As I typed away at my work desk, I heard the murmurings from the family lounge. ‘A thirty-four year old Indian actor has committed suicide …’ I tiny sadness touched my heart. I kept on typing. It had been a long time since I had watched the Indian cinema, with a few exceptions, so I did not know any new names in any case. Suicide was sad, nonetheless, for any human being. Later on in the evening, as I flicked through my Facebook, the news was everywhere. Sushant. The actors name was Sushant Singh Rajput. And there were the pictures. Something struck me about that face. There seemed something familiar about it. Searching … searching … searching … oh yes, my brain finally recognized him. He had been the short-appearance hero in Amir Khan’s movie PK. I had watched it especially after the reviews about the ‘holiness’ of its script. I quickly typed in the movie name to be sure, and my heart dipped as the same face appeared in the movie cast.
He had appeared so different. He had role played a Pakistani and a Muslim in that movie. He had had an aura of such an innocence about him. Not that I am trying to say that being a Pakistani and a Muslim means to be innocent, but what I mean to say that he was shown an outsider in that movie, an outsider to India, and he truly appeared to be someone different. Someone different from the rest of the cast. Someone different from the rest of the film industry. There had been a shine in his eyes, an innocence on his face and a softness in his voice that was just so intriguing. I had thought, at the time when I had seen the movie, that if he is a new actor in the film industry, he is sure to hit the skies, just like an Amir Khan of 1989, and a Salman Khan of 1991 and a Sharukh Khan of 1993. But he surpassed all of them in something, and that was his aura of extreme innocence.
Images, videos and articles kept popping up about Sushant on the social media in the following days. His life. How he studied hard to be an engineer only to please his parents. His passion. How he dropped out of the engineering university in the third year to finally join theatre. His ideas. How he spoke about the need to update our educational curriculum to adapt the children to a changing future. His hobbies. God Almighty, he was a cluster of creativity, energy and passion. I have seen few people in my life with so much diversity. The one person being a semblance of Sushant’s colorful personality is Raja Zia-ul-Haq, a motivational speaker of Islam who you would see riding up to the wilderness of the mountains on his bike to speak to the youth under a starlit sky and filming it with the best studio equipment available. Sushant showed around his house in a short documentary. He started out with his living room which appeared more of a reading room. But he called it a Time Travelling Room because of the huge variety of books he had in there and he said that he ‘talks’ to his books. Imagine the imagination! The walls were decorated with ancient pictures, the moon cycle graffiti and there was actually a giant-size telescope projecting out of the window from which he peered and said that he could see the Saturn rings, Jupiter’s moons and other galaxies too when the sky was clear. He also called the room, his Thinking Room. Like the innocence of a baby, he loved the color yellow. And wow! Believe it or not, but he actually owned a plot on the moon !
I saw some interviews of his. Once again, the purity of his soul and thoughts shone through his eyes and words. And this time, they were real words and not script words. It was one of those shows in which the host asks lucrative questions and tries to get scandalous answers in order to get hot ratings. It’s a match of wits. Some celebrities get caught out, embarrassed, while others strike a sixer with a bold answer. So this host fires a rapid round of questions on him related to women in his life. Without batting an eye-lid, he answers straight, naming his mother, his god-mother and a senior actress who he stood in awe of. It was such a straight and pure answer that the host actually fumbled with his response, for he had neither been able to shame Sushant, nor sizzle the audience. And this time Sushant was not acting, but looked straight in the eye with a genuine, innocent and pure response. A trait hard to find in the film industry nowadays.
I saw him arriving at awards and parties. A little unsure, a little insecure and very, very humble. If one can read the eyes, if one could read a face, if one could read body gestures, he was a simple soul, in love with acting and trying to adjust to the world of blitz. Despite his humbleness, I was amused to see the innocent confidence of a child in him. He had just performed in front of a jury which included Hrithik Roshan. Hrithik Roshan had been the hero of his teenage. So instead of becoming dumbfounded in front of him, he asks Hrithik if he would fulfil a wish of his. A bit taken aback, Hrithik asks, ‘What?’ And Sushant asks him to dance with him on his favorite song of Hrithik, kaho na pyar hae. So Hrithik comes on stage and they both start tapping. Interestingly, Sushant taps better that Hrithik although the song belonged to Hrithik. And then suddenly, after two out of three steps, Sushant stands back and opens his arms, asking Hrithik for a hug! What a daring innocence! And they both hug on stage.
Amidst all this, a word Nepotism looms up and is accused to be the reason for Sushant’s suicide. A new word to me, I quickly look it up and add it to my vocabulary. It basically means to promote somebody because of their heritage. They said that Sushant, despite his great looks and talent, was being badly bullied within the industry because he did not have cinema ancestors. And I easily found the bullying clips because they were so many. Karan Johar, Shahrukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and a few others unknown to me, are a few names I hate to mention but I hate them themselves now, while I used to be a fan of some of them in my teenage. It is disgusting and heartless the way these bunch of pretend-gods had openly bullied Sushant, tried to break his confidence and oust him out of the industry. It is sickening how Alia Bhatt babies Ranbir Kapoor because of Papa Rishi and downplays Sushant. Given the choice of three men and one to shoot, by Karan Johar, Alia said, she would shoot Sushant and then laughed it off with an off-hand apology. If you ask me, I would say that they were all horribly jealous of Sushant, because he was the real man, the real beauty and the real talent, while they are thriving in the industry because of Baba actor or Mama actress, or to launch their own children.
I would plead everybody who reads this to boycott these goons of the Indian Film Industry to avenge for Sushant’s suicide murder. As for Sushant, whose name means peace, as a Muslim, I can only say heartfelt what Prophet Isa AS will say on the Day of Judgment for his Christian followers, who turned his religion of monotheism into shirk, ‘If You punish them, indeed they are Your creatures and if You pardon them, indeed You are Mighty and Wise.'
[Al-Quran, Al-Maidah, 5:118]
