Every generation has its ‘superhumans’ — the people who achieved that wasn’t perceived to be humanly possible. I want you to take a minute and think of a single person from this decade who comes to your mind when you think of a superhuman.

Was it Elon Musk? Was it Jeff Bezos? Or was it Donald Trump (well he did prove that anyone can be POTUS didn’t he?)?

This post is a small list of people who I consider to have lived a life that could be considered as ‘super’ extraordinary. I will keep updating this list when I get a chance to.

1. Freddie Mercury

Mercury during one of his iconic performances

Born with buck-teeth, arguably the best voice the world of rock n’ roll has ever seen and a phenomenal performer with whom even Michael Jackson wouldn’t have competed, Freddie Mercury comes on the top of this list. Queen is one of my favourite bands in history and the lead-singer’s, not the leader, story is one filled with controversies, arguments and awesomeness. He faced challenges we cannot fathom in this day and age — he married early but realised his true sexuality later, he was a homosexual, or bisexual as he told the public, and the victim of the homophobia prevalent in the 70s, he brought in the very concept of making the audience to actually participate and not just stand listening in a concert, he was an outsider in Britain and he conquered the whole music industry. His life went on with a spree of sexual relations with more than a few men, alcoholism and revolutionary performances. Ultimately his brilliant career ended with him announcing that he was ailed with the wretched disease of AIDS. He died shortly after the announcement due to the disease. Queen continues today without Mercury and his flamboyant persona.

His journey taught me the extremely important fact that creativity, with a dash of craziness, is the most important thing you must have if you want to leave a mark in history, even if it means that you seem weird to the whole world.

2. Bobby Fischer

Fischer playing a charity game

The greatest chess player ever, before the computer era began, Bobby Fischer was not a force that you would want to be in conflict with. Extremely innovative and calculative in his games, he remains till date regarded as “the greatest genius to have descended from the chess heavens” as said by the great Mikhail Tal. His 13 year old self defeated GM Donald Byrne in what is known as the Game of the Century. Can you fathom this sentence? A 13 year old’s chess game regarded as the Game of the Century by hundreds of chess grandmasters! This was just the start of his career. He held the youngest to become grandmaster record for a whopping thirty-three years and that was before computers could be used as an aid for chess study. His growth as a prominent figure continued till he became the world champion in 1972: defeating the goliath Boris Spassky and ending the Russian hegemony over chess championships.

Here is where the story becomes ‘super’ extraordinary. He was most probably a schizophrenic and had an extremely erratic behaviour — he once during the world championship match demanded the match to be shifted to a closed locker room because “the audience and the camera noises were too loud” and refused to play frequently when his highly specific conditions of play weren’t met. He was anti-Semitic and regarded as a racist although his own mother was Jewish. He disappeared from the public eye after his world championship match and did not reappear for 20 years during which he lost his world championship by default. He fled USA in 1992 because he was issued an arrest warrant for non-compliance with the government and became an émigré. He was seen, arrested for holding an invalid passport, in Japan in 2004 after which he was offered residence in Iceland where he died in 2008. Even after his death he did not find peace, his remains were exhumed for a legal battle over his property by his supposed daughters.

Bobby was the literal example of the famous expression crazy genius. To be regarded as the greatest player to have played the widely revered game of chess is what makes me stand in awe of his amazing story.

3. Srinivasa Ramanujan

The Indian National Mathematics Day is celebrated on Ramanujan’s Birthday

This man needs no introduction to people studying math. Born in rural India, Ramanujan was a childhood prodigy in math. His work on number theory is still revered by many mathematicians as the most enigmatic research produced by any non-conventional mathematician. He failed multiple times in his university except in math where too he barely passed because he just attempted the questions he thought were intriguing. He dropped out of college to pursue independent research in math with no source of steady income. He came to the brink of starvation multiple times in his life because of his unreliable financial situation.

He was ultimately discovered by a professor from the University of Madras where he then continued his research as a professional researcher. His career rocketed then when he contacted the British mathematician G.H. Hardy who mentored him in formal math and took him to England to pursue research. He published several groundbreaking papers there and received a PhD followed by a Fellowship of the Royal Society. He was considered one of the most intuitive mathematicians in history. In his own words, the proofs “just come to me as a Goddess placed it on my tongue”. Less than a year after his election to the Royal Society, being the youngest to have achieved so, Ramanujan contracted tuberculosis and met with his demise at the early age of 32.

His story teaches me that no matter how brutally severe your state is right now, it just takes a moment of time to change that. His fortunes turned twice: once for the better when he met Hardy and another time for the worse when he contracted the illness right after the biggest achievement of his life.

Whenever I feel too morose or too happy about a situation, I remember a line that Birbal told Akbar — “this too shall pass”.

4. Sir Isaac Newton

Newton with his multiple contributions to science

Out of all the people I have written till now, I think Newton is most widely known among them. He was a mathematician in the true sense of the word. Claimed as the inventor of calculus, discoverer of the mathematical notion of the phenomenon of gravity, father of classical mechanics and a major contributor to the field of Optics, Newton’s interests varied across a lot of domains. His fame as a genius, who supposedly had the idea of gravity because of an apple falling on his head, was universal during his reign as the President of the Royal Society. But enough about the stuff that you probably already know. Let’s dive into the interesting stuff, shall we?

He quietly practiced Alchemy — the pseudoscience of combining random elements that may make some magical potion by any chance. His works on alchemy were published after his death and a lot of scientists took this as shocking news as an extremely logical and realist physicist was found in the race to invent the Elixir of Life. He was also quite famous for his aversion towards any kind of sexual activity towards both women and men. It is widely believed that Newton was a virgin his whole life and thus, obviously, never married leaving no successors to this great man. His dispute with Leibniz over the invention of calculus and his abuse of power being the President of the Royal Society are widely known as characteristic of his egotistical, devious and vindictive behaviour.

Now, Newton’s journey’s moral for me is kind of weird but what the general tone to it is — “avoid distractions, keep your head down and work hard till you make it.” His multidimensional contribution to Physics is something rarely found in today’s scientists who are more concentrated on a very specific niche of a subject. He proved beyond doubt that the human mind is capable of transferring intellect from one area to the other very effectively, while also indulging in pretty useless stuff like alchemy!

5. Kurt Cobain

Cobain’s suicide note — wildly shared amongst the youth of the 90s.

Oh well, whatever, nevermind. — Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana

If depressed people in the early 90s had a messiah, it was Kurt Cobain. A phenomenal band, Nirvana was one of the best and foremost alternate rock bands out there. His reputation grew tremendously as a person who truly understood depression, suicidal thoughts and general gloominess faced by every teen in their lifetime a multitude of times — remember that phase when you were depressed for no reason at all and somehow those “soothing” songs set up camp in your playlist? Yeah, Nirvana touched my soul too at that time. His work in music is considered revolutionary and gave rise to the development of styles of rock music which targetted the contemporary time teens. His style prevails till today as alternate rock has exploded in the 2000s.

He was obviously very depressed. He was an open bisexual, had a difficult childhood, heroin addiction, Lithium addiction and who-knows-what-more addictions. There’s a popular saying in Urdu and Hindi literature —

टूटे हुए दिल से ही संगीत निकलता है |

or — Only from a broken heart can Music arise. He had his life in a mess and was a worldwide phenomenon.

He supposedly committed suicide by shooting himself with a shotgun — emphasis on the supposedly. His beloved wife is considered the prime suspect for his possible murder. His suicide note is one of the most shared pieces of writing in the email era. Okay so by now you must be thinking I only write about guys with tragic death scenes and yeah I found the pattern too. The thing is, and Cobain taught us this, we do not matter in this whole gigantic marvellous universe. We don’t even matter in our tiny cities or even our neighbourhood. Eventful Death is the only interesting thing that happens in a person’s life. According to Cobain’s “suicide note”:

I would rather burn out than fade away.

Now, I myself believe in a slightly greener version of Cobain’s life lessons. I agree with him on the notion of us not mattering even in the tiniest of the scales. But I believe that the only thing that matters in a person’s life is her legacy. If, by the end of my insignificant life, I am able to get my name in some textbook, (I know, cheesy right?) I’d consider my life successful.

Lesser known fact about Kurt: He had an imaginary friend Boddah to whom he wrote his suicide note.

Footnotes

[1] Freddie Mercury: Queen: One of the best performances

[2] Bobby Fischer: Game of the Century

[3] Ramanujan: Movie

[4] Newton: The Loneliest Genius

Coming up in future updates: Stephen Hawking, Nikola Tesla, Rahul Dravid, Saadat Hasan Manto

Honorable Mentions: Elon Musk, Helen Keller, Galileo Galilei, Brian May, Judit Polgar, Vassily Ivanchuk, Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad.