As Hollywood comes in terms with the loss of yet another young talent, the gifted and edgy Heath Ledger, one can’t help but wonder if the Brokeback Mountain star too is poised for a cult status? After all, post Brokeback Mountain, where his performance earned him an Oscar nomination, Ledger was being touted as one of the most promising young talents of Hollywood. His tendency of gravitating towards, dark, edgy characters, was percieved as a mark of genius. “It’s a tragedy beyond words. Heath Ledger was just about to start a new phase in his career. He had the same edgy quality about him as James Dean,”says filmmaker Anjan Dutt.

Indeed Ledger’s untimely death brings to mind other bright careers snuffed out before time. The incredible possibilty of James Dean’s acting career or the promise of Kurt Cobain’s music, are stuff that many of us have spent afternoons speculating. “There is something very romantic about the loss of a young talent. Don’t we just love ruing about the untimely loss of a Shelley or a Monroe,” asks theatre person Trina Nileena Banerjee.

The realms of darkness of Jim Morrison songs and the brooding, moody quality of River Phoenix films will always stay with us, claims Jadvapur University student, Ishani Sengupta. “Cult figures like Kurt Cobain have attained immortality because of their undeniable talent. They are loved and respected because we all connect to their work in some way or the other. But it’s also true that we romanticise the lives of those talents who die young,” says Dasgupta.

Banerjee feels her favourite poet Sylvia Plath was on verge of a great creative leap right before her death at the age of 31. “I have spent countless afternoons wondering how Plath would have reacted to various cultural developments which happened after her death. That very fact makes her more alive for me me today,” she claims. But she also admits that it will be naïve to speculate on such things. “ The public psyche has a tendency to immortalise But it will be childish to only remember these talents because of their short life-span,” she says.