OBITUARY \\ In 2012, Bollywood became that much poorer as several veterans of the Hindi film industry breathed their last. Some of the bigger names included veteran character artist AK Hangal, actor and wrestler Dara Singh, veteran actress Achla Sachdev, satirist and actor Jaspal Bhatti, and superstar Rajesh Khanna. Khanna was a Bollywood actor, film producer and politician, who was referred to as the “original superstar” of Indian cinema. He earned these titles following 15 consecutive solo hit films in the 1970s, a record that remains unbroken. One of the most famous and popular Indian directors, Yash Chopra, also breathed his last in the September of 2012. He was known as the king of romance, a title he earned for his epic romances which he brought to the screen either as producer or director. The action thriller Deewar was one of his well-known projects and is credited with setting Amitabh Bacchan on the path to life-long fame. The Bollywood music industry was hit as well with the death of Pakistani singer Mehdi Hasan. Hasan was one of the best known ghazal singers of our times. Veteran cinematographer Ashok Mehta, too, breathed his last in Mumbai in August. Some luminaries in the world of business and art who breathed their last include SK Khaitan, the chairman of the Khaitan Group; T Samuel, the pioneer of Pocket Cartoons in India; eminent writer and president of the Sahitya Akademi, Sunil Gangopadhyay; Urdu poet Muzaffar Razmi; and the White Revolutionary and Milkman of India, Verghese Kurien. India also mourned the loss of a strong woman, freedom fighter and social activist, Captain Lakshmi Sehgal, who breathed her last in July. India’s first woman photo-journalist, Homai Vyarawalla, also died at the age of 98. She started her career in the 1930s and thereafter received notice at the national level when she photographed many political and national leaders, including Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah and Indira Gandhi. At the onset of World War II, she started working on assignments of the The Illustrated Weekly of India magazine, which published many of her iconic black and white images. At the end of November, Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray breathed his last, stalling all life in Mumbai, signalling the end of an era of an in Maharashtra politics. On an international level, the world mourned the death of Neil Alden Armstrong, the US astronaut and first man to walk on the moon. Armstrong died at the age of 82. Sally Ride, the first US woman to travel into space, also passed away in July 2012.