news for all wrong reasons which was difficult for die hard fans like me to digest. I

am not rejecting all of the stories as false nor do I see any strong evidences to agree too but I just sympathize for such a great entertainer who had to go through all these while we missed all the good things that he could’ve produced without such distractions.

Because of his closely guarded life, he will ever be a mystery and there will be hundreds of stories about him that will be floated around by people either seeking a 30 seconds to fame or revealing the facts when its too late. In my opinion I believe he feared death and wanted to defy nature and stay young forever while nature was in his case playing ‘porcupine’s needle’, the more you fiddle, the sooner and deeper it will affect. He tried to build his own world of his lost childhood behind the gates of his property failing to understand that there is no rewind button in the video player called ‘life’.

It is painful to see him go away while the world was excited about his come-back but in my opinion this is how a star must vanish, big bang, at his peak. The value would have faded had he finished his tour, paid his debts and announced a graceful retirement with an eroding health that wouldn’t have let him continue for long.

The album ‘Thriller’ that catapulted him to the top of the world had a theme of full moon and werewolf and I am not sure if anyone noticed that coincidentally the day of his memorial service 7/7/2009 was a penumbra lunar eclipse.

Bidding a final good-bye to a 11 year old man who dared to become a 50 year old boy