A mixture of the tragic and noble; good fortune and misfortune; sharp criticism rising to a crescendo of vilification followed down the years by accolades and admiration; finally unanimous praise and judgment that the good outweighed the bad; ultimately judged to be the best ever senator. That was Senator Edward M Kennedy who died at his home in Hyannis Port on 22 August, after more than a year long struggle with a brain malignancy.

This youngest son of Joseph and Rose Kennedy - patriarch and matriarch of the most illustrious of American families - rose from catastrophe to find his own place in politics. Just as he was shunned and derided after the Martha’s Vineyard, Chappaquiddick accident when the car he was driving went down into the water killing Mary Jo Kopechne, the diligent work he put in as an elder statesman is universally applauded.

In my mind as in yours probably, the images that stand out are very many because this family was special and held centre stage often. Though far removed from American politics and often scoffing at the adulation given the family by America as their royals, we were interested in them. They held attention and most certainly made their mark in the mind of even a person like me, so far removed. Joseph Kennedy was supposed to be ruthless in his ambitions, later transferred on his sons. He enjoyed immense success, personally and again, through his sons, but misfortune too in the death of his eldest son in war and a daughter supposedly mentally ill.

A photograph shows the striking picture of the three brothers beside the Oval office three months before President John F Kennedy was shot dead. Young Edward certainly looks the handsomest! Pictures of the President’s funeral show brother Robert next to Jacqueline and the two kids. He overshadows the youngest brother who was certainly markedly visible in sadness. The pain of the man was caught on camera as his son’s cancerous leg had to be amputated. Death was constantly in the family and tragic death in most cases. The most tragic to me was the death of John Kennedy Jr in a self piloted plane. Mercifully his mother was dead at the time, again a prey to cancer.

Even we so far away, mourned the death of this very handsome young scion on whom the mantle of the family would surely have fallen and been accepted with grace and a strong sense of responsibility. No one knows what transpired in the small plane to send it crashing but one surmises it was perhaps a violent exchange of words between John and his young wife, with maybe a push and shove that made the man loose control of the plane. His wife was supposed to be into drugs and as such unreliable in her moods. There were other extended family mishaps: sexual excesses and the accidental death of one nephew while skiing.

Another picture that has stuck in the mind is of Edward Kennedy losing the Democratic ticket for the presidency to Jimmy Carter. We cheered since we did not share the American adoration of the Family. We preferred the simpler peanut farmer from the South. A more recent picture places Edward Kennedy on a mind’s pedestal as he endorses the candidature of Barack Obama for president. Completely silver haired, he is shown in yet another photograph busy with papers in his Senate office. A final picture of him in a wheel chair, very ill.

His bids for presidency were invariably blighted. Consequent to the drowning of the girl traveler in his car after a party, he had to forego having himself running for selection as the Democratic candidate for president. Then in 1974, he took himself out of the 1976 race to be with his son, Edward Jr, who needed leg amputation due to bone cancer. In 1979 he announced officially that he would run for presidency. His campaign was said to be not tight and organized and his misadventures were dredged and paraded for all of America to hear and see. He lost to Jimmy Carter.

That’s when his career turn occurred leading to success. His always troubled personal life and as scion of the family eased out, and in the early 1990s he remarried.

He became an excellent Senator, outspoken, knowing his subject thoroughly and espousing social and humanitarian causes. He spoke up strongly for immigrants; proposed a better deal for the less advantaged; advocated better health care and tried to eradicate the fear of the average American to fall ill, get old and die. We are all wary of these conditions, but in the US of America the dread is doubled since medical care is so very expensive and more elders left to fend for themselves.

His first marriage to Joan Bennet in 1982 ended in divorce after 24 years. Born February 22, 1932, the youngest of nine children, four boys and five girls, he was too young at 28 to be elected Senator to the vacancy of Massachusetts. This was Robert’s seat but President John Kennedy, in an act of nepotism, promoted him to Attorney General. So Edward had to wait till he turned 30 to claim his Senate seat in 1962. Edward was in a plane crash in 1964 that killed both the pilot and aide and he the sole survivor. During his convalescence, he devoted time to legislative work.

Edward Kennedy’s eulogy on his brother Robert’s assassination ended thus: "The death of my brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life. To be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it; saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it." We cannot, while agreeing with these sentiments, push the death of Marilyn Monroe out of mind for it was whispered the AG had a hand in it to protect his brother, the President.

It is now proclaimed that Edward Kennedy is the best of the brothers; who did the most for America through years long senatorship, fighting for social causes and consistently hardworking. "He was the survivor," said Norman J Ornstein, a political scientist. "His was not a shining star but he burned brightly before fading away. He had a long, steady glow. When you survey the impact of the Kennedy’s on American life and politics and policy, he will end up being the most significant by far."

David Brooks, columnist of the New York Times, wrote thus: "As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less enamored of charisma. It’s fun to cover a charismatic politician but government is boring and in a healthy society it should be boring. Ted Kennedy is from the most charismatic family in the history of American politics, and yet he successfully transformed himself into something kind of original. From His Prince Hal youth, he became a professional legislator. He was the best in handling negotiations, crafting compromises, putting together the details, understanding the various constituencies at play, divining a legislative path through committees and on the floor. Kennedy hired the best staff, even people cleverer than him."

Gail Collins in the same paper writes: "One of the lovely things about the Kennedy story was that here you had a guy who everybody thought had one destiny at which he failed utterly, who picked himself up and found his own purpose at which he was better than anybody else in the world. Edward Kennedy was one of the worst presidential candidates in the world. People and even he thought he had an innate right to run the country solely because of his name. After he lost he went through a stage where he was not exactly the most admirable role model. But he gradually found the correct place and grew into a role where his own faith worked perfectly. In his middle age, he built a truly spectacular career in which he probably became the Kennedy who served this country best."

"A man of unbridled appetites at times, he nevertheless brought a discipline to his public work that resulted in an impressive catalog of legislative achievements across a broad landscape of social policy. But he was more than a legislator. He was a living legend whose presence ensured a crowd and whose hovering figure haunted many a president. He struggled for much of his life with his weight, with alcohol, and persistent tales of womanizing. His life steadied after he married Victoria Ann Regge, a Washington lawyer."

Gordon Brown said of Edward Kennedy: "Across America, Senator Edward Kennedy is mourned as one of America’s greatest advocates of social justice. He is mourned as a great internationalist who inspired social progress in every country. Because of his vision and courage, Ireland is today at peace, South Africa is free of apartheid, more children are going to school and have better health care."

The editorial in the International Herald Tribune of 28 August says: "We owe a great debt to the vision and courage of Teddy and his mantra forged in tragedy and expressed most eloquently to the nation when he abandoned his presidential quest in 1980: ‘The world goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.’ In his last speech he explicitly handed over the mantra to President Obama." His decision to support Obama’s candidature, being the patriarch of the Democratic Party, was significant. He persuaded Obama to take the long shot bid for presidency.