Bollywood’s crocodile tears for Sushant Singh Rajput
The young actor’s suicide sheds light on how the very industry he worked for failed him
While away from the studio arc lights and outdoor locales, he would quietly climb to the roof of his apartment and use his telescope to star-gaze. His endless questions on the laws of Quantum Physics and his attempts to explore its links, if any, with mysticism would sometimes leave filmmaker Shekhar Kapur speechless. His last Instagram post — that talks about a ‘fleeting life’ trying to ‘negotiate’ its options between a ‘blurred past’ and ‘dreams carving an arc of smile’ — offers vignettes of an existential crisis that probably drew him to a point of no-return.
But we prefer to label Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput a ‘victim’ of clinical depression and let him peacefully die a violent death!
The outpourings of grief and condolences from his industry co-workers on social media notwithstanding, the death of Rajput, all of 34, is yet another instance of the very industry he worked for failing him — just as the hazy Mumbai skyline hardly ever allowed the ambitious actor a clear glimpse of the celestial order.
Come on Bollywood, stop shedding those crocodile tears for a death that’s as much a result of mental turmoil as it is the likely fallout of a nonchalance, couldn’t-care-less attitude towards someone who was a part of the world’s second-largest entertainment industry in his own right and not because he had a surname to brag about in his CV. Merely attributing a suicide to ‘clinical depression’ is an ostrich mentality that will take Bollywood only as far as the next lurking suicide.
Collateral damage
For an industry that has for ages taken ‘pride’ in its dalliance with nepotism, for an industry that gloats in its ability to spot talent through the prism of a surname, for an industry that’s a masterclass on turning its award ceremonies into a mutual admiration society, people like Rajput are collateral damage that can be best condoled through social media posts and safely forgotten for the next premiere night.
Every time a Rajput commits suicide, remember, there’s a larger damage that is inflicted — silently. All these deaths are affirmations of not just a ruthless industry letting some of its talented foot soldiers fall by the wayside, but it’s also a sign of an industry riding roughshod on the dreams and hopes nurtured by those millions in small towns for whom the silver screen is a vehicle to wish fulfilment in figurative terms.
When Amitabh Bachchan was making his maiden political pitch as the Congress candidate from Allahabad in December 1984, a political correspondent from Kolkata, who was in Allahabad to cover the elections, wrote in his dispatch that the very first person in the queue at one of the polling stations had a hairstyle that was a replica of ‘Big B’s’ iconic hairdo. There was perhaps a ‘Bachchan’ in that young man whose dreams would definitely have taken a bashing with this Rajput’s death. There was this domestic help called Roshni [name changed] at my hostel in New Delhi who hailed from a village in Rajasthan. She would never miss the latest Madhuri Dixit release. When a Jiah Khan takes her life or a Divya Bharti allegedly jumps to her death, perhaps with them, there are countless Roshnis whose aspirations die a hundred deaths.
Of course Bollywood stars have their diehard fans among Metro India too, but the angst of living and dying in the throes of poverty, the urge to keep the fire burning in the midst of a skewed social order steeped in caste-bias, the ambition to tide over the odds in the quest for a bigger, better tomorrow can never be felt, can never be manifest in such raw, rudimentary terms as felt through lived-experiences in the hinterlands, in the dust bowls. That is why when actor Manoj Bajpayee talks about the ‘anger’ in the man on the street over Rajput’s death, it’s a clear reference to the angst, the frustration of these minions for whom even one Sushant Singh Rajput from a non-Metro like Patna is worth 10 textbook examples of a social hero.
The villain-punching, on-screen heroics that Bollywood churns out day in and day out help ‘transport’ millions, who do not even have access to two square meals a day, to ‘moksha’. It is an aphrodisiac of sorts that allows them to transcend the sheer pain of survival. In that sense Bollywood is transcendental, Bollywood is uplifting, Bollywood is belligerence. But every time a Sushant Singh Rajput dies, that belligerence, that desire, that resolve dies a silent death too. So instead of sharing those faux emotions for mass consumption, think Bollywood, think. Ask yourself this question: Did you really deserve a Rajput?