After that, I’d spot you in advertisements, on hoardings and magazine covers, and wherever else your pleasant, enlivening manner shone through. You seemed so positive and confident in the success story you were carving out for yourself. My husband and I, avid theatre buffs, knew you had way to go. We saw Chhichhore because you were in it.
Which is why you taking your life has left us stunned. Ten days after your death we’re still reeling, as are so many of your fans, friends, work colleagues and acquaintances. We cannot imagine the grief of your loved ones.
But you were grieving as well. The police found antidepressants in your room. Your friends reveal that you were battling a smear campaign. Those behind it were using their influence to affect your work. You’d apparently lost seven films in six months. You were beginning to despair. In one post, you beseeched fans to watch your film Sonchiriya. I have no godfather, you said to them. You were unsure of your future as an actor, even after 11 films, many of them triumphs at the box office.
It seems you were mocked for emerging as a TV actor first, taunted by those who decided they didn’t like you for your modest upbringing, and isolated to ‘show you your place’, lest you flex your chiselled muscles and flash your charm to gain more fans than allowed, for an ‘outsider’.
If this is true, then first let’s tear into the fact about smear campaigns. Smear campaigns are driven, not by power or influence as perceived, but by fear and insecurity. Those who envy your talent and are afraid that you may reach the stars, use force to pull you down. They are threatened by your potential. They deploy and divert resources, not to advance their own lot, but to harm another’s. Their aggression tells of their fear, not their might. Fragile and inflamed egos, so easily slighted, reveal a false sense of power. They resort to contempt to cover up for a lack of resilience.
Further, smear campaigns draw on untruth. A bunch of lies, loosely spoken are pushed around insidiously. Those who generate falsehoods, however flippantly, are ignorant of its true effects, of what it does in return to them. They etch their selves unknowingly into darkness.
Myth is replete with such instruction. When Yudhishtira falsely proclaims Ashwathama dead in the Mahabharata, he does so to disarm the invincible Dronacharya in battle. Dronacharya, as Ashwathama’s father, is numbed with grief, lays down his arms, and within moments is attacked and beheaded. A crafty plan to vanquish a powerful adversary seemingly works. But no sooner than this happens, Yudhishtira’s spoken lie bears an effect on his own well-being. His chariot, which until this moment had always moved above the ground, comes crashing down into murky mud. In a stroke, his past merit is consumed.
This tale is meant to caution us. One lie can wipe away lifetimes of virtue.
Had you known this, you might have heard your detractors, paid little heed and walked on. But your friends say you were sensitive and caring and passionate, and took things to heart. You were probably taken aback by the smallness of people mighty, and stung by the injustice of it all. You read Nietzsche and Sartre in quest of things deeper, played the guitar and wrote poems. Your search was existential, as much for the meaning of life, as for the reason of your mum’s death while you were still a teen.
This last fact proved crucial. In depression, it’s the strength of our emotional bonds that often keeps us afloat. Even as the impulse for self-destruction seems overwhelming, our deep concern for the well-being of our loved ones holds us back from fatally harming ourselves. I can do this to myself, a voice within speaks, I can’t do this to them.
Yet had you reached out to the many others who love, respect and adore you, each one I imagine would have reminded you of your accomplishments, of how difficult it is to make it to the place you already had; your blessings, of having intelligence, looks, talent and opportunity, things that money can’t buy; of how fortunate you were. Some may have counselled you to be patient in the face of adversity, and to have faith. Others would have shared their tales of the dark abyss, of being in the belly of the whale. Their emergence would have reiterated that however hopelessly and pointlessly and close to the brink you are, it is not for you to take your life. Some would have hugged you, made you laugh and whipped up your favourite snack.
Each, in their own way, would have told you your worth, and ‘your place’. There, among the stars, near the moon you so avidly looked at through your telescope, encouraging friends to share in your wonder. Each would have wanted you alive and fighting. RIP.
DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.
Courtesy - The Times of India.
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